Some thoughts on new writers and publishing

As a tutor one of the most common mistakes I see in new writers is their acting to soon on that urge to get their work out there. I think most writers have it - I definitely did - when you really find the thing you feel is your calling it is very exciting and every new poem or short story you write is the best thing you have ever written and of course you can't wait to share it with the rest of the world. And maybe it IS the best thing YOU have ever written, and maybe your friends and family and even tutors have praised it, but that doesn't mean that it will necessarily cut it in the competitive publishing world.

I am not saying this to be mean or judgemental - I sent out some howlers before I knew better. For years I wrote poetry without really working on (or knowing how to work on) my craft and I would send the best (in my eyes) of those poems to the occasional competition convinced it might stand a chance - I look back on those with horror now. And then when I started writing seriously and my work started improving and evolving and I was dipping my toe into the writing world, again I was keen to start getting it out there. I remember a particularly painful rejection that came from a guest editor of Magma suggesting I might want to do a creative writing course - I was apoplectic at the time - I was in the last year of a creative writing degree of course I was a serious writer - but looking back he was right. My writing was showing signs of something promising but I was still making beginner's mistakes and I was nowhere near there yet (not that I am now either - but I am a bit further along the path).

A wise tutor (and respected poet) once told me that it takes six years hard work to become a mediocre poet. At the time I thought that was a little harsh but now I realise that he was right. I have worked on my craft seriously for six years now (I don't count the time on my Creative Writing BA in that - if I count that too it's nine years) and I only now feel that I am really beginning to find my feet with my writing. I started sending work out sporadically to journals towards the end of my MA year and didn't start thinking about pulling poems into a pamphlet or collection until a couple of years after that. And all the while I was writing a lot as well as reading lots of journals, poetry collections, poetry websites, essays and books on writing.

Social media has been a great thing for writers. I am involved with several Facebook workshopping groups and was part of Jo Bell's 52 project last year. Social media has enabled writers to feel less isolated, to make connections, to get invaluable feedback on their work, and to make lasting friendships. But the down side of this web community is that it can make people competitive and over eager to be published. Consequently there has been a small rash of web zines and journals springing up that are not overly discerning about what they publish and don't reject much (if any work). On the one hand a little healthy competition can be good and more poetry publishing opportunities must surely be a good thing, but the down side of this is that it is easier than ever to get into print but that the quality of the work being published is not always so good. I know from my own experience that as you improve as a writer that you are sometimes embarrassed by your earlier efforts - which is OK if it is just the odd poem in a back issue of a journal that no one will ever see - but less good if it is emblazoned across the internet and the first thing that comes up if an editor googles your name. Luckily for me the internet poetry world was not so big when I started out and I have managed to locate and delete the awful poetry blog I started years ago.

So what's my point? I am not saying that new writers should never send work out or think about what might happen further down the line if they keep writing. I am just saying be cautious. Sit on your work for a while first, edit re-edit, put it away for a while and then edit some more. Be aware that not everything you write will be good enough to publish - I probably write 10-15 poems to get one or two that are OK. Keep reading and writing and reading. Read widely. Read journals to see what's out there and get an idea of where your work might eventually sit. Read collections to learn and be inspired and to get an idea of how collections work. If you are a relatively new writer put publishing on the back burner for a bit - it's better to enter in a blaze of glory than with something mediocre, and if getting published is your only reason for writing perhaps consider another career.

Getting it out there revisited

Reading back over my blog posts I came across one I had written in February called Getting it Out There. In the post I bemoan the fact that I had very little (almost nothing actually) published last year. The upshot was that with the encouragement of Heidi Williamson my writing coach, and after reading Jo Bell's blog post about poetry submissions, I decided to shake up my approach to submissions.

When I say shake it up what I actually mean is put a rocket under it and light the touch paper. I resolved that I would send out at least one submission per week. What I found when I first started doing this was that some weeks I would send more than one lot of poems off - it's the getting started that's the hard bit, but once I have I sometimes find that I get on a roll and then it's easy to send more. My new spreadsheets (submission spreadsheet and poem destinations) make it much easier to track where I am sending stuff - and more importantly where I have sent things before - crucial if you don't want to submit the same poem to a journal twice (I have done this and it's very embarrassing!). The poem destinations spreadsheet lists all my poems that I think are submittable (probably a tenth or less of what I have written) and next to each poem all the journals each poem has been sent to. I highlight a journal in yellow if it accepts the poem so that I know not to send out the poem again.  Of course spreadsheets are only as good as the person filling them in/reading them so mistakes and multiple submissions can and do still occur - but hopefully much less often.

I send to both print and online journals - always making sure that I have read the journal first and that I send something that I think will fit either the journal's style or the theme. I have kept up this submitting schedule for several months (I have slowed down a bit now) and I have been astonished by the results. Firstly I discovered that the more rejections I receive the less bothered am. When I was sending one submission every few months I would get very attached to the outcome and feel slightly depressed when the rejection arrived. Sending more work out inevitably means a lot more rejections but when I have several submissions out there I am less attached to each one. Secondly I have had almost thirty poems published already this year, with several more pending publication. All those years I had been brooding over occasional rejections and not sending out my work because I didn't think it was good enough - something that this months Mslexia cites as a common response amongst women - all I actually needed to do was send out more work.

Of course rejection still hurts, and if I have a few nos in a row it can still make me feel despondent, but now when I feel the despondency creeping up I remind myself to look at my Publishing History and I feel a lot better about the whole thing. 

Some tips for submitting:

1) Read the journal.

2) Read the submission guidelines - they vary from journal to journal.

3) Send a polite cover letter/email including a brief and relevant bio (unless the guidelines ask you not to) listing the names of the poems and thanking the editors for taking the time to read your work.

4) Send several poems so the editor gets a feel for your work.

5) Don't expect a receipt or acknowledgement that they have received it - and please don't email asking for one.

6) Don't resubmit immediately as soon as you get a rejection. Leave at least a month or so in between. Magma is the exception to this as they have a different editor for each issue. 

7) If you are submitting the same poem to several places email the other places immediately if a poem is accepted elsewhere.

8) If you have a poem accepted by a journal wait to submit more work (unless they ask you for some). Journals often like to wait at least an issue before they publish a poet again - Nutshells and Nuggets asks successful submitters to wait six months before re-submitting.

9) Don't use fancy fonts. 

10) include you name and contact details in the header or footer of each page (unless the journal asks you not to - some journals read anonymously - check the guidelines).
11) Don't automatically assume a poem is bad because it gets rejected - I have had poems published after being rejected by five other places, and some that are strong that haven't found a home because they don't quite fit anywhere.
12) Don't send a poem out too soon after writing. Leave it a bit and edit it again. If you can take it to a workshopping group. If you write a poem you feel will be good there is always that excitement that makes you want to send it out into the world too soon - and if you do this the likelihood is it will be rejected. You will look at it later and feel embarrassed because it needs editing - but then, of course, you can't submit it to that journal as they have already rejected it. I speak from bitter experience! 

Getting it Out There

I was updating my personal bibliography a couple of months ago and was shocked to discover that I had only had one poem published in 2014. I had had work accepted that will come out this year, I had been shortlisted in a pamphlet competition and I had written a couple of reviews - but still only one poem. I was shocked. Part of my problem is that I have never been pro-active enough about sending out my work. I had a beginner's flurry - where you send out lots of work that isn't good enough because you are so excited about this amazing writing thing. But since then I have sent out in fits and starts - fits mostly.

Once I had discovered this I started sending the occasional thing out. I also made one of my New Year Resolutions to be to get my work out there more to send out at least one submission a week. The more work you send out, the more you stand a chance of having something accepted, and ultimately the more chance you have of a publisher taking your pamphlet or collection seriously - it's not rocket science. Amazingly once you start sending work out regularly it suddenly becomes less of a big deal. I have found that now I am sending out more and more work, and I have already had a few things accepted.

There are two things that really helped motivate me with this - one was being coached by a friend who was training as a writing coach - kind of like a life coach but for writers. She asked me lots of questions about my writing life that made me think about what I do and why - you can read more about that here. The second thing was reading a blog post by Canal Laureate Jo Bell, which you can read here. One of the things that Jo suggests is making a database or spreadsheet to track which pieces of writing you send where and when you might expect a reply by. This is a brilliant (and simple) idea. It means that you are less likely to submit the same poem to journals at the same time, or, and I have done this, send the same poem to the same journal twice.  I actually made two spreadsheets - one that shows which all the journals poems have been submitted to - I highlight the place it is eventually published in - and the other which shows what poems are currently out, where they have gone and when to expect a reply by. It has certainly revolutionised my submission practice.