STRENGTHEN YOUR SUBMISSIONS STRATEGY, PART 2 by Adele Gardner (writing mysteries as Max Jason Peterson)

Rocco writes a story.

In Part 1, I outlined the reasons why we need to keep trying rather than getting discouraged by rejections. In essence, each rejection brings you one step closer to the goal of getting published. Your mission is to find that one editor who loves your piece. Feel free to tinker with your work as you go along, but don’t feel obliged to rewrite or scrap it based on the comments of someone who is not offering to buy it (if the editor is seriously interested & wants some rewrites in order to accept it, that’s another story).

Statistics help me keep going because I am able to measure the average number of times I need to send a type of work out in order to make a sale. For instance, one average might be that it takes fifteen submissions of individual poems to individual markets to earn an acceptance of a poem.

Please note, this does not mean that every poem you sell will need to go out fifteen times. Some might get snapped up on the first submission; others might take thirty submissions or more. And keep in mind that most (not all) poetry publications welcome submissions of up to five poems at a time. So on average, if I send out three batches of five poems (five poems apiece to three different publications), down the road, I may hope to receive an acceptance.

It won’t necessarily come from that specific batch. It’s statistical, so it might come from any group of poems I sent at any time. But this average has stayed remarkably consistent for me—even though I continue to send poems to publications like The New Yorker, which is one of the top markets in the country—a target I have not yet reached (but if I don’t submit, I’ll never have the chance to appear there).

Even with sending to markets with such stiff competition, my average of poems sent to acceptances received remains remarkably consistent; for years, it remained fifteen poems submitted per acceptance received. Yet here statistics offer another benefit, when recorded over years: I’ve recently noticed that the gap is shrinking. Time will tell, but it seems likely that my average has improved to twelve poems submitted per acceptance—showing, I hope, an increase in skill over time.

For those who enjoy Excel, in my next article, I’m going to provide the nitty-gritty of what my submission spreadsheet looks like. But for those who don’t like spreadsheets, take heart! I started out using notecards, and then graduated to using a word processing document. I will provide details on how you may use other formats to achieve similar results (it will just take a little more work—and hopefully not as much as you’d think!)

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For more information about Adele Gardner (writing mysteries as Max Jason Peterson), visit their website: www.gardnercastle.com. Halloween Hearts: Poems by Adele Gardner is available through Jackanapes Press.