Michelle Richmond

How to Submit a Story for Publication

So you’ve written a story, revised it, and are ready to send it out. Here are a few tips for submitting your stories for publication to literary journals and other magazines.

• Visit the magazine’s website to see what they publish. Read a few stories. Pay attention to their submission guidelines.

If the literary magazine asks for a cover letter with your submission, make it brief. Your letter should mention where you’ve published in the past, and should include a very short bio. Your cover letter should NOT explain or praise the story. That is very bad form, and will likely result in your story being deleted before it is even read.

• Do submit to more than one place at once. This is called a simultaneous submission. Five is a good number to start with. Include the wording, “This is a simultaneous submission” at the end of your cover letter.

• Never send a publication a second story before the editors have responded to the first.

• Never call to check on the progress of your submission.

• Shorter stories are more likely to be accepted than very long stories.

• Always double-space your story, use one-inch margins, and indent every paragraph!

Here are some two great resources for anyone looking to submit fiction:

Newpages.com—litmags, publishers, and book reviews
www.webdelsol.com–Contains many useful links to literary magazines and resources for writers.
pw.org – the Poets and Writers website features ongoing calls for submissions

More great resources to check out before you submit:
• Novel and Short Story Writer’s Market (Writer’s Digest Books)–This is probably the best; it covers many of the better publications with detailed descriptions of tastes, editorial guidelines, payment, and rights.

• Pushcart Prize Anthology (Pushcart Press)–Annual anthology of the best of literary magazines and presses selected by editors themselves; you’ll not only find fiction in here, but a list addresses of prize-winning magazines and presses.

For current publishing contests, check out the Writer’s Chronicle, published by the Associated Writing Programs (www.awpwriter.org) and Poets and Writers Magazine (my personal favorite), which has upcoming deadlines for literary contests, as well as calls for submissions.

Some of my favorite literary magazines, in no particular order

Fourteen Hills
The Sun
Other Voices
Alaska Quarterly Review
Mid-American Review
Ploughshares
Granta
Boulevard
Story Quarterly
Quick Fiction Online
CutBank
South Carolina
Review
Missouri Review
Bellevue Literary Review
Mississippi Review
Gulf Coast
Identity Theory
North Dakota Quarterly

Any publication is a boon and a definite validation of your talent, but here are the magazines that can really jump-start a career: The Atlantic Monthly, Harper’s, The New Yorker, Zoetrope, McSweeney’s, The Paris Review. It never hurts to send to the major magazines as long as you’re sending out a bulk submission.

Learn how to write short stories in my online course Master the Short Story.

How to Start a Story

One of the questions I hear frequently from aspiring writers is, “How do I start a story?” Even seasoned writers have days when the story won’t come. Talking to a reporter for Interview Magazine in 1995, Martin Amis said of novel-writing, “If I come up against a brick wall, I’ll just go and play snooker or something or sleep on it, and my subconscious will fix it for me.” Good advice, for sure. But if snooker and the subconscious don’t do it for you, here are a few tips to get you going.

You can begin “in medias res,” or in the middle of the action. When you’re telling a friend a story, you rarely begin with, “I was born in such-and-such hospital in such-and-such city.” Rather, you jump forward to the exciting part, the middle of the action of your own life. “I was standing in front of the old movie theater on Amsterdam Avenue when…”

You can begin with a character in a strange or tense situation (Gregor Samsa wakes up as a cockroach in “The Metamorphosis”, Mersault is on trial for murder in “The Stranger”).

You can begin with a line or two that describes the setting, then move on to who is in the setting, and why. …
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Creative fidgeting

An article by Roland Rotz, Ph.D., in ADDitude Magazine this month claims you shouldn’t fight the fidget, especially when it comes to children with ADHD:

Doing two things at once, it turns out, can actually help focus the ADHD brain on a primary task.
Experts believe that engaging in an activity that uses a sense other than what’s required for your primary task — listening to music while reading a social studies textbook, for example — can enhance focus and improve performance in children with attention deficit disorder. These secondary tasks are called fidgets — mindless activities you can do while working on a primary task.

Rotz recommends walking, moving around, doodling, using multicolored pens and pencils, keeping your hands busy, listening to music, and chewing gum.

I think anyone–with or without ADHD–can benefit from a bit of creative fidgeting. When I’m stuck in a novel I’m writing, it always helps to get up and move around. When we lived in the Outer Richmond in San Francisco, I used to take long walks on Ocean Beach (well, yes, that does sound like a personal ad, but I did!), and I never came home from one of those walks without a few paragraphs in my head. Something about the zen aspect of moving with no invited noise–I never wear headphones when I walk, so the noise was that of the waves and water, and the hum of traffic on the Great Highway–intensified my focus, such that I would write in my mind as I walked, repeating the sentences in order to memorize them.

I say “invited noise” because, while noise is inescapable, we don’t have to invite it in. Turning off the headphones when you’re running or walking, or turning off the TV when you’re on the treadmill, or turning off the radio in the car, is a way of keeping the endless, not-so-ambiant noise at bay. Of course, one of the fidgeting activities recommended in the ATTitude article is listening to music–so it really depends on the person. My husband always listens to music when he’s writing or reading, and it works for him, but anything with words completely stumps me, because the words crowd out the ones I’m trying to write down. That’s why I can’t write in cafes, which is a method some of my writer friends swear by.

Think about your own creative process. Are there any kinds of fidgeting you do that bring you focus?

Creative Fidgeting

An article by Roland Rotz, Ph.D., in ADDitude Magazine this month claims you shouldn’t fight the fidget, especially when it comes to children with ADHD:

Doing two things at once, it turns out, can actually help focus the ADHD brain on a primary task.
Experts believe that engaging in an activity that uses a sense other than what’s required for your primary task — listening to music while reading a social studies textbook, for example — can enhance focus and improve performance in children with attention deficit disorder. These secondary tasks are called fidgets — mindless activities you can do while working on a primary task.

Rotz recommends walking, moving around, doodling, using multicolored pens and pencils, keeping your hands busy, listening to music, and chewing gum.

Think about your own creative process. Are there any kinds of fidgeting you do that bring you focus?