Submit or Perish!!!

Are you a writer who is also a pack rat? I am. I went over the list of stories I have been working on and discovered I hadn't submitted anything in a couple of months. That didn't seem right. So I checked a little spreadsheet I have of current work. Sure enough, there were five stories I had finished editing and didn't submit! Why? I asked myself. It turns out I was too busy writing other things and getting them ready for critiquing. So they sat on my PC, gathering electronic dust (and cat hair, but we won't go into that.)

So I fired up the Internet (thanks, Al Gore and Vin Cerf) and logged onto Duotrope. There I found a home for everyone of my stories. Now, I may get five rejections. But if I do, at least that tells me where I stand in my writing skills (See previous post.). But If I don't submit, then nothing changes.

Some writers I know keep working on stories forever. They want it to be perfect before it's published. But I am of the mind that putting too much polish on a story can actually take some of the shine off of it. You need rejection; you need to know what you are doing wrong (or at least not quite right.). Any response I get on a story will teach me something. But not submitting teaches you nothing.

Write, submit, recover and start all over again!