Some Basics

There are some basic things that everybody needs to know if they want to submit writing essentially anywhere.

1.  Get the mechanics right.  This one is hard for me as I seem to have some kind of attention disorder and consistently produce manuscripts with doubled words, typos, omitted words, and other mistakes.  Despite the fact that it is tedious and hard, the struggle to produce clean copy is necessary.

2. Read the guidelines.  Submitting work that's in the wrong format, is the wrong length, or with the wrong theme is a path to rejection.

3.  If you write a book length manuscript get an agent.  Not all published authors start with one but most successful authors acquire one.

4.  Hardcopy self-publishing rarely works and is expensive.  No one would look down on you for self publishing a chapbook of poetry, but outside of that it's not accepted.

5.  Get a thick skin.  Especially if you are just starting out multiple rejections are the norm.