Sending out writing submissions in hopes of getting your short stories, poems, essays, or book published can be stressful. After creating your initial draft, there’s all the editing, proofreading, and formatting — plus hours of research to find the right places to submit your work. Then you anxiously wait to learn if your writing has been accepted or rejected. Before you start to hyperventilate, take a deep, cleansing breath and find enlightenment about the best ways to relax and be more Zen while making effective writing submissions.

How To Keep Calm While Making Effective Writing Submissions

Identify your stress triggers. Knowing which aspects of making writing submissions give you the most anxiety and aggravation will help you determine how to make the process more stress-free. Do you ignore submission guidelines? Hate spending hours and hours researching where to send your work? Pinpointing the areas where you need help will make it easier to discover rational solutions and eliminate unnecessary frustration in your writing life.

Listen and pay attention. Pay attention to details and make sure your work is proofread and formatted to publishing industry standards. Nothing turns off literary agents and editors more than a poorly formatted submission filled with typos and grammar errors. Wait, there is one thing they dislike more: when you don’t follow the submission guidelines. Ignoring submission guidelines is one of the fastest ways to end up in the “rejection” pile.

Your query or cover letter should also meet publishing industry expectations. A cover letter should be short and sweet: an intro sentence and brief bio only. Add anything more and you risk getting on the un-Zen side of an overworked literary editor. If you’re submitting a book to literary agents, it’s important to include everything your query letter needs to be successful — and leave out unnecessary filler.

KEEP READING! MORE GREAT INFO BELOW!

Focus on what matters. Doing all the research necessary to properly target your work is an essential step in making successful submissions. There are THOUSANDS of literary journals and agents out there, with new ones popping up every day. You need to determine if reading dates have changed, if agents are taking on new genres, and more. Not only must you locate the latest information on the right markets — you also need to spend hours eliminating all the wrong places to send your work. But putting the necessary effort into this important task will ultimately relieve anxiety, because you’ll know your work has the best chances of getting into the right hands.

Take a deep breath and repeat. Let this be your writing submission mantra: Every rejection brings me one step closer to an acceptance.

There’s no way around it: Getting a rejection can be disappointing and stressful. Even seasoned writers with many acceptances will receive many rejections. But when you send out work on a regular schedule to multiple markets, you improve your odds of success and lessen the sting of any rejections. If you get one rejection, remembering that you have other submissions circulating makes it easier to release your anxiety and stress.

For creative writers whose writing is strong and who are making well-targeted submissions, the average rate of acceptance is 1 out of 100. Sending out more submissions more often will help you chip away at that number.

Visualize success. Making polished, carefully researched submissions on a consistent schedule is a philosophy that has worked well for our clients. In fact, each week we’re thrilled to learn some of our clients have received acceptances from literary journals or requests for full manuscripts from literary agents. So once you’ve sent out your submissions, let the tension out of your shoulders and visualize an acceptance letter appearing in your e-mail inbox. Then mark your calendar and get ready to send out submissions again!

Now that you know how to make your writing submission process more Zen, it’s time to follow your bliss — which could be spending more time writing, taking a walk outside, or eating chocolate cake. Or maybe writing while outside and eating chocolate cake!

Should novels generally be six hundred pages? No, they should not. Half of writing, maybe 3/4 of writing, is editing. This seems to be a thing that has not gotten through to them. It’s my impression that you could get rid of half of most of these books. These people are not good enough to be this long, but they’re apparently also not good enough to be shorter.

FRAN LEBOWITZ

TIPS TO LOOK AFTER YOUR HUSBAND.

1. HAVE DINNER READY

Plan ahead, even the night before, to have a delicious meal on time. This is a way of letting him know that you have been thinking about him and are concerned about his needs. Most men are hungry when they come home and the prospects of a good meal are part of the warm welcome needed.

2. PREPARE YOURSELF

Take 15 minutes to rest; so you will be refreshed when he arrives. Touch up your make up, put a ribbon in your hair and be fresh looking. He has just been with a lot of work weary people. Be more interesting. His boring day may need a lift.

3. CLEAR AWAY THE CLUTTER

Make one last trip through the main part of the house just before your husband arrives, gathering up school books, toys, paper etc. Then run a dust cloth over the tables. Your husband will feel he has reached a heaven of rest and order, and it will give you a lift too.

4. PREPARE THE CHILDREN

Take a few minutes to wash the children’s hands and faces (if they are small), comb their hair, and if necessary, change their clothes. They are little treasures and he would like to see them playing the part.

5. MINIMISE ALL NOISE

At the time of his arrival, eliminate all noise of washers, drier, dishwasher or vacuum. Try to encourage the children to be quiet. Be happy to see him. Greet him with a warm smile and be glad to see him.

6. SOME DON’TS

Don’t greet him with problems or complaints. Don’t complain if he is late for dinner. Count this as minor compared with what he might have gone through that day.

7. MAKE HIM COMFORTABLE

Have him lean back inna comfortable chair or suggest he lie down in the bedroom. Have a cool or warm drink ready for him. Arrange his pillow and offer to take off his shoes. Speak in a low, soft, soothing and pleasant voice. Allow him to relax – uwind.

8. LISTEN TO HIM

You may many interesting things to tell him, but the moment he arrives is not the time. Let him talk first.

9. MAKE THE EVENING HIS

Never complain if he does not take you out for dinner or other places of entertainment. Instead, try to understand his world of strain and pressure, his need to come home and relax.

10. THE GOAL

Try to make your home a place of peace and order where your husband can renew himself in body and spirit.

Read widely and deeply in your chosen genre—and also outside your genre—to figure out how other writers have done it. Seek out, mentors and fellow travellers. Be patient with yourself: Failure is an inevitable and necessary part of any artistic process. Learn who to listen to, and who not to listen to, which is an answer particular to you. Remember that in the end, it’s your work, and you get to decide how to make it.

The gift of language is a powerful engagement tool. The same way you don’t just eat/drink anything concocted is the same way our heart longs for the richness of anything beyond the ubiquitous. What makes words live longer in the heart/mind is the depth & art of the narrative. ⛱ ~Segalink

Four-eyed fish swim in Omuo Ekiti Rivers.

A Ekiti Community where “spirits” wash clothes at riverbank

A fish with four eyes: Incredible but true. In the outskirts of Omu community, inside a tiny stream is a fish with four eyes! But no camera can capture its image, its picture would simply not appear.
Oba Adeyeye, has this to say on the fish: “ Yes, indeed, we have a mysterious fish here which has four eyes. The fish is in Iwereji river in this town. We have been trying to find the root of that strange development but no one has been able to get that. But if you take photographs of the fish, it won’t show in your device. That is quite strange.

“The only myth we have established around it is that in our reigning days as a great kingdom, we had very powerful warriors who decided to enter into some strange things when Omu was betrayed and was defeated by the Alaafin warriors. We heard of many of these warriors who went into the river, thick bushes, trees among others which today are characterized with many strange incidents. For instance, there is a river in this town, located far into the forest where in the mid-day, you see people’s clothes spread all over the bank of the river.

No human is living at least more than a kilometre away from the place and you wonder who were those washing their clothes and spreading them there. But by the time the clothes were dry, they would just disappear. It was this river, one of our former monarchs, Oba Adewa, was said to have entered when he was defeated by the Alaafin warriors.”

Authors and writers are brave amazing people. Putting themselves out there on a daily basis. Their thoughts and dreams. As are screenwriters and artists of all types. My thanks to those who have written and will write. ©TheLaureate