Returning to the Statement of Purpose

Over the years, I’ve written quite a bit about how to write your statement of purpose for a low-res MFA program. That advice is still valid, but I felt it was time to return to it again and to update it somewhat. I’m curious about the things most applicants leave out of their statement, and maybe I’m thinking about it especially in the post-pandemic reality.

I see letters that describe the writer’s style fairly well, and ones that name authors they’ve read or that they admire. I even see letters that discuss prior publications or writing workshops or retreats that the applicant has gone to. All those are great. And even though I see a lot of letters that begin with how much the applicant loves writing (I assume you do if you’re applying to a program), I usually forgive that, at least as long as it sounds authentic and reveals something specific about the applicant that is at least a little intriguing.

The main thing that I look for in a letter and rarely find, though, is a discussion of how the applicant is going to make it work to be in a low-residency program and afford to put food on their table and pay for tuition.

This has always been a concern, but it’s an even greater one now. We see more applicants apply to our program, get accepted, and then get cold feet. I get it, times are still hard for many, or maybe you got a better job but now have to spend more time at work and don’t feel you have time for school. We work with people and suggest ways they can make it work, even offering a deferment for up to a year. That has helped several students out, but it doesn’t always solve the main issues.

I want to know that an applicant is committed to our program (not just to writing, though that’s good, too) and I want to know that you’re realistic about what it will take to complete a degree. I want to know more than how much you want that MFA degree and why, but also that you are willing to do the hard work to improve your writing, while also doing the hard work of staying alive and managing your other obligations. I don’t need to know everything about your personal life in your letter, but it does help to shed some light on that as you persuade me that you’re someone worth taking a risk on because you will do what it takes to complete the program. That won’t be the main point to your statement, but if you can slip it in, I will notice.

High Fees for Authors (and Justices)?

This post is in response to the flurry of supposed controversy surrounding Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s book appearances and sales according to the Associated Press. Or as Margaret McMullen questioned in the Washington Post, was it a bribe to invite a justice to the Mississippi Book Festival to speak, when she refused payment and gave a great presentation being very present for all the children who came to hear her? Was it a bribe if the justice engaged with the kids in the room and earnestly asked them questions?

All questions of the ethics Supreme Court Justices earning outside income aside, the AP article is rather quaint in its understanding of how celebrity authors on book tour operate. Justice Sotomayor sounds positively wonderful to work with, though her story does illuminate a problem in the book industry. The AP article bristles at the fact that an author on book tour might suggest (almost require) that a venue make a large book order for their appearance. The reality is that this is far too common for celebrity authors.

By celebrity authors, I mean both excellent writers who have won major awards for their books and have therefore reached the highest echelons of literary stardom and writers who are politicians or celebrities in their own right and whose fame grants them a similar status. Much of the outrage in the AP article should not be directed at the Justice, but at an industry that not only allows this star system, but promotes it.

As someone who organizes a literary event, the Eudora Welty Writers’ Symposium, I have long known that there are two types of authors: those I can afford and those who are completely out of my league. In recent years, the divide between these two types of authors has grown ever wider. Recently, I reached out to a relatively well-known writer to see which group he would fall in. I had some grant money, so I thought it might be possible to bring him to campus, though I expected it to be a long shot. I was not surprised when the initial response to my invitation was that the famous author’s usual speaking fee was at least $30,000 — they might be willing to come down a bit if I could guarantee a bulk book order. I was working with a local group, so I was able to suggest a sizable number of books we could buy. Judging from the AP article and the fact that this author ultimately turned us down, that number wasn’t high enough.

I tell this story not to shame this author who will remain unnamed, but to point out that asking for a large book buy is not at all uncommon, especially when the speaker is willing to come for a smaller fee (or in the case of Justice Sotomayor, possibly none). Her publisher wants to sell books. Her publicist and/or speaker’s bureau wants to sell books. Yes, the Justice earns royalties on those books, though only if they sell enough copies to earn back the advance. And large universities or other organizations with large enough coffers are willing to pay out large honoraria and/or purchase large quantities of books in order to bring in a celebrity.

There remain the questions of whether a Justice’s staff should be involved in this side-business and whether a justice or other office-holder should be able to make money on the side this way. Those questions may be legitimate, though they are not nearly as scandalous as the questions about other justices who have received lavish gifts from billionaires that have gone unreported.

The fact of the matter is that the way celebrity authors operate may be outrageous. The fact that Justice Sotomayor participates in that business is hardly surprising, though. Book publishers, publicists, speaker’s bureaus, all profit from book sales and/or their cut of an author’s speaking fees. There is pressure on authors to sell as many books as possible and to earn money for their agents. Usually the author isn’t part of those negotiations, but only signs off on a lucrative contract that the publicist or speaker’s bureau has arranged. You can’t really blame a writer for taking advantage of a system and profiting from the fame they’ve finally achieved.

Nonetheless, I am more sympathetic to the 90% of authors (maybe more) who labor in the trenches, whose books sell modest amounts, and who are very glad to come to my event for what I consider a generous honorarium to speak for forty minutes and be entertained for the rest of the weekend. These authors are entirely gracious. They engage with the audience and with each other, and there is not such a great divide between the top draws and the lesser-known writers with a debut novel or poetry collection. As a general rule, I’m happy to leave the celebrity authors to their world of glitz and exorbitant fees. That may be sour grapes, but I’ll take a writer who is willing to appear for a reasonable honorarium over a prima donna any day. That includes the vast majority of writers, so I have no dearth of excellent books to choose from.

Fun Again With ATT

It’s been quite awhile since I’ve written a post about my router woes — I guess that says ATT is getting better! And today’s issue was resolved relatively quickly, leaving me a fairly happy camper, but I thought I’d tell you about it anyway. This is for those who like to follow that saga or who get help from my experience.

Let’s start at the beginning. This weekend, our ATT UVerse Broadband modem decided to flake out. Somehow, it reverted to factory settings all on its own. I woke up on Sunday, unable to connect to anything and unable to get on wifi with our main network. I was able to login on our extended network, but it couldn’t get online, so I knew something was up. Checking my wifi networks revealed that our main network wasn’t listed, but there was a similar ATT network that had four bars. A quick check of the router itself revealed that all was as I suspected, the router listed this new network, but the installer had used the name of our previous network when we got this replacement a few years back.

That was a quick fix. I just had to login to the new router with the new network and its default password, then change all of our devices over to that network, including the extender, and update the name and password on all devices for the extended network. It took awhile, but wasn’t stressful at all.

At the time, I noticed that the Phone light on the router wasn’t lit, but that didn’t bother me much. I figured it would resolve on its own, and I was too busy changing passwords and logging all my devices onto the new network. All was fine until today, when I needed to make a phone call. (Yes, I could have just used my cell phone, but I hate to do that, and I hate to know that something’s broken and not try to fix it, so I dove down the rabbit hole.)

My first step was to try to restart the phone line, since I’ve done that. I went to the status address for my router (usually printed on the router, but I have it bookmarked: 192.168.1.254). There I could see that the Voice service had an error, and I attempted a restart. Of course, the Access Code had changed when the modem reset to factory settings, so I had to look that up on the back of the modem, too. It’s a long and complicated string of letters and symbols, so it’s not easy to copy down, but I did. I attempted to restart the Voice service with no luck, then restarted the modem, also with no luck, and eventually went online to try ATT Support.

If you’ve ever tried ATT’s Support chat, you know how frustrating it can be. Very frustrating. But it’s still a hundred times better than the hell it used to be, so I didn’t lose patience. I attempted to answer its questions about my problem, even though they didn’t make sense in terms of what I was experiencing. I kept getting answers that weren’t helpful. Finally, I typed “operator” and that got me to a live person and not an automated chatbot. The first person had to transfer me to the right department, and then I got connected with “Jeniffer,” who was able to help me out.

I explained what had been happening, and in the process, I realized that Phone 1 said “Not Subscribed,” the same as it said for Phone 2. We only have one line, so Phone 1 should have shown our phone number. I told her this, went through a few more troubleshooting steps like telling her about the lights on the router, and eventually she was able to correct the issue remotely. My phone got a dial tone, and I was able to make a call.

When I asked what had happened, she only said that my phone service hadn’t been syncing properly, and she had corrected the issue. She had no explanation for why the modem reverted to factory settings or why that might cause the voice line syncing issues, which I assume it did. Oh well, at least it is working for now, and if I have problems again, I’ll be sure to type “operator” sooner if I end up on ATT Support chat!

Whither Social Media for Writers?

Today, I made a first post on Medium as part of my research into the places that writers are gravitating with the (pending) demise of Twitter and changes happening at other social media platforms. So far, it’s not getting a lot of traction, which isn’t terribly surprising. With no prior posts, I only have 1 follower. One other person found it, probably from a cross-post on Twitter or Facebook. When I search on my post in Medium, I don’t find it, so I’m curious about settings and whether I need a paid subscription to be discovered. All of that is part of my research. Follow the link above if you’re curious what I had to say. Check back here to see what I learn about Medium and other options in the coming days.

What are your rights? (FNASR)

Over the weekend, I had an interesting email from a reader, Bill Harrison, who had a question about whether to consider a work published if the magazine it was published in had gone belly up. He said he was in that situation and wondered what to do. I replied, but then I thought I might expand on that answer and post about it here, since it’s a very good question.

Here’s what I told Bill: Strictly speaking, if the magazine did publish your piece but has now gone defunct, then you should not submit that piece to magazines that request first serial rights. There are quite a few magazines that consider reprints, though, so I would consider sending there and indicating where the piece was first published. Anthologies are also a good bet for reprints, and of course, a collection that you publish will usually contain a number of pieces that have been published elsewhere, so there is still life for the piece in question. You could also publish it on your own website or blog.

If the magazine accepted  your work but did not publish it, then you should feel free to submit it as an unpublished piece to any magazine. It is probably best to verify the publication’s status before submitting elsewhere, just to be on the safe side. 

Once I had a poem published at an online journal that ceased publication after a year or so (as I recall). For a while, the website was just gone, then someone put up an archive of the magazine that included some poems, but only a listing of mine. Now that seems to be gone again, but I still consider the poem published. (I decided to post it on Instagram since I couldn’t publish it elsewhere.) Another poem was published in a magazine that soon stopped publishing, yet the website it was on remained online for several years. Eventually that went away, but by that point, I had published the poem in my second book (with an acknowledgement of the original publication). Poems published in print journals are also not very accessible after the initial publication, but they are still published. I consider journal publication to be fleeting and book publication to be more permanent, though even books go out of print.

The longer answer: Why I say that my work (and Bill’s work if it actually made it to publication) should still be viewed as published comes down to the rights you sell (maybe for a sample copy) when you publish with a journal. Those are called First North American Serial Rights or sometimes just First Serial Rights. Poets and Writers has a good explanation of the basic kinds of rights authors work with. Most print journals will request First North American Serial Rights (FNASR) when they publish your work because they want to be the first place to publish the work in their market, which is North America (unless you’re publishing in Europe, Asia, Africa, or South America, of course). First Serial Rights is a broader term, and is more typical of online journals whose market is global.

Once you publish one place for even one day, legally, you can no longer offer anyone else First Serial Rights. You could publish a piece in Europe that had only been published in North America, but you can’t publish for the first time in North America (or anywhere, in the case of First Serial Rights) again. That may be sad when a publisher no longer exists, but it is what it is.

One tricky question is about self-publishing your work online. If you post your work to your blog or to social media, especially if the site is public, then most magazines will consider it published. You’ve essentially used your First Serial Rights yourself. True, it hasn’t been published by someone else and they haven’t marketed it or generated readership for you, but your work has been made publicly available by you, so the value of that work is reduced compared to First Serial publication. This is why you usually hear the advice not to post your work publicly if you want to publish it in journals. Some journals have said they will still accept work as unpublished if it was posted to a personal website and then taken down before it is submitted to a magazine. Other journals discourage that, though realistically, it would be hard to check. In many ways, we are on our honor to faithfully report prior publication of any kind.

Also, First Serial Rights or First North American Serial Rights generally disallow to prior publication to a wide audience — North America or the world — so exceptions are usually allowed for small, private publications like a print college magazine or a club newsletter where circulation is limited (such as to an organization) and the work has not been made more publicly available (such as online). Some magazines do specify that college magazines are considered prior publication; if they don’t and if the audience was truly limited, then you are pretty safe in still calling your work unpublished for the purposes of FSR or FNASR.

What is publication, then? In Bill’s case, if his piece was accepted by the magazine, but the magazine never went to press or even if the magazine was printed but never distributed, then he would have a good case to make that his work had not been published. If it was posted online, then his piece has been published. If the magazine had been printed and sent to subscribers, then his piece has been published, but only in North America and he could still offer First Serial Rights in other continents potentially.

Book publication is different than serial (magazine or journal) publication, but legally, it supersedes it. That means that you can publish something in a book that has been published in a magazine, but once it’s been published in a book or anthology, you can no longer offer First Serial Rights because those imply first publication of any kind.

Generally, publication refers to publication in print — an audio version of the same piece would not be considered published, nor would a video recording of a reading in which you read the piece in question. The publication of a fragment of a piece would not be considered prior publication of the whole piece. So you see, there are some gray areas, even though in general the answer to whether a piece has been published is pretty clear.

Fortunately, for Bill and for others in his situation, there are magazines and other publications such as anthologies that ask for Reprint Rights. In that case, you are more than welcome to send them work that has been published elsewhere already. And book publication of a collection usually involves several pieces that have been published elsewhere—look at the Acknowledgements section, where the first publications ought to be listed.

There is life after first publication for any work you write. It is best to know what rights you are selling (or giving away) when you publish, and what that might mean for the life of your work in the future. Most book publishers want to see some prior publication of works in the book for a collection or of other works for books like novels or memoirs. It is best to be up front and honest about your publication history. Don’t hide publications that might be less impressive than you’d like, and don’t embellish the publications that you have. Use your knowledge of the copyright system of rights to find the best publishing opportunities for you and your work, whether that is for the first publication or reprint publications.

How Long for Submissions?

This weekend, Becky Tuch posted a question on her LitMag News Substack looking for comments on what it means when a submission is out at a magazine for a longer period of time. I responded with my experience as editor of Poetry South and as a long-time submitter to magazines. I don’t want to reiterate that comement here, but the upshot of the comments seems to be that there’s no way to tell what it means if your submission has been at a magazine for a long, long time. It might be good news (they like it and are still considering it) or it might be bad news (they don’t love it but haven’t sent submissions back yet). No one likes being in limbo, but that’s the reality of submitting to literary magazines.

What we can gather from the comments seems to be that there are so many different magazines, each with their own review process, that no general rules apply to a case like this. Some magazines respond quickly, and some don’t. Writers can consult sites like Duotrope, ChillSubs, or The Submission Grinder to get some insights on the practices of individual magazines, but even then, the sample this data relies on is limited to the users of each platform who actually report their submissions (and the accuracy of those reports). There’s still a lot of guesswork.

Writers can also rely on magazines to tell them, via their websites, what their typical reading period looks like, so they have a more realistic idea of response times. At Poetry South, for instance, we try to indicate that from July through January our response time will likely be very slow. We’re happy to let you submit, but we are busy with production. So a response in six months or even more is not uncommon. But in January, we try to catch up, bringing our response time closer to 1-3 months. If you submit in July, we will try to respond in 1-2 months.

But when are your odds better? When we read that big batch of submissions, starting in January, we are actively looking for good work to fill the magazine. We are selective, since we know we’ll have six more months of submissions, but we also are excited about the good work we find that we know we want to use. We usually accept quite a few pieces right away, mark quite a few more as “maybes,” and keep reading. After working through a month or two of submissions, we’ll likely go back through those “maybes” and accept some more. We’ll also probably return some of them that don’t generate quite as much excitement the second or third time around. And we may save a few for the next round of selections, as we continue to read in the next month’s submissions, etc. We don’t wait until the bitter end to make final decisions, but we also don’t make all decisions on a first read.

If you know our reading habits, then you can know that if you submitted in July and it took six months for a response, this is likely because we didn’t start reading right away. If you submit in January and it takes more than three months, we held onto your work, and someone liked it. Once we get caught up, our typical response time is 1-2 months. If we held onto it longer than that, we like what we see, but we may need to weigh it against other poems that we also like and take a little more time with our decision.

Does every magazine operate like that? Obviously not. But if you research a magazine to see what their typical response time is and what their reading schedule looks like, then you can have a better sense of how to interpret the response you ultimately get. In the end, your submission will either be accepted or it won’t be. The magazine will send you a response, and from that you can judge whether they were interested or whether they are simply behind in their submissions.

I’ve stopped sending to magazines who took forever (over a year) to reply and still returned my submission without a personal note. I’ve submitted again to others whose response indicated they had been very interested in my work. If I feel a magazine is disorganized and doesn’t communicate well about submissions, they may not be worth my time. If I feel a magazine is overwhelmed with more submissions than anyone could possibly handle, I am sympathetic, but I might still decide they’re not worth my time. If it’s a top-tier magazine, though, I might decide it’s worth it if I want to be in that world.

The advice to forget about pending submissions (as long as you keep good records) is probably wise. Tracking your submissions also means occasionally checking to see which have been under consideration for a long, long time. A query might be worthwhile, though Submittable and other platforms at least can show you if your submission is “In Progress.” I wait to query longer if I know the submission hasn’t been lost, and I rarely withdraw a submission unless it gets picked up somewhere else. Because you never know. But I’m not surprised or even too upset when those finally come back to me. As long as I can simultaneously submit the same piece elsehere, it doesn’t hurt me to let a magazine consider my work for as long as they need.

Want to know what that response letter means? You might look it up on the Rejection Wiki to see whether it was a form rejection letter or a more personalized one. Not all magazines are listed here, and not all form letters may be up to date, but it is a good place to start, if you really want to go down that rabbit hole.

My advice is not to dwell too much on returned submissions, but to pay attention when you get a personalized letter so you can submit again soon. Keep your work in circulation at a number of journals, and try to be patient until it comes back to you. Keep track of the magazines that take a long time or that have quick response times, and use that when deciding where and when to submit. But don’t take the response you get too personally. Almost all magazines get thousands of submissions that they can’t accept, and they return far more good work than they can use. That’s just the reality of submitting these days (and it wasn’t ever a lot better). The ease of submitting (and writers’ reliance on simultaneous submissions) means there are a lot more submissions in everyone’s slush pile. But that also means more writers have access to literary magazines, and there’s some really great work being published.

Wordle Strategy Upate

Some time ago, I wrote a post, just for fun, about My Wordle Strategy. At the time, my best streak was 45 in English, and I was doing a Dutch version, called Woordle, and Dordle, plus Quordle in English and Dutch. Today, my streak at the New York Times Wordle has reached 88, and I’ve topped 100 for my Dutch streak. Mostly, this means that I’m pretty consistent to play every day, but it also means I’ve developed some strategies.

It’s not rocket science, and I’m not claiming to be a genius at it or anything, but I do try to think ahead. Take today’s Wordle for instance. To avoid any spoilers, I won’t give away the words I used, but let’s just say that after three tries I had all but one letter correct and in the correct spot. That meant I had three more tries. I could have guessed the correct word on the next try, but after exaining all the letters I had left, I identified four possible words that used one of those letters in the blank spot. Obviously, I had three guesses left, so there was still a chance I could guess wrong each of those times.

So instead of trying to guess the word on the fourth try, I found a word that had three of the letters I had identified. Since I was looking for a consonant, I didn’t care whether the vowel in this word was even in the correct word (it wasn’t). I even allowed myself to use a double-letter combination (which I did) in order to make a valid word with three of the consonants I needed. One of those was in the correct word, but in the wrong place in my guess. But since I knew where that letter needed to go, I was able to guess the correct word on the fifth try. If none of the letters of my fourth try were in the correct word, I would have still had two more guesses — the fourth letter I had identified or possibly a word using a letter I hadn’t thought of.

Sometimes I intentionally guess wrong, just so I can use more letters that I think might be in the right answer. Sometimes I guess wrong so I can find a vowel or rule out letter combinations that might work. I try to think ahead and think in terms of letters, rather than just guessing words because often there are more good guesses than you have turns. It’s a good mental exercise, but ultimately, it’s just a game and it ought to be fun. Keeping a streak going is part of the challenge, but I know that eventually I won’t be able to play the game some day or I will mess up and break my streak, and then I can start all over again.

Happy News

This will be a quick post because I haven’t found time to write in a while and to share a little good news for National Poetry Month. I’m proud to have two poems, “Quarantine” and “Partial Eclipse,” appear in the new issue of Birmingham Poetry Review.

Also, in the last month or so, I’ve been in touch with a music group out of Greece, called StarWound. They reached out to me, actually, with a proposal to set one of my poems to music. They liked “Black Racer” that was in Delta Poetry Review last summer. Given their theme, I’ve sent them a couple of other poems to consider, so we’ll see what happens.

We’ve been in talks about bringing them to The W next October. We now have a date for their concert (tentatively Oct. 25, pending their other travel plans), and we’ll begin collaborating next month. Meanwhile, StarWound is in Germany recording their third album. They will also work with student poets and musicians for the day they’re on campus, which should be great.

Meet me at #AWP23

Next week, I’ll be headed to Seattle for the annual AWP conference. If you don’t know that acronym, it’s the Association of Writers’ and Writing Programs, an annual gathering of thousands (often over 10,000) writers, teachers, publishers, etc. Virtually everyone is a writer, but we all wear a number of hats.

I’ll spend most of my days at the table for Poetry South, Ponder Review, and Mississippi University for Women’s MFA program, talking to people about what we do. We’ll have brochures, sample copies of the magazine, swag, and candy if I can get out to buy some this weekend and fit it in my checked luggage.

I always save room to carry some magazines there in my luggage, along with many of the other things we give away. That way, I’ll have room to bring home some swag as well. The best advice I’ve heard about AWP is to wear comfortable shoes and save room in your bags for the books and magazines you want to carry home, which is great advice, but do beware of baggage weight restrictions for your return flight! Come get Ponder Review or Poetry South first, in other words!

I always love the conversations I have at our book table the most. Yes, I will get away for a panel or two — thanks to our graduate students who will take over when I need a break! — and I will wander the book fair myself as well. But if you’re also traveling to Seattle this week and want to stop by to say hi, you can probably find me at T1221. I’d love to talk about our program, our magazines, A Writer’s Craft, or my latest poetry projects — and yes, I’d also love to hear about your latest projects or whatever else you have going on.

Did you know that I teach a class in AWP? It’s one option for our Short Residency in the low-res MFA program. We have been studying the schedule, pouring over off-site events, comparing notes, polishing our elevator pitches, and this week, four of my students (Seattle is a long trip for most of us) and I will be at the conference. I’m there to support them and to take most of the hours at our table, and the students will spend their time going to panels, roaming the book fair, and also taking their shifts at our table, so if you want to meet some of our grad students, ask me when they’re planning to be there. I also know of at least 3 of our alumni who will be at the conference, and I’m sure they will stop by and maybe even pull up a chair for awhile.

This year, I’ll also have some flyers for a special issue of Delta Poetry Review that my friend Susan Swartwout is guest-editing. She won’t be at the conference, and I’m happy to help her get out the news about the call, so ask me about it, too!

AWP can be an intimidating place — what place wouldn’t be intimidating when 7,000 – 14,000 writers descend on it. I like to remember that all of the “important writers” mus feel equally overwhelmed, or even if they don’t feel that way now, they did the first time they were at AWP. I’ve been going so many times that it hardly phases me anymore. I’m used to being part of that flow, and I try not to take myself or anyone else too seriously, but it is a great place to catch up with old friends and to make new ones. It’s also a great place to make connections and learn a few things. Taken with a healthy grain of salt, AWP is invigorating and inspirational. If you think you have to conquer AWP, you will more than likely leave disappointed, but if you take it for what it is and accept whatever experience you have, then you will undoubtely leave rewarded.

The only way to truly win at #AWP23 is to stop by table T1221 and talk to us about our magazines and our program. If you haven’t done that, then you lose; if you have, then no matter what happens, you will win in my eyes. Of course, I’m joking, but I do hope you’ll find us and stop by for a moment.

Submission Etiquette and Tiered Submissions

I had an email exchange with a student the other day about magazine submissions, and I thought that it would be good to come back to here. My student’s had the good fortune of being accepted at a small, student-run publication with a small distribution, and it caused her a bit of a dilemma, since the same submission was still out at a number of other journals.

The etiquette for simultaneous submissions is to let the first magazine who accepts your work have it, and to withdraw it from other places where you’ve submitted immediately. Unless you have serious qualms about the magazine that accepted your work, that is what you should always do. For my sutdent, this is a lesson that you should research magazines well before submitting and send to ones that are of similar caliber, so you don’t have any qualms about an acceptance when it comes.  

To be frank, though, my student’s odds of getting this piece accepted at most of the other magazines she sent to aren’t that great, so she shouldn’t feel bad about it. I haven’t read her submission, so this comment is no reflection on her or her writing. Top magazines can take a long time to turn you down, or they might accept the same piece eventually, but you’ll never know because you need to make a decision about the acceptance right away. The more well-known a magazine is, the more submissions they will receive, so the harder it is to get accepted, and the odds of getting the same piece selected by two different places are always going to be slim.

That’s no reason not to submit to top journal, but it can be a good reason to rank the places you’d like to submit and then send the same piece to places with similar rankings first. This is often called tiered submissions. Start with the magazines you think are a good fit for your piece and that you would die to get into. Then if none of them accept your submission, move on to the next level of magazines that you’d love to get your work in. Eventually move on to those smaller, quirky magazines that you’d be proud to be in but aren’t top on your list.

If you do want to withdraw a submission from a magazine after it’s been accepted, you need to do that immediately and don’t wait for someone else to accept it, which would be incredibly bad form. Withdrawing after acceptance is bad enough, but you should never wait to do that, and I would only withdraw my work after it was accepted if there was something in their terms that I couldn’t agree to, which rarely happens. You should have a good idea of a magazine’s terms and of the magazine itself so that you’re willing to see your work published wherever it gets accepted first.

Once a piece has been accepted by one magazine, you should always withdraw it from everywhere else. If you submit poems or flash and have multiple titles in one submission, it is okay to inform the magazine which title you’re withdrawing and ask them to keep considering the rest if they allow that. If you submit fiction or CNF, then you will likely need to withdraw the whole submission. Maybe the magazine will allow you to submit something else, if their deadline hasn’t expired, though your submission will probably move to the bottom of their pile. Occasionally, when you withdraw a piece, the magazine will ask if you have something else they could consider, though simultaneous submissions have become so ubiquitous and withdrawals so common, that that doesn’t happen very often anymore.

Using tiered submissions sounds good, but can also be a collossal waste of time. If you always send to the top journals first, that’s one or two rounds of submitting where you have very poor odds of getting in. That’s why I would suggest a tiered submission practice that is also targeted to the specific works in the submission packet. In other words, I consider where I think are the best places to send each packet and start there. I want each place I submit to be roughly equal in terms of how I will feel if my submission gets accepted, but I don’t always start at the top of my list of magazines. Some submissions are just more appropriate for that quirky little ‘zine that I want to support with my writing. Others seem to be more appropriate for a more mainstream audience.

And of course, the reality of submitting is that magazines have different reading periods and deadlines, so you can’t always send to your top magazines all at once. You will likely send to a mix of places that have open reading periods. Just make sure that you will be happy enough with any magazine that you won’t regret it if their acceptance comes first.

It’s never wise to sell yourself short, but it’s also unwise to always shoot for the moon. Be thoughtful about when, where, and how you submit, and you will always be thrilled (and rarely have regrets) when your work is accepted.