What I have learned about submitting to publishers and writing competitions – Part Two

My personal experience as a writer, editor and judge

Photo by mana5280 on Unsplash

Hello everyone,

Last week I shared some tips on how to avoid careering into the rejection gutter when  submitting work to publishers and writing competitions, based on my experience over the last decade as both an author and as a competition judge, reader, and literary magazine editor.

This week, I’m going personal. I’ll be giving you some insights plucked from my own experience of the submissions process for both competitions and publications. I hope you find it helpful.

This is a story about a story, called Jennifer’s Piano. When I first started writing, more than 10 years ago, I was part of an online writing group that gave me the kick up the backside I’d needed to actually take myself seriously as a writer. I started producing finished pieces, both flash fiction and short stories. And I started sending them out. And then I got lucky. Jennifer’s Piano won the Fish Publishing Flash Fiction Prize.

For those not in the know, the Fish prizes are well regarded on the short fiction scene. They’ve been running for years and attract some serious competition. I travelled to Ireland for the launch of the anthology, as part of the West Cork Literary Festival in Bantry, a pretty seaside town horseshoed around a harbour, with quaint multicoloured buildings dotted around the place and, just out of town, the wildness of the Atlantic coastline. There were television cameras at the event. Prize winners had travelled from the US, Europe, even Australia. There was a large, enthusiastic audience. This, I quickly realised, was very much a big deal.

Jennifer’s Piano was heavy on intertexuality (using one text as inspiration for another, a bit like ekphrastic paintings do with art). It combined words taken from the William Blake poem 'The Sick Rose' with elements of my family history - my dad’s uncle was a tail gunner in Wellington bombers during World War Two and got shot down during a secret mission to drop supplies to partisans in Eastern Europe. I’d like to think there is also something of the darkly sexual tone of the original poem in the story, and a sense of innocence destroyed. If you wanted t read it, you can find the story in my flash fiction collection All That Is Between Us.

Why had I decided to submit Jennifer’s Piano to the competition? Partly because it was the right word count. Partly because I was just sending out to lots of competitions and knew this was a good one. I didn’t write it for the competition, and to me that’s an important point. Others may disagree, but for me writing to order for a competition or a publication is not how I roll. I write because an idea compels me to create a story. The ability to find a home for that is secondary. If I have something that suits a publication or a competition, then great. If not, then it can wait, no matter how good I think it might be.

Back to Bantry. Being new to the whole ‘now you get to read your story out loud to an audience’ game, I was nervous. I sat with my head down, rehearsing in silence how I would read the story. I failed to listen properly to much of what was going on during the event around me, including a short speech from the judge, the novelist Peter Benson, on why he liked the story. That was a mistake, because any judge worth their salt will be saying things that are relevant not just to your story in particular, but about writing in general. There’s treasure in those words. And it is not just judges who can give you this at literary events. There’s often people kind enough want to engage with you directly about your work. Feedback from real readers is gold dust, not least because, in my experience, give you an insight into elements of your writing that have never occurred to you.  

As is the nature of these things, the evening was a whirl. I read my story pretty well. I styled out the moment, having finished my reading, when I stepped confidently off the stage and then realised it was a lot higher up than I thought and had to land with as much grace as possible. And I was lucky again, because, some time later in a blog post about the event, I found a write-up of the judge’s comments. This is what he said:

“Jennifer’s Piano did everything flash fiction should do. The first line dropped me into the story with perfectly tuned immediacy, and by the end of the second line I knew so much more than the writer had told me. In fact, I’d say that there was as much power and thought in those first two lines than there is the first chapters of many contemporary novels.

And so the piece continues, creating a world that on third and fourth reading seems almost miraculous, one in which two lives are described and experienced in apparent totality. Laughter, suspense, love and tragedy are all there, and when you reach the end, even though you want more, you know that what you’ve had is enough. And this is – I think – what flash fiction should do for the reader.

“Jennifer’s Piano stands as one of the finest examples of the form I have read."

Nice words, and I spent some time fully embracing that sugar rush of praise. But eventually I realised these words could also help me develop my writing. The flush of pride that someone really likes your work last for a while, but what stays with you is the insights. How an opening should drop you into the story with immediacy. How with short fiction in particular, you need to create a picture that is more than the sum of your words. How characterisation and emotional connection can grow through a story. How the ending of a story should leave the reader wanting more, yet also satisfied with the sum of the story.

The early success I had with Jennifer’s Piano was fortuitous. I caught an updraft just as I was starting to fly my writing kite. It encouraged me to continue developing and submitting, even during the far leaner times to come.

I have tried to replicate this on the opposite side of the fence. A couple of years ago, I judged the international Bath Flash Fiction Award, and in my report, I tried to write something worthwhile about the process of judging (I also provided feedback on each of the winning stories). There’s a link here to the report, which I hope will give you some insight and understanding of what the process is and how judges come to make the decisions they do.  

A final word about Jennifer’s Piano. A few months before winning its prize, it had been rejected by another major writing prize, without even making the longlist. What does that mean? Simply that this is all a subjective process, done by humans who might be having a bad day, or have particular tastes, or have seen something similar in the pile of stories they are reading, or didn’t get the intertextuality, or didn’t like the way the story was delivered.

Since that early success, I have had many publications and competitions successes, and many more rejections. One of the biggest lessons to come from all this has nothing to do with writing itself. It is simply this: You need to embrace the administration involved.

I had no idea how much time it takes to find markets and competitions and go through the submissions process. Not a clue. Zilch. Nada. I thought you just excavated stories from the fiery crucible of your soul, edited them until they shone like a bright, new penny and then…well, I didn’t think about the ‘then’ much at all.

But what I did find useful, particularly in the early days, was keeping a simple Submissions Log. Nothing fancy, just a crude tool to monitor my progress, keep track of my submissions and help structure the admin. It was also a psychological tool – it helped me deal with the pain of rejections by making them part of a housekeeping process. Here’s a rough example, drawn from the end of my first year of full writing and submitting (I tended to submit to more competitions at the time, hence the balance of the numbers).

SUBMISSIONS LOG RECORD

Submissions: 75

Competition Successes: 15
Two first places (Fish, Words With Jam); one third place (Accenti),
two prize-winning places (Fish, Lightship),
one Honourable Mention (Flash 500),
five shortlists, four longlists.

Publication Successes:  5
Emerge Literary Journal, Litro online, Ether Magazine,
UK Flash Fiction Day anthology, Leodagrance anthology.  

Rejections: 45
Still On Submission: 10

I told you it was nothing fancy! But it was also a reminder that I had managed to press Send and put myself out there 75 times. A reminder that I had a decent acceptance rate and some good successes. It acknowledges that a lot of those submissions ended in rejection, but that information is down the list, it’s just a number, it takes some of the sting out of it. And I had a sense from the Still on Submission number that there was churn, that I was still liable to get success as well as rejection.

I think it’s important to say, there are other ways of doing things. Some writers, who have had great success with short stories, write a smaller number of pieces, polish and polish and polish them, then send out to a small number of big, influential competitions or publishers, eventually gaining success. This is also a good route, but not mine, because I was writing a lot of flash fiction back when I started and that requires a more abundant way of doing things.

This has been a long post, and though I am aware that there’s still more to say on this subject, other pitfalls and traps about the submissions process that need highlighting and will probably require a Part Three to do it, that’s enough for now. To paraphrase Peter Benson, leave the reader wanting more, but also satisfied there has been enough said.  

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