The Submissions Process: Tip #7

7. Submitting to journals takes a lot of work. After working on a batch of poems that you feel are polished and ready, prepare for the long haul of submitting to poetry journals.

I kid you not that it might take more effort and time to submit to poetry journals than it took to write your poems. Don’t go through this process quickly. If you do you will likely break rules and get on the bad side of editors in the future. Or your work will just be discarded or deleted, which would be a very sad thing. Do you really want to consign your poems to such a fate? Give your poems a chance to be read and understood.

The submissions process is a long drawn out affair to do it right. It takes time to read through published poems, through the journal’s rules and guidelines, to gather your poems in the correct format, to decide which poems would be appropriate for a particular journal, etc.

Twenty poetry journals will likely mean three hours of work each day, for two weeks. You can do it though. Set aside the time you need and keep focused. Look at it as an investment for your poems’ future.

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