What Sheer Hard Work Can Do

What a Day!

Not so much the writing, but the subbing!

I had to clean out the garage (well, half of it) but, BECAUSE I'M NOT GETTING ENOUGH HELP I decided to keep blasting away at the submissions. (I have so many stories and poems just sitting there.)

Anyway, the blast/blitz has taken me to 52 submissions for the month. I used to like to keep 50 pieces out there and now I'm back up there. Trick is to re-sub as soon as a rejection or acceptance comes in.

The BC target was 150 and we are on 142 now. I'm beginning to thing 200 is in reach.

The fascinating thing about who gets hits is it seems to be perfectly correlated with who submits most. And I'm not talking "throw enough shit at the wall something will stick". When I sub, I sub to a range of places: a few web zines, good paper periodicals, small to medium comps, big comps like Bridport and Glimmer Train, and whenever a story is good enough I punt at New Yorker, Paris Review, Ploughshares.

Getting stuff written and rewritten is work BUT SO IS GETTING IT OUT THERE. I have lost count of the number of Boot Campers over the years who weren't bothering to sub, got a kicking and subbed, (or got enthused and subbed) and then came up with a big hit at a quality magazine or in a good competition.

Here is the rule.

if it's written, rewritten, "finished" IT MUST BE AT WORK. Get the damn thing out. The more you have out, the more successful you will be. The more you place, the lower you can get your stack, the more incentive you have to write fresh material.

And, since you are better than you were when you wrote that material, your new stuff will be GOOD!


alex