WHAT I HAVE LEARNED BY SUBMITTING EVERY WEEK

By Kasie Whitener

In entrepreneurship, my other profession, business ventures evolve through iterations. A company tests an idea with customers, then adjusts it after feedback, and then issues another version for another test. The cycle is ongoing as the company iterates, builds, and prospers.

I decided this year to treat my writing life like entrepreneurship. The goals I set for 2018 were about creating iterative habits that would enable me to build my writing business.

Write every day.

Submit every week.

Revise one work per month.

These goals are about progress in small increments and about establishing habits. They have taught me things I didn’t know about myself and about establishing my dedication to this thing we call craft. This blog focuses on the second goal with a list of things I’ve learned:

Submissions mean rejections.

Better than writing in a cave, thinking my work is fantastic and polished and clever is submitting said work and getting the “no thanks” over and over. Why is that better? Because I know my work is not fantastic, it needs more polish, and cleverness is for bozos.

“Just tell the stories, Kasie,” these rejections tell me. “Don’t worry about us.”

Submissions are about finding the right amplifier.

I can share the story I wrote for my best friend Jessica with her via email. I have a few I’d like to send directly to the ex-boyfriends they’re about (but I won’t). I submit to journals and magazines because I want the stories to be amplified. Finding a place to share them means finding the right audience for them. So, I submit. And I get rejected. Because as much as I think by reading three or four pieces the journal has published that my work would fit there, the editors read everything they publish and they know better.

Rejections are about the work, not about me.

Editors who say, “No, thanks,” don’t know me. They don’t want to hurt my feelings, ruin my life, or keep me from writing another story about another ex-boyfriend. They just want to put together a collection of work that their readers will read, enjoy, and maybe even pay for. Editors who reject my work are rejecting the story. Not the storyteller.

Rejections shouldn’t be purchased.

I don’t pay for submissions anymore. Not even the really good journals like Missouri Review and Glimmer Train. I know the industry says getting my work in those journals would say something about how fantastic and polished and relevant it is. But, the free journals are more competitive. So, getting published by The Forge or The American Literary Review, or Apeiron Review would be better because they receive more submissions. Also, submitting every week at $3, $5, or $20 a week is crazy expensive.

So far, the iterations have taught me a lot about myself and this business. Learning is what iteration is all about and I’m definitely learning.