How to Get Your Story Read

During my time as senior editor for the Duende literary magazine, I saw a lot of pieces cross my desk. The sad truth is that I rejected far more than I accepted. In this article I’ll explain a bit about why that is and offer some suggestions on making sure your work gets read.

The most important piece of advice I can offer is simple: be proud of your work. If you like your work, someone else might also like it. I read pieces by people who had plenty of publishing credits to their name and their submission didn’t even make it beyond the first round of reading because it was clear that this was a story they didn’t really care about.

When you care about a piece of writing that you do, you treat it differently: you do take care of the piece during the submission process, for one; you take the time to do your research before you submit.

• Is this the right journal for my piece?
• What sort of work do they accept?
• Have I read at least three of their issues?
• Do I know where my piece would fit into their journal?
• Who are the editors and which editor should I specifically address my query to?

These are the basics. Every article in history will tell you to check the above.

I wish that it also went without saying that you need to carefully double-check your submission for grammar and spelling mistakes before submission…from personal experience as an editor, however, I must unfortunately state that this actually needs significant stressing to the wider writing population.

But, of course, it is the writing that will really shine. I wish that it also went without saying that you need to carefully double-check your submission for grammar and spelling mistakes before submission…from personal experience as an editor, however, I must unfortunately state that this actually needs significant stressing to the wider writing population.

If your writing is good then the editor will take notice of it. Perhaps it still gets rejected, but it fundamentally changes the way your piece is viewed. Is it a piece that instantly gets tossed back into the slush? Attaching your name to that sort of work doesn’t help you in the least. But, even if it gets rejected in the end, a piece that shows real promise might be a piece that an editor remembers. They might pause the next time you submit to be sure that they take a good look at your new work. Without knowing it, by submitting work you love, you could be making friends.

It’s not always easy to tell if your work is good. On top of that, submitting requires a huge amount of effort! Exploring the markets, doing your research on specific journals, preparing the dozens of query letters you will need for each and every single piece, and actually going through the submission process itself…grueling. Time that most writers would much prefer to spend writing.

And so some writers half-arse it. They cut corners. They submit generic query letters, or submit “shotgun” style to as many semi-related journals as they can. Worse still, many submit their work before it is ready.

There was nothing worse for me, as an editor, than seeing a piece come along that was almost good, but which had clearly not been given the time it needed to mature. And so therein lies my next advice: like a fine wine or scotch, let your story rest.

Once you finish that first draft of your piece, let it sit for a day or a week. Return to it and give it the very first serious edit. Read it aloud — do all the proper things that all the writing articles tell you to do. Explore. Then, share it with a trusted friend or writing buddy. Ask them to give it a seriously intensive critiquing. Ask them to tell you about any places that don’t work. Then, rewrite. Wait another day or a week. Polish once more. And then… let sit one more time.

It’s that final space, at the end, when you have already done all the workshopping, that makes the difference. Never submit on the fly. Give your story at least one week after you’ve done your final polish before you submit. Make sure it’s the best that it can be.

But, don’t let it sit too long either. A story eventually needs to be freed. Don’t workshop a piece to death. Make sure it’s been given time to rest but don’t force-feed it the whole bottle of sleeping pills. Eventually you will have to submit it.

One of the writing instructors at the MFA I attend recently gave a good piece of advice.

Twenty submissions is barely getting started but when you hit a hundred (and you still have nothing but rejections) it’s time to take another look at your work. That gives you an idea of the sheer number of journals you should be looking at for any given piece.

Whatever you do, don’t give up! Rejections will happen, so learn to roll with it. Get your research done on the major fifty or so journals you think might be good for your genre and style, then just keep writing. Submit new stories to all of those journals. Finish the first draft of one story? Make sure you have three more in the process of being written. It takes that much work to get yourself out there but, in the end, it’s worth the effort. You deserve it, your writing deserves it, and your editors will thank you for every submission that clearly bears the marks of your time, energy, and love.