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Tag: Submissions

Submitting daily

Published by Val Gryphin on January 5, 2013

I don’t make new year’s resolutions, but I set a goal for myself of mailing a submission every day for the month of January. The reasoning behind this is two-fold. One, I simply want to get my submission number higher, and this is a good way to do it, and two. I’m hoping to increase my habit of submitting on a regular basis. I set myself two guidelines for this. One – if I miss a day, which will happen, I have to make it up. Two – I can’t work ahead, or “bank” submissions. If I submit extra, great, but I can’t go ahead and do the following day’s early*. So far I have missed one day, which I have made up, and have a total of six submissions for five days. Now to just maintain the numbers for the month.

*I count the day ending at midnight for this, so I can submit one day’s before midnight and the next day’s after midnight – a concession I made because of my schedule.

 

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Oh no

Published by Val Gryphin on October 27, 2011

Well, when you submit as much as I do you are bound to screw up, and I do, and this time I did!

I have a story out to a magazine that bumped it up for a second reading. All well and good. But I was looking through my rejection letters and realized that I submitted it to the same market last year where I received a personal rejection to it. Oh no!

So then the question was do I write and tell them I realized what I did, or wait and see how they responded? They are a super-fast market and I knew I would hear within a day or two.

I sent them a note apologizing for the mixup, and hopefully they won’t blacklist me. The market just looked like a good fit! Hopefully they have a good laugh over it and no hard feelings. I’ve made this mistake once before, oddly with the same story, and the editors were not happy with me at all – that time I didn’t know until they pointed it out to me. Not a good thing to annoy editors.

The funny thing it I use Duotrope religiously, and somehow missed in the tracker that it had already went to that market – and I am usually very careful about double-checking so I don’t do this.

Ah well, I’ll laugh at myself and hope the editor does the same.

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We like you… but not enough

Published by Val Gryphin on February 16, 2008

One of the stories I submitted last year went to an online magazine, and let me tell you that was an up and down ride.

The first email I got was this:

We’re delighted to let you know that your story, “Short Story,” has just been accepted for its second step in our selection process. Each of our editors will evaluate your story and we’ll make a final decision as to whether or not we’ll be able to accept it for publication. This happens for less than 10% of our submissions.
…
You should hear back from us within one month.

Then a few weeks later…

Our editorial review of your truly lovely, delicate story, “Short Story,” has been completed. Unfortunately, we won’t be able to use your piece at this time.

Once again, though, we liked your work. Please be aware that only a small percentage of the stories submitted to us ever make it to the ‘second step’ stage where we’ve been considering your story, and only 52 can be published within the framework of our weekly schedule each year.

We genuinely look forward to seeing more of your work in the near future.

Wow, that was a let down, let me tell you, particularly since this particular editor really did seem to like the piece. Happily, it later was published in a different market 😆

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