Submitting to lit mags is, you might say, the absolute worst. It’s as if you’re a chef who cooked the best meal of your life only to have to go out into the streets to beg a load of well-fed people to eat it. Fun.
Submitting is also an unavoidable part of a writer’s life. But my god, why? Is a question many writers ask themselves when they sit down to submit. There are more than 3,000 literary magazines! A few of them probably just went defunct. Another couple just lost their funding. Oh, them over there? They’re dead. There is no good answer or good reason for the messy-room syndrome of the literary world. It’s full of people. People behind everything with their people preferences and problems. The “why” of submitting is a personal step everyone needs to make before trying to fit the process into their life. A few common ones? Validation. Community. Prestige. Seeing where you stand among other writers.
A big reason to submit for folks who write CNF is to add weight to a collection of essays. An agent is going to want to see that a collection can attract readers. Publication credits are built in evidence that folks out there are interested in reading your work already. Why? Agents like money. Readers have money. When an agent is getting dozens of queries a day, the one that includes, “with works published in … ” is going to stand out. And that is the goal, right? To build a collection for when someone says, “Oh, what did you write?” It feels a lot better to hand them a book, rather than send them a link.
Once you get through the why, the how is the kicker. Developing a schedule where writing time had a place took years. Now you need submitting time?! Psh, suh, fff — what? If you’re serious about getting more work published, you can’t only submit to one or two places. Well, you can. But it’ll be a slow process. Usually, an essay will need to be submitted 10 to 25 times before it will find a home. There are dozens of reasons your work can get rejected even if it is brilliant. Logistical reasons, even. Like an issue simply filling up by the time yours was reviewed.
The more you submit, the better your odds. So here are some techniques to lighten the load.
First, set aside one day a month — or even better, one afternoon a week — dedicated to submissions. Nothing else. Make it sacred. Block it on your calendar like you would a funeral. OK — maybe not that sacred. A distant cousin’s funeral, then.
Know where you want to submit in advance. If you start looking for the right place on the day, you’ll drive yourself mad. There are too many. Split your strategy. Research for a while. If you’re focused on a single genre, great. That will make life easier. You might spend a whole month just researching magazines before you’re ready to submit. If you do this enough, you’ll eventually develop a solid list of places you want to publish in. Ideally, around 100 magazines with 25-30 favorites. Eventually, this becomes a passive thing. As you grow as a writer, so will this list.
Eventually, you won’t need to research anymore. When you write something, you’ll think, “I know where to send this.”
Another great practice is to create templates for everything. Have a basic cover letter ready with customizable sections. Mine goes like this:
Dear [genre-specific editor]
Thank you for taking the time to consider [Title] (word count). My bio is below.
(Personalized line or trigger warning — optional)
This is a simultaneous submission. I will withdraw it if I’m accepted elsewhere. Thank you for your time.
(3rd person bio)
(Sign off.)
When you’re ready to submit, make a cover letter for the piece you’re working on, and then it’s copy-paste, copy-paste, copy-paste.
It is also good to keep separate versions of your manuscripts formatted to common guidelines (one with contact info; one without). This way, when you’re submitting, you don’t have to keep going into the document to make it anonymous or add something in. Follow William-Shunn’s guidelines for regular submissions, and cut your name and header info for anonymous ones.
Save these materials. Once you’ve sent a piece through a round of submissions, there is no guarantee you’ll get accepted. But you might still love the piece. With these materials in place, you can sit down and submit to another 20 magazines in under an hour. Make a folder system that works — maybe one for each piece, with subfolders for different versions. There are loads of tutorials out there on how to best organize files. They’re doing God’s work (assuming God is a huge nerd). However you do it, the goal is to eliminate decision fatigue and reduce repetitive formatting tasks that drain your creative energy.
These are logistical ways to save time, but psychological ones are the toughest. Don’t touch the writing of a submission when you are submitting it. Don’t even read it. It’s done. It’s ready to go. You edited it and created the different formats already. Reading it when you submit will lead to fidgeting with unnecessary words for an hour, sucking up time and motivation and it’s not worth it. There are loads of magazines in the sea. If you find you messed up later, so be it. Learn. Add a second pair of eyes to your prep process.
Accept that submission time is still writing time. It’s part of the job. Just as you wouldn’t consider yourself a chef if you only cooked but never plated the food or served it, you’re not fully engaged in the writing life if your words stay locked in your drawer. Reframe submission time as the final step in your creative process rather than an annoying administrative task that steals from your “real” writing time.
The most valuable time-saver? Depersonalize rejection. When you stop spending hours licking your wounds after each “not for us” you reclaim that emotional energy for what matters — writing more and submitting again. This can be particularly taxing with CNF because a rejection can feel like a rejection of your lived experience or the reality of life you’re sharing. But it truly isn’t. Remember: this is a numbers game played over years, not weeks. The time you invest now in an efficient submission system will pay dividends in publications later.
Benjamin Davis is a co-founder of Chill Subs and edits the Sub Club Newsletter. He has stories and poems in 25+ literary journals like Booth, Wigleaf and Moon City Review. His book of poems, The King of FU (2018), was such a smashing success it shocked the indie press who printed it into an early grave. He is now working on his first six novels.
