Fall Submissions
Here's a little snapshot of my submissions tracker spreadsheet if you're curious. A few of us were talking over e-mail about the do's and don'ts of submitting work--namely we talked about simultaneous submissions.
A while back, I never simsubbed. I was too scared to. Now . . . I do simsub, but ONLY to the journals who say it's okay. What's more, I keep very anal notes about where I'm sending things.
If you look at the picture, you'll see I've got color-coded bars.
Black means a poem's been taken, so it's out (note that there are very few black bars).
Gray and white tones signify batches of poems sent to journals that do not accept simultaneous submissions.
The flourescent colored bars indicate batches of poems that are being simultaneously submitted. So, if I'm sending a batch of five poems to three different journals, all the journals and poems will be highlighted in turquoise. I generally try to keep the number of sim-subbed batches down to 2-3 journals per batch. It's too hard to track anything greater.
Yes, it's cumbersome and tedious, but I know far too many editors who get pissed about folks pulling their poems at the last minute and I don't like pissing people off, namely people who take the time to read my work.
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The other thing I noticed--more and more journals are accepting online submissions. Ploughshares, The Kenyon Review, and The Virginia Quarterly Review are taking submissions online.
If you're sending your stuff via that route, have two sets of copies for your batches: the individual poems, and a batch of your poems saved to one document. Sometimes the uploading software only allows one file at a time, so you'll need to consolidate your pieces.
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I'm feeling good. I'm feeling like I've gotten some things accomplished. We'll see what happens when the rejections start rolling in! All told, I sent poems to lots of journals. Quite a feat for me.