#0003 My Hunt For Places To Submit; Or,
“Be vewy vewy quiet, I’m hunting wabbits!” — Elmer Fudd
As you may remember (from #0002), I’m in search of the just-right home for a weirdo written work. I’m trying to submit the piece to three places this week. Because I set myself a deadline. In public.
The written work on some of my chronic health conditions runs about 550 words. It’s kinda prose poetry? Sorta creative nonfiction? With a touch of experimental — integral footnotes — formatting? Basically, the piece is hard to define. So I’ve labeled it one of my weirdos.
For me, “weird” is a term of affection. FYI, Merriam-Webster lists synonyms for weird, including ODD, FANTASTICAL, MAGICAL, FATE, DESTINY, SOOTHSAYER. I especially like the Did you know? section, which explains
You may know weird as a generalized term describing something unusual, but this word also has older meanings that are more specific. Weird derives from the Old English noun wyrd, essentially meaning "fate." By the 8th century, the plural wyrde had begun to appear in texts as a gloss for Parcae, the Latin name for the Fates—three goddesses who spun, measured, and cut the thread of life. In the 15th and 16th centuries, Scots authors employed werd or weird in the phrase "weird sisters" to refer to the Fates. William Shakespeare adopted this usage in Macbeth, in which the "weird sisters" are depicted as three witches. Subsequent adjectival use of weird grew out of a reinterpretation of the weird used by Shakespeare.
That reminds me of the 2010 debut novel by Eleanor Brown, The Weird Sisters. Brown’s use of the collective first person (we/us/our) ties together Rose (for Rosalind, As You Like It), Bean (for Bianca, The Taming of the Shrew), and Cordy (for Cordelia, King Lear). So well done! But I digress…
Just one example of my procrastination. Don’t we all distract ourselves when deadlines loom? Or maybe it’s just me.
As a member of Inlandia’s 100 Rejections Club, I wanted to explore Duotrope to test what it had to offer for my weirdo work. I did a Search for Publishers two ways. Under the main category of Nonfiction, I set the parameters for
Style: Experimental
Topic: Health/Medical
Type/Length: Narrative Nonfiction
Submission Type: Electronic
For the Submission Details, I checked the box for Simultaneous Submissions. Duotrope came up with exactly 2 matches: The Linden Review and Open Minds Quarterly. Two down, one to go.
For my second search, I selected the Poetry category,
Poetry Form: Prose Poetry
Genre: General
Style: Literary
Topic: Health/Medicine
Length Type: Poem
Submission Type: Electronic
and I checked the box for Simultaneous Submissions. No dice. Duotrope suggested I try fewer search criteria or change the Search Level to Fuzzy or Broad. Except when I tried combinations of all those, there were so many possibilities my eyes glazed over. Still hunting for one more…
When I signed up for the group account, I selected the option to receive Duotrope’s weekly newsletter, the Weekly Wire. Basically a long list of links to calls sorted by various topics. Under Upcoming Themed Deadlines, I discovered that Pleiades: Literature in Context was seeking submissions for the theme On Disability. That’s my third place.
For all three possibilities, I read Duotrope’s collected information about each journal and statistics on time from submission to response and acceptance/rejection rates.
Let’s just say, I have a good chance to rack up some rejections toward the goal of 100 Rejections.
Every Duotrope publisher page has a link to the publisher’s website, a handy timesaver. I made sure my weirdo work matched each journal’s call and read previously published work to find out if mine might be an okay fit.
After submitting my weirdo work to the three journals — two via Submittable and one as an email — I returned to my personal Duotrope Control Panel, where I used Report a Submission. That’s how Duotrope aggregates its statistics. And it’s a way for me to keep track of what I’m submitting where. Plus, Duotrope will implement a way (soonish?) for individual submission reports to appear on the Group Control Panel. Including Rejections!
More on embracing rejection next time.