Want Your Prose To Be Published in a Lit. Mag? Try This.

We all know the idea of the tormented author, stuck in a dreaded, seemingly-endless creative block. It’s been a meme since before there were such things as memes: the image of a writer, sitting at their desk, not writing.

Writing is a love-hate relationship, but to be a writer, you do eventually have to write. And in trying to do so, you pace and procrastinate, create playlists and stare out the window, complain and backspace and scroll for inspiration. You grit your teeth, throw your pen across the room, and curse whatever higher being bestowed upon you the unstoppable urge to spew words and stories. And then, finally, you write. And you write. And you write some more. And then, with time disappearing in the blink of an eye, you have a finished piece. Now what?

I’ve been submitting my own prose and poetry to various magazines and journals since I was sixteen years old. And joyous days, last year, I finally got my first piece published. …at twenty. Four years later. Sigh.

In your teenage years, it’s hard to recognize just how small and inexperienced of a fish you are in a deep, deep ocean (I say, wisely twenty-years-old). But I knew I was a strong writer. I had the passion, I had the belief, and I had the drive, pouring over the exact specifications of each journal's values to give myself the best chance. 

And yet, over and over, I’d get rejected, and each time I would ask myself, “what am I doing wrong?” For the ones I was especially proud of, the hardest rejections to take, I’d be left asking myself, “am I not a strong writer after all?”

But that rejection did not last forever. In more recent years, I’ve had the absolute privilege to be a part of several literary magazines and journals. Silhouette, for one (my first!), as well as Elevate Magazine, the Minnesota Review, and even a small press called The Words Faire. My roles have ranged from blog editor to article writer, from reader to editorial director. I work with writing every day. I eat, sleep, and breathe it at this point.

At Silhouette, I’m the current head of the blog. But I’m also a prose editor, and have previously been a part of the poetry editorial team as well.

Being on this side of the story has opened my eyes. I get to see the bigger picture of the submission queue, get to understand the consideration and process that goes into the final decision before we pass the baton to the magazine design team. Working on the editorial teams has helped me figure out what a story has that gets it accepted for publication, and what a story lacks that gets it rejected.

If I could go back and tell my sixteen year old self something, it wouldn’t be that you are a strong writer, but that you can be. That you do have the passion, the belief, and that it hasn’t steered you wrong. Rejection isn’t a sentence to the limbo of mediocre writers. It’s trial and error. It’s understanding what admired writers do that gets them published.

“So, wise guy,” you’re saying, “what do I need to do then?”

For starters, you need to do the worst part: you’ve got to write the damn thing. You need to brainstorm, jot in your notes app or in your paper planner, or miraculously wake up at 3am with an epiphany, and you need to type it out word for word until you have a finished piece. I like to equate this step with distance running sometimes. It’s hard in the moment, but afterward, the “runner’s high” you get reading something you’re proud of is a feeling like nothing else.

Now you have a finished piece. But do you submit it? No! Not yet, at least.

As Janelle Drumwright put it: “The two most common reasons I vote no is either the story didn’t hold my attention or the story needs to be developed more. In either case, the bottom line is the piece needs more work.”

This may sound bad. But remember, you’ve already done the hard work of putting pen to paper and building the foundation.

Sometimes, I see stories that feel flat, from start to finish. Why would an author write a story if there was no depth to it? Well, I'd argue it’s because they weren’t aware of it. The complicated and beautiful idea they had in their head did not come out on paper, so the editors and readers couldn’t connect with it. The idea the author wanted to share was lost in the transfer.

This can be solved in two ways: have someone else read your work before you submit it (this can be a friend, as long as it's an honest friend), and by not letting your first draft be your final draft. Rewrites aren’t always necessary, but adjustments almost certainly are.

I have never rejected a piece because I’ve found a couple of typos. But I have rejected many works that made me think upon completion “the author did not reread over their writing.” Do not be this writer!

Getting a second set of eyes on your work before you send it out for publication, and touching-up on your piece based on the feedback you get, helps immensely with stories that may fall flat or be undeveloped. If what’s in your head isn’t coming out on paper, your first (beta) reader or readers can let you know. Finish your piece, leave it alone for a day, let someone else read it, and then edit it based on their advice and what you notice after your reread.

Additionally, at Silhouette, I’ve found we often get prose submissions from people that have clearly never read our magazine. Now, you should read Silhouette Magazine, because it is awesome and made by very talented people. But if you want to submit your writing to many other magazines in future, it’s hard to be an avid reader of all of them. The simple advice? Just make sure you understand the vibes of the magazine you’re submitting to.

And don’t limit yourself - I think you should submit to other magazines (after you submit to ours)! While Silhouette focuses primarily on literary fiction, there are plenty of magazines out there that do themed calls. If you find your calling in sci-fi or horror fiction, there are so many interesting journals out there that might inspire you to create your next literary masterpiece (and maybe… even pay you for it…). You can often find open calls on https://authorspublish.com/.

If you want to be a published author, then do it. Trust me, you’re capable. There’s a whole world out there for blossoming writers to explore.

Just make sure you start with Silhouette! ;P

Image credits: Working at Five Eyed Fox, Bonnie Kittle, Unsplash