Submitting Again

I mentioned in my post about my 2020 accomplishments that I had started submitting short stories again. Really, it was only one story, and some of the markets took months to reply, so it had just been out to a few places so far. I’m also making myself send it to dream magazines and websites despite the temptation to send it somewhere with less competition. It’ll probably take longer to find it a home this way, but you don’t know if you don’t try. Right? And I’m not in a hurry.

It would be nice to send out more though. I do have a second story I’m just finishing that I’ll be sending out soon, but I’m not a fast writer. Some writer folks I follow on Twitter talk about submitting, and I find the chatter encouraging. Some give themselves challenges of submitting on a schedule, or I saw one that wanted to submit something for 14 days in a row. I was amazed. Who has 14 things ready to submit? (Probably a lot of people actually, but I was still impressed). I’m a little embarrassed to admit, that I just recently figured out that some of the things they sent out were reprints. It seems so obvious now, but I’ve only ever been on the outskirts of the publishing world, peeking in here and there. But that’s what writers do. They sell things again if they can.

Then my next revelation came: I have previously published stories. The contracts on them are long ended. I could (theoretically) sell reprints too. That would be a fun way to get more out there without killing myself trying to produce more faster. So that’s a goal this week. Do some market research for reprints. Maybe one day I will know all the ins and outs and feel more confident, but in the meantime, this is how I learn.

Here’s hoping I’ll have a sale to announce sometime in 2021.