One of the cool features of publisher databases like Duotrope, The Grinder, and Chill Subs is that they give real-world data about journals, like the average response time and acceptance percentage. This info doesn’t come from the publishers, but from submitters who use the submission trackers on these sites.
The response time part of this is usually pretty helpful. Even if there are only a few reported responses, you can get a sense from them of how much the journal’s response time varies, and a rough time-frame—at least whether you’ll be waiting a few days, a few weeks, or a few months.
The acceptance ratio can be a trickier wicket, however. When you’re looking at this kind of data, having a small sample size can dramatically skew the results. Who you’re sampling to collect that data makes a difference, too.
Editing a literary journal gives me a unique insight into the publisher’s side of the process. Even so, though, that’s just one journal, and while I’ve read for a few others in the past, I also know that each market has its own unique process for reviewing submissions and deciding what to publish.
Luckily, a lot of publishers are also very open and transparent about what they want to see from submitters. One great place to find this info is using Duotrope’s Editor Interviews. For anyone who’s not familiar with Duotrope, it’s a searchable listing of presses, journals, magazines, contests, and other places publish creative work, and is a handy tool for figuring out where to send stories and poems.
I’m not a person who gives all that much credence to the idea of star signs. I can see some logic in the idea that when you’re born shapes aspects of your personality but not enough to ever choose partners or make other decisions based on this info.
That said, I’m very much a Virgo. I also identify strongly with the Vulcans on Star Trek, and for many of the same reasons. Which got me thinking: with the plethora of different species that have graced the screen across the Star Trek universe, there has to be one that aligns with all the other signs, too.
I recently got back from my cross-country adventure to Yosemite and back to Pittsburgh by train. Trains and buses are my preferred method of traveling when I have the time. Planes are efficient, sure, but there’s something special about seeing the landscape go by while you’re passing through it that’s inspiring for me. The constant stream of inspiration and potential new ideas going by outside the window makes it easy for me to get my head into a creative space.
In that spirit, I thought it might be fun to write prompts based on the things that gave me ideas or piqued my interest during the trip. Here are 3 writing prompts based around travel.
I’ve been working on a few new projects lately, including many short stories for a linked collection as well as two independent novellas (or what I think will be novellas, which is maybe a discussion for a different post) and that means coming up with lots of character names. This is something of a problem for me because I’m historically quite bad at it.
Character names are one of those details that feel incredibly loaded and important and can utterly derail me from making progress on a new draft, no matter how much I tell myself I can always go back and change them later. Hell, even real humans have that option down the line, and it’s much more complicated to alter a real-world personal identity than to simply Find/Replace in a Word document.
I’ve been relatively stationary in Pittsburgh for the first half of 2023 but I’ve got a couple of trips coming up in the next few months. My first trip of the year starts in a week, and it’s a new one for me: a visit to a national park (Yosemite) followed by a cross-country Amtrak excursion back to Pittsburgh.
I’ve done long road trips in the past, but typically the destinations have been urban areas—places I thought I could count on getting easy access to things like power and Wi-Fi. I didn’t always plan ahead properly, and as a result I learned:
Outlets can be a hot commodity when you’re working out of coffee shops or other public spaces
Just because a place offers free Wi-Fi doesn’t mean it works
Long-distance Amtrak routes don’t have Wi-Fi, and Greyhound Wi-Fi is spotty
These things are annoyances for typical travelers, but can be huge sources of stress for working writers who have clients waiting for responses and assignments that need to be completed by a deadline. Being prepared for potential snags can save you a lot of headaches and wasted time, letting you actually enjoy your travels and keep up with your work at the same time.
Like most things in the world, the publishing landscape has changed dramatically since the dawn of the internet. That change has happened at an inconsistent pace, though. Some established publishers stuck by their old school print-subs-or-bust guns until the 2010s (and print subs are clinging on by their fingernails even today), while other journals have been online only since the early aughts.
This inconsistency has led to some conflicting advice for writers submitting their work. Some things that used to be must-include formatting or info is now seen as antiquated, and including it makes you come across as out of touch or ill-informed.
