Submitting written work for publication can be daunting. Written work is often very personal, either because of the content or simply the time and effort spent in producing the work, leaving us feeling very vulnerable and exposed. Just hitting that send can be difficult. And, then, those rejections start rolling in. Most writers receive about ten rejections for every acceptance, so the more submissions, the more rejections rack up. Once we cultivate our thicker skins and start the business of submitting in earnest, though, we encounter a whole new problem – how do we keep track of where all our submissions are in the process?
This might not be a huge problem for those submitting only full-length manuscripts. It’s a different story for authors of shorter works. Because so many publications accept simultaneous submissions, a short story writer or an essayist could have ten to twenty pieces in circulation at one time and a poet could have up to one hundred! (I know that sounds like a crazy amount, but you’d be surprised how quickly they add up, especially when some publications take up to a year to respond.)
The simplest and most obvious starting point is an Excel spreadsheet.
I used a spreadsheet for the first few years of submitting my work. It was very effective, and it had multiple pages.
The first page had all of my work, alphabetically by title, and included columns for each submission I made. I used green for submissions that were out and red for rejections. I colored the entire cell yellow for accepted work, because yellow is such a happy color. I was able to tell at a glance what work was out and where it was. Because I kept adding columns, I could ensure I didn’t send something to the same publication twice.
On the second page, I listed all of the publications and what I had with them, as a cross reference. Many publications have rules about not accepting work from a writer in consecutive issues, or they ask that writers wait a specific amount of time before submitting again to give others a chance to submit. It’s better to be safe and avoid the chance of upsetting an editor.
Something happened, though, as I was racking up my acceptances and rejections – as a poet, my spreadsheets got HUGE. For me, it was no longer a convenient way to quickly check on the status of my submissions. I began to seek other options.
Submittable.com is the submission manager of choice for a lot of publications.
It is free to create an account for writers, so it’s a good idea to sign up. The site is searchable for open opportunities to submit. The site tracks submissions and manages all communications with the publisher. Very convenient! However, it only tracks submissions that are made through that site. Many publications still accept submissions through an email address, their own website, or (gasp!) snail mail. How do we keep track of those?
Duotrope.com is another submissions manager.
This one has an annual fee of $50.00 to use. It does have some advantages, though. An account can be used to track any submission, anywhere, so long as the information is input manually. The site also offers personalized lists of publications that might suit the account holder’s material, which come as convenient bi-weekly emails.
You can go analog.
In the end, though, I went old school, as analog as you can get – a thick, five-subject notebook. One tab holds my poetry (two to a page) with the dates submitted, where, and the ultimate result. One holds the publications (two to a page). The third tab holds manuscript submissions. One tab holds submissions of other written work, like short stories, essays, and reviews, so I know where those are, too, because after you get your name out there, people start asking for other stuff. And the last tab holds a record of all of my open mics and readings, the dates and what was read, so I don’t keep reading the same thing at the same place month after month.
I use stickers and highlighters to celebrate the wins!
These are just a few ideas about tracking your work. However your mind works (on the computer, in the cloud, OG analog), choose the method that suits you. Don’t be afraid to scrap a process if it’s not working and start anew. The important thing is that you’re getting your work out there and you know where it is.
Lisa Wence Connors retired from the US Army and is now a mercenary writer and poet. She divides her time between Salt Lake City, UT, Fruita, CO, and the open road. She works with troubled and struggling teens in Salt Lake County, as well as facilitating creative writing workshops for the Mesa County Public Library and the Grand Junction VA. She is the Editor of High Desert Cadence: A Journal of Veteran Creative Writing. Her work has been published in the journals Proud to Be, Alexandria Quarterly, Bluestem Literary Journal, and Atlas & Alice, among others, as well as the anthologies Groundhogs, Crones, and Other Poems, The Gyroscope Review 2023 Anthology, and We are the West: Tributaries. She has been awarded a 2023 Missouri Humanities Poetry Award and two Gold Medals for Poetry from the National Veterans Creative Arts Festival.
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