First Thoughts
Demystifying "emerging writer" publishing
If you’re new here, First Thoughts is a call-back to my first year on Substack, which took its name from Natalie Goldberg’s Writing Down the Bones. I wrote weekly about whatever made itself available: poems, stories, essays, and weird little lyrical bursts. I’ll occasionally pop in here when I feel the vibrations. Not that you need it, but I want to give you permission to skip over these if you’re mostly here for book(ish).
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Some of you might not know how all this works, so I want to demystify the writing/publishing process a little bit and give you a peak into the realities of being an “emerging writer” right now, because I think it’s important to talk about and normalize. It’s such a huge part of the job, and a lot of writers spend a lot of time in this phase.
Spreadsheets: This is one extraordinarily unglamorous side of being a writer—specifically, a fiction writer, poet, or CNF-er. You work on a story or poem for (who knows) six months, two years, sometimes longer, seeking feedback from trusted friends, incorporating the stuff that rings true, leaving the stuff that doesn’t, then revising, revising, revising. Then, you send the story to more (sometimes the same, sometimes different) trusted friends one more time. One more time, they suggest revisions. You revise, revise, revise. You read your story or essay or poem aloud to your lover in bed. They say, “This is great, send it out. Now, will you get me a glass of water?” Next day, you draft a cover letter. You re-read your story once more, catching any wonky phrases that don’t sound quite right. You’re ready to go. You’ve put everything you possibly can into this story.
You search publication spreadsheets, forums, databases, and individual magazine websites to see who is currently open for submissions. Some are open all year, some for the academic year, and, more and more, some for just a few months out of the year. The Paris Review is famously open until they “reach capacity.” What that means? You don’t know. Sometimes they open their submission portal on the first of the month and then close it down two days later. (These top tier mags receive thousands upon thousands of submissions from writers all over the world during these submission periods. Some writers submitting are total beginners. Some have a good number of publications, like you, and some have already published a book or ten or have Pulitzers. In which case, they have agents who do all this work for them—I think.) You tweak your cover letters according to each magazine’s specifications, change the format of your story according to their protocols—indent, font type, where your name appears or doesn’t appear, page numbers at the bottom, page numbers at the top, on and on—and you double check everything and hope for the best. “Dear Sophia Sheely…”. Then you hit submit and realize—shit!—it’s Sophia Shealy. E-A, not E-E. You kiss that submission goodbye. Rejection is imminent. (Yes, some of these mags are that savage. Spell an editor’s name wrong or format your story with the wrong margins? They’ll reject you right away.) Brush it off. Keep going. You submit to other mags. You spell check the editor’s name out loud so you can hear it and calm your nerves before you submit to the next magazine. You read and reread the submitting protocols. (A lot of mags allow “simultaneous submissions,” which means you’re allowed to submit your story to more than one mag at a time, so long as you notify the editors if you are lucky enough to get an acceptance from another magazine.) You submit to five, ten mags at a time and wait….and wait….and wait.
You receive some rejections three days after submitting, and some rejections two years after submitting. (You wish this was a joke.) Yes, sometimes it takes that long. These mags are low staff, underpaid, volunteer-run, etc. All the mags eventually respond, maybe give you a nice note, a “close, but no cigar,” but offer no specific feedback. Your story—not you—has now been rejected ten times. Two years of writing. Eight months of waiting (usually eight months is the longest a mag will take). In the meantime, you’ve been working on a new story, but you’re still a little upset. There’s no workaround: rejection always stings. No amount of hardness or hard won experience makes rejected easier. You simply only get better at how you respond to it. So, you try to respond in a mature, dedicated way. After you go for a run or bike ride and snivel a little and cry to your lover in bed, you work up the courage to re-read your rejected story. You realize it’s garbage. You print it out and mark it up like Jackson fucking Pollack. You revise and revise. You send it to your trusted friends and do it all over again. Revision, cover letters, databases, spreadsheets, word counts, submission windows, reading aloud to your lover, getting the water, submitting, crossing fingers, waiting, waiting, waiting.
Why?
Because stories maybe saved your life. Because Min Jin Lee and Ursula K Le Guin and Madeline L’Engle and many, many other writers have similar tales of rejection.
You’re not special. This is part of the job. So, get to work.
Keep going.
And maybe someday you’ll be able to share your precious little blip of word energy with even just five people. Five readers alone in a room, or at a beach, or in a depressing break room at work somewhere across the continent.
Because stories make you feel less alone.
It takes an insane amount of stubbornness and support. (Thank you, Rebekah.)
To my writer pals: stay stubborn, and keep the faith.
To my non-writer pals: go subscribe to a few literary mags. (Let me know if I can help you find some you might like.)
Peace & love,
Josh