I have been posting calls for submissions like mad, over at the new and improved PAWA blog, and have been a little surprised at the non-response to them. I know; just because I’m not hearing any feedback does not mean folks are being unresponsive. It’s just that I have been trying to gauge community interest in submitting work for publication.
Here is what befuddles me: There’s so much dialogue over our invisibility and non-presence on bookstore shelves and on course syllabi, coupled with reticence to put work out there in a major way. As well, there’s so much interest in self-promotion, in being recognized, so much desire to be given props and praise for being poets and writers, coupled with reticence to put work out there in a major way.
What gives, with the contradictions? I am interested in untangling that, and giving substance to the picture of “poets and writers,” and the necessary work to make it so.
As my friend and fellow author Sunny Vergara has recently blogged, it’s loaded, “self-promotion,” and the term, “shameless self-promotion.” Submitting work is part of the work of self-promotion. With every cover letter we write to accompany every submissions packet we send out, we engage in self-promotion. We’re submitting to the possibility that our work is good and/or interesting enough to warrant publication in a potentially competitive field. He’s listed some truths, which I believe are important to arrive at on our own schedules, after going through our own processes:
- You cannot sit on your ass and hope to be discovered.
- You cannot sit on your ass and hope to be invited to speak.
- You cannot sit on your ass and hope to be published.
This is a good credo. That said, I am interested in where these hopes “to be discovered,” “to be invited to speak,” “to be published” come from. How and why are they perpetuated?
I have questions, and it’d be great to hear from folks. As you may know, I am conducting a “Submitting Your Work for Publication” workshop on July 30 at the Bayanihan Center in SF. I’d decided to offer this workshop because of the volume of emails and questions I regularly field on the subject of submitting work.
Questions range from very general, “how do you submit work,” to “where do you submit work,” to “where do you find out who’s accepting work,” to questions of what “simultaneous submissions” means, whether you should submit via snail mail or email, etc. The most general questions require unpacking; when someone asks, “how do you submit work?” what specifically is being asked?
Anthem Salgado recently interviewed me for his Art of Hustle podcast, and this was an excellent conversation that he and I had been meaning to have. I believe it’s this conversation, or rather, the planning of this conversation, that led me to commit to a date for this submissions workshop; I know that in general, folks want to know more about submissions and publication, but I don’t know specifically what the questions are. I also know that there are hang-up’s surrounding submitting; I want to know more about what these hang-up’s are about, and what the causes are.
Are there issues with submitting to bodies representing “academia,” and “institutions,” that are not “for us,” that are not “ours?” Are there issues with “selling out,” and “whitewashing?” Having recently read Manong Al Robles’s essay, “Hanging on to the Carabao’s Tail,” in the Amerasia journal (15:1, 1989), I see there really are issues about being perceived as participating in the institutions of the “whiteman.” So I want to talk about it, frankly, openly, negotiating the publishing industry and our politics. I want to talk about what we can do concretely, proactively, as community producers and editors with the concrete skills and resources that we have. (Perhaps this coming workshop is not the proper forum for this discussion, but for sure, this is on my mind in a big way.)
So, now that I am compiling my workshop materials — e-resources for submissions calls and journals/magazines, sample cover letters, sample submissions calls to read for editors’ requirements and instructions — I want to find out from you folks: what are your questions, issues, confusions, hang-up’s about submissions and the submissions process?
And, will you attend, and participate in the discussion? Please do come and share your resources.
bjr,
firstly bjr just seems such a cool tag, if you threw tags up. secondly, i think writers are infatuated a little with the idea of being discovered. and i think it’s more because writing isn’t doctoring. which is just to say, the standards of judging merit in our field aren’t even trusted by those of us in the field. and for many, being discovered is a way to feel above the fray of having the merits of your work judged.
i find that i submitted my work more when i wasn’t a part of any community, well when prison was my community. i find that it was purer than because i didn’t judge what was chosen to the degree that i do now. and maybe, cause i still submit my work, i’m finding a need to find a space that is sort of in between submitting and getting my work out to the larger public that isn’t represented by any of these spaces we submit to. submit. bow down. acquiesce. maybe we are ultimately afraid. frightened by abdicated the crumbs of power we have by being voices against the machine.
i don’t know.
hey barbara,
after reading your post, i’ve just realized that i mostly submit to magazines that prioritize “underrepresented” voices, folks of color, asian american poets. i gravitate to these journals because they are much more than the actual publication; they foster community through blogs, events and collaboration with other publications, organizations (i’m thinking of lantern review and kartika here). they represent deliberately constructed spaces (much like kundiman and vona) for poets/writers of color. on that note, i wonder if i am limiting perspective on the submission process. surely there are people who want to read filipinas in the atlantic!
some questions i have: when/how will you know when a poem/series of poems are ready for publication? (i think i’ve asked this before on my blog… i’m still thinking about it.) is buying the annual poets’ market helpful? (or any publication that has magazine and submission information. if so, which ones?) when should you start branching out to the more “prestigious” publications? and should you?
thanks, barb!
best,
rachelle
RE: “to be discovered,” “to be invited to speak,” “to be published” — it’s the passive voice that’s key here, and it’s in direct contrast to that other great credo, “You can’t win if you don’t play.” Sometimes you get roughed up if you’re out on the court, but at least you weren’t sitting in the dugout the whole time. (I’m mixing my sports references here.)
My personal take on that passivity is that it’s partly out of fear, but mostly out of laziness; actually doing the work and getting serious comprises not just coming up with an end product, but also the hustle. The latter partly takes care of aiming for high visibility on Google, but that’s not a worthy objective if there’s no good work to show for it.
There are certainly issues in the Filipino American community about submitting to “institutions” and “selling out” — but they’re not mine. My real problem has to do with wondering whether my stuff is worth submitting, period!
Hi, Barbara.
I’m definitely not “sitting on my ass” waiting or hoping for anything to come TO me. As I sit on my ass, writing, however, I have spent a good amount of time researching good fits for my pieces. I’m past the point of worrying whether my pieces are”good enough” or not. At the same time, I am at the moment irritated that working with traditional publication route takes so much waiting time, in my case, for a rejection that never came. No answer can mean many things (got lost; spilled coffee on it; dog poo’d on it) What- publishing companies are too busy to send out a proper form rejection now? At least that would be some low level form of Acceptance. Okay, I’m finished whining now. I was one of the people who once queried you about your view on various publishing routes. Your response was very helpful and from there researched what I thought might be fruitful. I want my work to go through the rigors, but the waiting game is unreasonable. Perhaps the publishing world is just one that I do not understand. Thank you for offering the July 30 workshop. I will be there!
I think that my problem with the submission process is that I’m impatient. I get tired of waiting and wondering if people will accept me. This might have to do partly with my age, and it might have to do just with this era of information overload; there’s so many venues to consider, so much research to do to figure out what’s a “good fit.” Yeah, that can be an excuse for not doing anything, but the other option is to do it yourself, and I’ve always liked the DIY route, and found it more fun, in some ways.
There are open source publishing venues all over the place, so I feel like if I want to put my stuff out there, why not be both the writer and publisher myself? If I have something I think is worth saying, why not just design a platform, put it out there in the best form possible, and then let those of your tribe who are interested know? Let the public decide if it’s worth checking out, and converting to print. Then of course, there’s the whole question of if print is really the venue that validates your work, or not.
In some venues–like academic publishing, which seems to embody the last holdout of meritocratic publishing–submission and acceptance is still the way to go if you want some recognition. But even that’s starting to change too.
But otherwise, I think part of the problem might be that the publishing world is changing so fast, and the change is so unprecedented, that writers are a bit befuddled right now. There are so many ways to choose…
Jean