Submitting Your Short Stories

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I have a short story that I really believe in. It’s informed by a painful trauma in my past, and, for me, it evokes a clear sense of place, but also dislocation. 

I’ve just received my fifth rejection for the piece. After absorbing the gut punch from the form email (rejection never gets any easier no matter how many times it happens), I’m ready to get it ready to submit to another market.

I’ve had family and friends read it over, and they really feel that it’s a great story. After this many rejections, should I give up? No, I don’t think so. Everytime I get it back, I have time to take another look at it with fresh eyes. Are there sentences and phrasing that I can tighten? What can I remove that isn’t true to the story?

Part of this process is finding the right market for it. This particular story contains personal horror, but it’s not exactly a blood-and-guts horror story. It’s also more about memory and grief, so I am going to try to go a more general route in terms of submissions, rather than looking at horror markets. 

I might even try to submit it to a large publication. If I have the courage.

One site that has been monumentally helpful in helping me find markets to submit to is The Submission Grinder. This is a donation-supported writing market database. While the interface is a bit rudimentary and clunky, I love the ability to search the thousands of markets it has in its database. The site also gives me the ability to create entries for my pieces and then track them through the submission process. 

It’s free, and it’s been so helpful in allowing me to find markets. You can also see stats on recent acceptances and the many, many, many recent rejections. It’s somewhat heartening to see that I am not alone in this lonely and masochistic journey that I’m on.

Onward and upward.