By Baker
- If you haven’t already, set up a way to track your submissions. Duotrope’s submission tracker used to be free but when Duotrope went pay, so did the submission tracker. Membership is $5 per month, less if you sign up for a year. Writer’s Database has a submission tracker and free accounts.
- Jamie Todd Rubin offers a simple spreadsheet in Google Documents for free via his site complete with examples in place and a column for you to track payments.
- When you set up your submission tracker, go through your email and add everything you’ve ever submitted. It can be inspiring to remember how many times you gave it a shot.
- Set a goal for submitting your work over the next three months, like:
- Send out a story every Thursday for 12 weeks.
- Clean out your file of unfinished or abandoned work and polish one piece for submission within 90 days.
- Submitting poetry? Max out your submission. If you only have one poem slated to send but the journal accepts three per submission, add two poems. You never know what will move an editor.
- Read the submission guidelines for a handful of random journals. New Pages runs a nice listing, as does Poets & Writers. Compare submission guidelines for similarities and differences. If you’re curious about why a journal has set a specific criterion, click through to read it and you might discover further explanation at the site.
