Another honest breakdown of a year submitting my writing
What I sent, what was published, and what I would do differently
Hello again,
Over a year ago, I wrote the first missive from Sorry We’re Prosed.
For those who are new here, the idea behind this newsletter is that I send a monthly round-up of writing opportunities as well as my occasional thoughts on the writing and publishing process, whether it’s about current events or submissions strategies.
So that first ever post was an overview of my first year seriously submitting my work to literary magazines and competitions.
I wanted to do it because it was an interesting exercise for me, evaluating how well I had done in numbers, and how that matched up with my feelings about how well I had done.
Another reason was the desire to be transparent about the proverbial swan’s legs of publishing creative writing. Usually we only see people share their submissions progress when they’ve been accepted for publication somewhere, bar the occasional jokey tweet about Submittable’s in-progress button.
Yet the reality, that we all know even if we have to keep reminding ourselves, is that only a fraction of work sent out gets published. There’s quite a lot of hope and rejection going on.
I’ll be doing the same thing again today, taking a detailed look at what I sent out and what was published. If that doesn’t interest you, feel free to click away and I’ll see you in March for the next opportunities round-up. Many of February’s are also still open.
So, for those still here, let’s take a look under the hood.
Another year submitting
As I wrote last year, I only started seriously submitting my work in 2020. That means the period I’m reviewing today should have seen me a year more experienced, a little bit more familiar with the market, and perhaps a little smarter in my approach.
Casting my eye over the list of places I sent work, I think this is somewhat true. There are certain competitions I decided were worth trying again for a second year, and made the effort to enter.
I would also say there’s a notable drop-off in what I call “long-shot” submissions.
Sure, there’s that occasional #YOLO short story sent over to The New Yorker or The Paris Review, but mostly I’m sticking to smaller indie magazines and national (rather than international) prizes.
This suggests I was getting a touch cynical, and I don’t think that’s a bad thing. When you read a publication and see that most people in it already have agents, or have a book coming out soon, or are literally Zadie Smith, it’s fair to assume you’re probably not getting in on the slush pile.
I still don’t see any harm sending something off to these prestigious places, especially when it’s free. But I would say this was the year I wanted to get some work out there and not faff around too much with never-gonna-happens.
That’s not to say I set my sights low. I was still mostly going for competitive opportunities. But I focused on places I could imagine my work, whether because it felt like a good fit or because I’d seen writers with similar levels of publication and experience to me being published there.
One thing to clarify before we move on is that my submission year actually starts on 15 May, a totally arbitrary date decided by when I started the spreadsheet.
That means the period I’m talking about here is the 12 months leading up to May 2022. The reason I wait so long after the end of the period to review it is that many literary journals say to expect to wait six months or even more for a decision.
The numbers
OK, here’s what we’re all really here for.
I sent 62 submissions between 15 May 2021 and 14 May 2022
That’s up a modest 8% on the previous year’s total of 57 submissions.
The total consists of 14 competitions, six anthologies or other publication opportunities, 41 submissions to magazines and journals, and one application for a mentorship scheme.
My work was accepted for publication in three places, and was longlisted for one competition.
Counting those four as wins, my success rate is 2.48%. Ouch!
That’s a big dip compared to last year’s 8.77%.
But there are other things to consider. Last year, for example I made a loss of £88.85 when totting up the cost of competition entries and submission fees. So how did I manage this time?
The good news is, I made a profit!
The sad news is that it’s all down to a brilliant magazine that has now closed.
LampLight, a magazine publishing dark fiction, picked up one of my stories. Actually, it was the one I mentioned this post last year as it was at that point my most-rejected story.
I was so thrilled to finally give this story a home, and to make things even better, I was paid a professional rate for it (for the first time). So I got $120.
That was the only money I made from creative writing in the whole period, but it more than covered the £75.08 I spent on competition entries.
It’s a real shame that the magazine that gave me my first pro-sale has now shut up shop, and it makes me feel a little sad about the prospect of the industry at large.
Was it all worth it?
Staying on the topic of money again, it is notable that for the second year in a row, not one of my successes came from a submission I paid to make.
I guess I do still believe it’s worth paying for the odd competition, but I have to accept that it is essentially a kind of gambling. The reason it’s worth paying money is not the likelihood of winning, but the value of the prize.
In terms of the overall workload of submitting all these things only to have a 2.44% acceptance rate? No, I don’t think it was worth it.
But what I mean by that is I think my approach was extremely unfocused. In my mid-year update I said I didn’t feel I’d made enough submissions. But by rectifying that situation, I ended up going scattergun. There is little consistency either in what I’m submitting or where I’m sending it.
Looking over what I actually sent, there are 16 (!) different stories. On top of that, there were extracts from my novel, as well as a couple of times I sent out multiple stories packaged as a proposed collection or pamphlet - for which I actually wrote another small story as the introduction.
That’s a lot of different work to be sending out, and it means a lot of pieces have only been seen in a couple of places.
It also means a lot of work straightening out different works for submission that, let’s be honest, I could have spent writing.
So no, I don’t think I’ll be doing things quite like this again.
Looking at my spreadsheet for the current writing year, it’s obvious that I have already learned this lesson subconsciously and begun applying it because there are far fewer submissions.
However, there are still several different pieces on the current spreadsheet. So I’d like to start focusing on perhaps just two stories and getting those out to more places.
Final words and where to find my work
There are quite a few more of you than there were last time I sent this kind of post out. I hope you haven’t minded the detour into mulling my submissions strategy, and I would love to hear what your writing goals are this year.
Are you focusing on one big project? Do you want to send out more submissions? Is there a dream publication you’re pursuing?
Let me know. And if you have any success from opportunities you see in this newsletter, I would love to hear about it and share a link to your work in a future edition.
Finally, if you are curious about what my fiction actually looks like, you can find some examples below. Thanks for reading, I’ll see you next month for another round-up of writing opportunities.
‘The Spitalfields Book Club’ on Litro (free to read) - now Pushcart-nominated!
‘Kouros’ in Diet Milk Fall/Winter I
‘New/Normal’ in Wizards in Space Issue 8
‘The Quiet Dead’ in LampLight Volume 10 Issue 3 (free to read)
‘Desk Flowers’ in Popshot Quarterly issue 32
‘Scratching’ in Weird Horror issue 2
‘A Pain In The Head’ on Dear Damsels (free to read)
‘The Birdmen’ in Spellbinder issue 4
You are doing great! So many of my writing colleagues give up on sending a story out, after four or five rejections. Many times I find, once you've succeeded on writing something good, it is often luck and timing that gets it put into print. It does help to look for theme call-outs and to study and read samples of what certain publications like to publish, but this takes lots and lots of time. Persistency is key!
Thank you for your honesty! It's so refreshing and reassuring seeing breakdowns like this! Inspires me to keep at it, and glad you will too 😍