The Science - or Art - of Subbing

 You weren’t expecting to hear from me today, were you?  Unfortunately, the regular 14^th of month blogger, Liz Manning, is not well. 

Actually, it’s quite good to get writing again as I’ve spent the last few days scouring the internet for literary sites where I might submit my short stories and flash.  I know that a writer should keep his/her eye on the markets, see what editors are looking for and what they are accepting, but it’s a tedious, even soul-destroying, task.  You can fall into the bad habit of sending your stories to the same old same old every time, but, apart from getting yourself into a writerly rut, those markets you depend upon may change (not accept flash anymore, perhaps?) or even close down.  Literary magazines online have a notoriously short shelf life.

Literary sites should have a link for ‘submission guidance’ or ‘entry requirements’ or just ‘submissions’ where you would find out about obvious things like word length and genre, but often they don’t have such a link or it’s sketchy.  Eclectic is a word I dread, even worse ‘We’ll know what we like when we see it’.  They are telling you nothing, even though they will all have their preferences and their pet dislikes.  Jersey Devil Press is one of the few sites which owns up to theirs.  I have never subbed to Jersey Devil Press because I know I’m not writing the sort of thing they want. 

Of course, we all love reading, but looking at markets and working through the stories on their sites is not like curling up with a good book before bed.  You’re weighing up… the voice, the setting, the style, the language… and asking yourself ‘Does my story fit?’  Most frequently, the answer is that your story is nothing like the ones you’re reading on the site, but that doesn’t mean they won't take yours.  Maybe they have published grim stories but they didn’t have your humorous story… you hope.  Many literary ezines contain lit-er-a- chure, so highbrow and so dull that you wonder who is reading this stuff.  Is anyone, I wonder, apart from those hoping to sub to that ezine themselves?  As a child, I believed that there were two sorts of books, the ones which were enjoyable and those which were literature.  Out of the mouths of babes etc.

Before I leave, I must mention our submissions page on Writing Craft menu of the ACW website.  As I got this together, with Allison Symes, I hope writers are finding it useful.

The worst thing about all this is that we want to be writing and living in our story-world.  We are all Shakespeare at our own computer in our own ivory tower, aren’t we?  We don’t like falling down with a thump into reality.