Here It Comes, Ready or Not

 

I have often been asked, over the years, for advice on how to submit short stories to publications--mostly magazines. I don't know how helpful that's been, but I've always tried to deliver honest guidance, and the only reason I feel qualified to advise at all is that I've submitted a lot of stories and I've done some of it the wrong way.

The truth is, in the old days it was much harder to submit stories to editors and much easier to make a submission mistake. I can recall forgetting to sign my name on cover letters, leaving pages out of manuscripts, not putting enough postage on envelopes, binding the pages the wrong way, using the wrong kinds of envelopes, forgetting to enclose cover letters, and forgetting to enclose SASEs (remember those?). I once put together a neat submission, packed it all into one of those 9 x 12 envelopes, and then forgot to mail it. My wife found it under some papers in the back seat a month later.

But even in our modern, electronic world, you (I should say I) can still make submission mistakes. One of the worst, of course, is an error in the story itself. Some of those are minor (misspellings, typos, punctuation errors, etc.) and some are major (plot holes, factual mistakes, unintended POV switches, etc.). All are embarrassing, and are a good reason to try harder in the future to proofread, proofread, proofread before sending a story off into the hard and competitive world.

It's something that's especially important to me because one of my so-called rules for the submission process is to not read a story again after I've sent it off to the publication. After I hit SEND to dispatch my emailed submission to an editor, I try to forget that story, and I mean completely forget it, until I receive a response. If the eventual response is a rejection, fine--I then re-read the story, make any changes that I think are needed, and submit it elsewhere. If the response is an acceptance, I usually also re-read the story. But--I'll say it again--I don't re-read the story while it's out for consideration. I erase it from my mind and start working on another one.

Now, consider this. What if ignore that advice, and decide to take another look at your story after submitting it? Hopefully you won't find any mistakes, but . . . what if you do?

If the error is really minor, I would let it go. Everybody makes mistakes now and then. Make a note of it to yourself if you want to, but do nothing more. Don't contact the editor. Go back mentally to the point when you emailed the submission and think no more about the story until you receive a response. 

But what if it's a major mistake, like one of those I mentioned earlier? What if you re-read the story while it's in transit or under consideration and find that action B cannot logically follow action A in your plot? What if the geography's wrong, or the timeline is wrong, or the hero knows things he couldn't possibly know, or the device your character used in your historical mystery hasn't been invented yet? Or maybe Janet Bradley on page 2 has changed to Janice Brady on pages 4 through 10. After you slap your forehead and spew a few words that shock both your family and your dog, what do you do?

That's happened to me. (Well, except for the dog.) In my case, it was an error in a fact that I just hadn't researched as well as I should've. It not only made my plot look stupid, it made me look stupid. I still remember thinking Did I actually write that? But I did. And I submitted it to a magazine, only a few days earlier.

What happened then was, I reluctantly send a followup email to the editor, one I thankfully knew, and I told her I'd screwed up a story I'd sent and would like to resubmit a corrected version of that manuscript. She was kind enough to allow me to do that (she probably hadn't read the botched submission yet)--but even so, I suspect my request annoyed her. And annoying editors doesn't top anyone's list of smart things to do.  

But what if I had found the mistake and hadn't sent the followup note? One of three things might've happened, and they're the same things that might've happened if I hadn't found the mistake: (1) the story could've been (deservedly) rejected; (2) the story could've been (undeservedly) accepted, after which the editor would probably have corrected the mistake or asked me to correct it; or (3) the story could've been accepted and published with the mistake intact. And believe me, that can happen as well.

Anyhow, it has become my practice to submit a story and then leave it alone until I get a response. Call me irresponsible, call me unreliable, but that's my policy. I make sure my submission is written as well as I can write it, I send it off, and I forget it. My reason is, if you re-read it and don't find any mistakes, you've wasted your time. And if you re-read it and do find a mistake, you either alert the editor or you don't. If you don't, you'll probably still worry about it for the next few weeks or months, and if you do alert the editor, you run the risk of irritating her and could be wasting your time anyway, because the acceptance/rejection outcome might be the same. Bottom line: I'm not convinced that finding an error once the bird has flown does anyone any good.

One more thing. I think my decision to not look at a story again after it's submitted has made me a more careful writer. It's forced me to look a lot harder at the story beforehand. 

So here's the question. What's your policy? Do you forget your stories after they've been submitted for consideration? Do you re-read them after submission but before you've received a response? Have you ever found a gastric-distressable error at that point? If so, what did you do about it, besides Maalox? Did you contact the editor, and if so, how'd that go? Was the story accepted or rejected anyway? Have you ever made story mistakes, small or large, that somehow got past all the guards and found their way undetected into print? (I wish I hadn't--they don't stay undetected long.) Come on, be honest. Confession's good for the soul.

Meanwhile, keep writing the best stories you can, check them carefully, and send 'em in. Some of them will surprise you, and actually make something of themselves in the world.

May the odds be ever in your favor.