This time of year presents submission opportunities both local and abroad. The Red Door and A Common Place are seeking local submissions from Longwood students. The process of submitting to a literary journal or writing competition can be a stressful one, especially if you’ve never submitted your work before. Students must choose their submitted work wisely and revise until they feel their piece is worthy of publication, prize money, or both! Here are five tips to help kick-start your submissions process!

• READ SUBMISSION GUIDELINES

This is very important. Each platform, journal and competition have different submission guidelines. A Common Place requires all submissions to be a doc, docx, or pdf attachment sent to acommonplacelitmag@gmail.com. A Common Place also requests the genre of submission be included in the subject of the email.

Submission guidelines will inform writers of how long to wait before inquiring about the status of submissions, for A Common Place we request 90 days. However Sequestrum, a popular journal of short prose and poetry advises anywhere from six minutes to six months for response time. Reaching out to editors in the early months can slow down reading and response time. Inquiring early when requests are stated in the guidelines is a sign of lack of attention to detail. Editors are watching.

• GET FAMILIAR WITH THE PLATFORM

A major component of a literary career is citizen leadership. Literary citizenship invites you to read more books, subscribe to literary journals you want to be published in, interview authors and more. Simply put, you have to give more than you take. Contribute. Read new books and support authors, send a brief email about the impact a particular book had on you. The opportunities to contribute are endless. Do you want to be published in a particular literary magazine? Show support on social media, subscribe to their news letter, buy their printed journal. Spread the word about submissions. Supporting a literary magazine or journal doesn’t guarantee your work will be published, but it does connect you to other authors and platforms that can help further your literary career.

It is always helpful to confirm that your written work will mesh with the theme of the journal. For example, it wouldn’t be wise to send a 7,500 word fiction story to Sequestrum, a journal for short prose and poetry.

• GET A SECOND PAIR OF EYES

Creative Writing can not be done alone. Workshops are in place to help writers grow in their structure, use of punctuation, character development and more. Have you participated in a workshop class? Reach out to those who’ve read your work and ask if they’re willing to read your piece before submitting. If you haven’t had the luxury of a creative writing workshop, ask a good friend, professor, roommate or family member to read over for mistakes or plot holes. Another tip is to set your work aside for a week or so and come back to it with fresh eyes. This allows you to see things you may gloss over, like those pesky typos and plot holes.

• AFTER SUBMITTING

Keep writing! Don’t wait for your poetry or story to be accepted before you write again. If you are pro-active and writing for submissions, you could potentially have a new story by the time you hear back. If your work wasn’t accepted, don’t be discouraged! Author Trish Hopkinson’s poem was rejected 31 times before it was accepted into a journal she admires.

While awaiting your acceptance, be on the look out for ways to revise your work and resubmit to another journal, or revise the new story/poem and submit again! It takes time and dedication to write, revise, polish and submit. Don’t miss out because you’re waiting to hear back.

Comment any questions you may have regarding submissions!