I have taught for many years now that there is a certain set
of guidelines to follow upon submitting a piece of writing. Upon the recent
publication of my beau, I had to rethink the rules and guidelines.
You see, he is not a ‘writer’ per se, but he does have TWO
blogs that would say otherwise. Me, I’m a writer! I claim to be a writer and my
only published works received no commission, and I haven’t been submitting like
I should be. I’ve been on the learning/ teaching end.
So what made his submission so different? He wrote a blog
post called Children of the Corn. Now mind you, he grew up in the country, a
farm here in Gibbon Nebraska. He has many stories of growing up out here in the
cornfields, tractors and such. I remember asking him recently, “You’ve never
seen a sand castle?” His response was, “Have you ever seen a tractor pull?”
Well I can honestly say, being a city gal from the east coast, no, no I have
never seen a tractor pull. Touché!
He has no idea where he got the idea of submitting the
story. But being on the internet many hours of his day, he came across, Country
Living, a magazine, and thought that the Corn story would be a good fit for his
Children of the Corn tale. He submitted.
He tells me he sent a request for guidelines, but he also
said he didn’t wait for the guidelines, he just sent a word document and didn’t
think about it again. As a matter of fact he never even told me that he had
sent it. He probably just shrugged it off. He’s like that, just lets things
roll off his shoulders, as for me, I would have been waiting month after month
for a response/ rejection letter.
Not him, he just let it roll. No fear, no anxiety, nothing.
Then when the ‘complimentary copy’ of the magazine came in August and the
letter said, “Thank you for contributing.” THAT is when he told me, showed me
actually, the publication of his story. He then said, “Oh I sent it way back in
January. Didn’t think nothing of it.”
Well la di da! I have been writing all my life, the past ten
years I have been really learning the ropes and teaching other writer’s the
ropes, and here he is, just sends it off, and poof, published!
My friend said, “He must have had a good teacher.” Wink
wink, thinking I showed him? Ha! No Sue, I can’t take credit for that. His high
school teacher can and his wonderful upbringing but I feel all I did was
inspire him to WRITE.
When I met him ten years ago, he was wrapped up in his work
as an Administrative Assistant for UPS and surfing the web but did he write?
No, he never did. But as he was going blind, as you can imagine, his internet
surfing was getting harder and harder and that is when I told him to maybe try
a blog.
Reluctantly, I believe, he tried it. Little by little he
wrote more and more and thus were born, Audio book Heaven, an audio book blog
where he reviews audio books for the readers, and his Drums in the Deep blog
where he tells of his life.
He was blind for three years of his writing his blogs and
imagine his excitement when he had a chance to SEE them and reshape and format
them the way he wanted and that what you see now, is the finished product. To
this day he is still writing! He requests audio books from publishers and now,
he doesn’t even need to request, they send them to him!
And on his Drums in the Deep blog, he’s had enough blessings
and miracles in his life to keep him busy as an active writer. And now a
PUBLISHED author! Way to go!!!
So now my advice is going to change for the entire up and
coming community of writer’s. If any thing, HE has taught ME!
Just send it and forget it.
Keep it a secret that you’ve submitted (I don’t advocate
keeping secrets because to me, that is a form of lying, but in this instance,
when it comes to submitting your work, TELL NO ONE!)
Keep in mind, you might send a thousand words, and they are
at liberty to chop your work to pieces. Steven’s was chopped from 803 words
down to 250, but get this, he didn’t know it was $1 a word!!! And as you can
imagine his surprise by the $250 dollar check he got in the mail!
I think the number one thing I learned was to market your
work to a magazine that fits your story. Don’t submit a Children of the Corn
Story to City Living. It won’t sell. Country Living was a perfect place for his
story, THAT is why they took it.
He had received a letter that said he could order additional
copies but it only said, “IF the submission qualified for payment, a check
would be in the mail.” They never informed him IF it qualified but apparently
it did. What qualified it? More than likely it was because it was an original
story, not a reprint, or previously submitted work and it fit right in the magazine.
Just a guess.
