Sending work “out there” means waiting for responses. I’m not so great at subbing. I know writers who constantly have lots of work out at one time and just send that baby straight back out the minute it comes back to them. I understand that, I just don’t do it myself.
Thing is, I choose really carefully where I want a story to go. I’m not “this must be published no matter what” I’m, “Ooh, I think my story “You say Grigio I say Gris – who knows why?” would be perfect at THAT PLACE, so I send it off, and stay hopeful, and if it comes back unwanted I feel a little sad for “You say…” and I write down the date of the rejection and any comments I got in my skull notebook, and that’s it.
A month or so may pass and I’ll look at the story again, edit a little, and realise, “Ooh, no, THIS PLACE would be superb for my story” and so it goes.
While something is still being considered there’s a gorgeous feeling of possibility. For ages I had a really high ratio of successful subs to rejected ones. I think that’s gone now. That sucks. But that was happening when I was writing fresh words regularly. Illness and family responsibilities have cut my new words way down but hooooo-rah, recently I have written a couple of brand new stories. It feels so good to have actually made some stuff up! I am now in that world of hope again and feel like good news may be just an email away. I am doing that too frequent email refreshing.
Anyway, there have been a heap of top tips for writers around the blogs but none pleased me as much as this wonderful list by Laura Ellen Scott “Get out of that slushpile, what are you crazy?!?!?” Perhaps if I follow her advice faithfully I’ll boost my success stats.
Sara Crowley 