![]() Paying market for literary science fiction and fantasy Orion’s Belt will close its current submissions window at the end of the month. It’s a British magazine with beautiful illustrations. Popshot Quarterly, where I have previously published a story, is taking submissions on the theme ‘Roots’ until early morning on 2 September. Have you taken deliberate or inadvertent submissions breaks? Did you find it helped you get work done and come back refreshed, or did it make it harder to get back in the game? Let me know in the comments below.Īnd now for the hard core, a few bonus opportunities which are closing soon. In fact, I think the most likely outcome is that I’ll arrive at a happy medium, taking a break from frequent submissions, but trying not to miss out on anything that happens to crop up and seems too good to be missed. Gathering up opportunities for my monthly listings allows me to keep an eye on what’s out there. Thankfully, there’s little chance of that given that, whatever I decide to do, I’ll keep this newsletter going. It seems an efficient way of doing things.Īnd on a related point, I can’t stand to think of missing out on opportunities that seem ideal. I like to think of my finished work going out into the world and knocking on doors while I get down to business on my unfinished work. If I have something finished, edited, and lying around in my files without being sent anywhere, it frustrates me. This writing is a tough business and even if I’m only making small gains, I prefer to keep my hand in than to go down any path that might lead to me deciding it’s too hard.īut perhaps the most significant factor for me is that I hate to leave work unutilised. Personalised or encouraging rejections are especially helpful, as they let me know I’m on the right track.Īnd as much as I can feel worn down by a bad run, I don’t want to let general fatigue with the whole process get to me too much, such that a break turns into a hiatus, which turns into giving up altogether. Something I like about being a frequent submitter is that I have plenty of feedback in the form of rejection data. But I wonder whether taking a break would make it any harder to come back? By this point, I don’t even think about that factor, as I’m mostly just focused on the practicalities of the submission. Essentially, it takes a certain level of confidence to send your work to strangers and let them judge it. Perhaps you will recognise this feeling too. I think of it as a muscle that is easiest to flex with frequent use. Since I started submitting seriously, I have built up something of a habit. Ultimately, all of this drives towards the primary argument in favour of taking a submissions break, which is that I think I need to find some confidence in own work that derives from the work itself. And for all that to lead to the uphill slog of rejections can leave me feel that I’ve wasted time. ![]() The effort I expend on submissions is no small feat: I wish I could just blast them to several places at once, but I tend to tweak each piece for each target. Most importantly I want to focus on the work itself, and to stop getting quite so distracted by themed callouts and other things that tend to get me distracted, rooting around for an old idea that might just fit if only I can write that instead of whatever I was currently working on. I want to make more progress, and to have a bigger store of finished work. Sitting with work for longer is another reason I am thinking of pausing submissions. I worry that I need to wean myself off this instant gratification when it comes to creative work, and accept that much of it could sit in a drawer for years - that this may even be the best thing for it. When I send off a submission, I get some semblance of this satisfaction, just from the sense of possibility that it could be published. ![]() It’s not just about the reader, but about having the sense of accomplishment that comes form something being ‘done’. Maybe this is the one that makes an impact, that a lot of people read, that increases its author’s status.īut even if it doesn’t make a splash, there’s something addictive about frequent publication. Much like publishing a piece of creative work, publishing an article carries that same frisson of possibility. Though more people have undoubtedly read my journalism than have read my creative writing, there are many similarities. In most of my jobs, I have written at least one thing every day that is published online immediately. I am by trade a journalist, and by the time I entered the workforce, online was very much the avenue of focus for most publications. Perhaps the biggest issue I face in writing fiction is that it rarely yields immediate rewards. ![]()
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