This week’s Feature Friday is a guest event, courtesy of my longtime writer/poet-pal Karla Linn Merrifield, who is also the contacts editor, as well as column editor, for The Centrifugal Eye poetry journal. Karla knows a ton about preparing and making submissions for publication — both from the editor’s and writer’s point-of-view. She’s an avid submitter, herself, and she’s also read many thousands of submissions over her tenure with TCE.
If you’re keen on getting submission tips from a veteran in the field, lend Karla your ears, and listen up:
Repent, Sinners! Read Every Word and Obey!
By Karla Linn Merrifield
I’m the daughter of a circuit preacher, so standing on a soapbox (which a pulpit is) was a lesson I learned early. Weekly. At five country churches. I saw firsthand over and over that it’s okay to get up on your high horse (as my mother called it) and holler and rant, especially when it came to following the über-rules. Golden, Commandments 1-10, et al. My dad was mighty big on rules, and could go on about them in epic sermons laden with superlatives à la Cecil B. DeMille, who was popular in the Fifties in Bible-belted West Virginia.
My turning out to be an atheist keeps him jiggling around in his marbly urn, but I imagine he’d salute me for getting huffy about following submission guidelines, and ranting about the breaking of said literary rules. Sinful! says I from my virtual soapbox.
Just this week, I, who am far from stainless, was chastised, IMO* rather rudely, by an editor I’ve worked with for more than 10 years as a regular contributor. He’d sent me a personal e-mail, suggesting I send along “some haiku.” So, I did, in direct reply to his personal invitation. His reply to my reply, in toto: “Let me remind you again. Follow submission guidelines.” Sorta smacked me upside the head with that. I haven’t resubmitted. Yet.
His was a timely whack, given this mild rant I’d committed to Eve Hanninen to write in January. Ergo, I plagiarize my dear, long-dead dad’s metaphor to give you this variation. . .
The 7 Deadly Sins of Submissions
1
Ignore not the “No simuls” fair warning. It’s my sense that more and more editors are dropping the requirement that submissions be exclusive. They’re submitters, too, and know well how “no simultaneous submissions” limits a writer in today’s marketplace. But the rule is still out there. Honor it. Respect the editor. It all comes back to you threefold.
2
Know ye that “blind” means “blind.” Ahem. I somehow skipped over this requirement for a recent submission. The co-editors were kind about it and I was able to remove my ID and resubmit, but I sure was embarrassed, even chagrined. A sloppy error on my part. I hate, hate, hate to make extra work for an editor. Sigh.
3
Mind ye the font. Yes, yes, sometimes the font requirements are fussy, but you have to follow them i.e., 11.5 Arial means just that. Not 11-point Garamond. There are some oddball ones I’ve run into, but, thankfully, most of the time it’s good-ole 12 pt. Times New Roman, which is convenient for word-processing programs.
4
Follow the formula, all ye writers. Be it x# pages or y# poems . . . single-spaced, double-spaced, 1.5-spaced . . . paginate or not . . . justify margins or not . . . .pdf or .doc/docx. . . . You’re familiar with those parameters. In 10+ years as assistant editor at The Centrifugal Eye, I can’t count the number of poets who sent entire collections when we were seeking a max of 4 per submission. Had to have been 100+ of ’em I wrote to with a release letter. Pretty simple. Ya think?
5
Dress titles as directed. NO ALL CAPS. No underlines. No italics. Please bold. Untitled poems/stories/essays will be discarded. That one drives haiku/tanka, etc. poets — like me — bonkers. Aghhhhhhhhhh!
6
Trespass not upon bio restrictions. C’mon, folks. Print journals and anthologies most particularly are particular about the length of contributors’ bios. Each page costs money, and can cut into pages allotted to your works. Fifty words is 50 words. Please don’t make editors chase after you for something shorter. I’ve had to do it too many times in the course of three anthologies. Please do unto others . . .
7
Read, sinners, read that journal. Or a selection of works from the publisher. There’s no substitute, no short cut, for knowing your target outlet. The Centrifugal Eye is a journal of poetry (and eye-candy graphics), but, sure enough, writers send us short stories. Book-length, quasi-scholarly treatises? Like, duh.
Vigilant Tracking of Devilish Details
If I can come down from the crate I’ve been metaphorically orating from and mingle among you, dear readers and fellow writers, allow me to pass along a trick of the trade. This might not be a better way than yours of tracking your submissions, but it’s been working exceedingly well for me since April 2007. My mechanism is an MS Word table document that took over for my old system after years of scribbling by hand in a comb-bound binder. The “Tracking System” doc is now 208 pages long. I use “Other” to cite notification dates and any sub fees. And I can strike out “sold” submissions. My example header’s below. Just add rows beneath as you go . . . and sin no more.
Poem Outlet/Pub Date Sent Status Other
Meanwhile, enjoy any guidelines you read. And follow. I’ve been seeing they’re getting more and more creative as editors express the nature of the work they’re seeking. There are many finely written guidelines that may surprise and inspire you, such as this one did for me recently: http://darkmatterwomenwitnessing.com/submission_guidelines.html
And no matter what you do: Write on. We need each other. And the world needs us. Amen.
*IMO means in my opinion; origin, computer “chatspeak”; see Chat Acronyms and Text Shorthand, NetLingo.com
Karla Linn Merrifield, a nine-time Pushcart-Prize nominee and National Park Artist-in-Residence, has had 600+ poems appear in dozens of journals and anthologies. She has 12 books to her credit, the newest of which is Bunchberries, More Poems of Canada, a sequel to Godwit: Poems of Canada (FootHills), which received the Eiseman Award for Poetry. She is assistant editor and poetry book reviewer for The Centrifugal Eye, a member and former board member of Just Poets (Rochester, NY), the Florida State Poetry Society, and The Author’s Guild.
Visit her woefully outdated, soon-to-be-resurrected blog, Vagabond Poet, at http://karlalinn.blogspot.com. Google-search her name to learn more; Tweet @LinnMerrifiel;
visit her on Facebook.