#0071: January Speedrun Postmortem; And, Wanna Try Again? Differently? Also,
TGJIFO, am I right?!
Thank goodness January is finally over. Not because of the speedrun, of course. Just… everything else.
You might be wondering what postmortem in the headline means. When I worked on my high school and college newspapers (sometime during the Cretaceous Period), we reviewed what went well and what, er, didn’t after each issue, from the writing and editing to the production and printing. In journalism, it’s called a postmortem. (Not to be confused with necropsy. Or autopsy.)
Reflecting on a project after it’s done is a good way to learn. To improve. Especially if you’re going to try it again. Because practice makes perfect better. Here goes!
Postmortem
In anticipation of our January speedrun, I pulled together a list of places offering FREE submissions. Or so I thought.
In the quiet week between Christmas and New Year’s, when I compiled our quick turnaround submission list, many places usually open year-round were closed tight. Including Typishly. When I went to submit 5 short poems —many only 3 lines – during our Week 3: Submit, I discovered the editor charges $6.97US per sub. If you believe personalized, only-positive comments in 24 hours are worth seven bucks per poem, go for it. Otherwise, I count this one as an Oops.
Turns out the SmokeLong Quarterly free option was closed by the time I looked into submitting midweek of our submission week. Maybe taken down after reaching an unlisted sub cap? The journal still offered paid options, including multiple subs, expedited subs, and personalized sub review by the editor-in-chief. While I was bummed to have missed submitting for free, there’s some good news. SLQ publishes quarterly, so we can all submit (early and often) to this R E A C H publication in 2025. So, a small oops with an asterisk.
At least one of the places closed between my research and our submission week, Venus, Darling Magazine. Though I included their theme as a prompt for Week 1: Create (oops), I caught the closed sub window. If you wrote on the theme, I do hope you were able to submit somewhere else. Though I’m left wondering: Did other places on the submission list end up dead ends?
Let me know in the comments how your efforts to submit went. Did you run into roadblocks, tech glitches, other calamities? Also, how quickly did you receive a response? Or are you still waiting?
Tip #1: I mentioned many times to Read the Guidelines before submitting. Did you also look at some of the previous issues, if available, or at least published examples? Remember to read through earlier issues of a publication to get a sense of the aesthetics and preferences.
If you want a better chance at getting your writing or artwork published, it’s important to try to find places that say (in guidelines and editor letters introducing issues) and demonstrate (in back issues) an affinity with your creative work. Try to match your speculative fiction, for example, with a lit journal that publishes oh, I don’t know, speculative fiction.
Tip #2: Did you write thank you responses, regardless of whether your sub was accepted or rejected? As I said last time (#0070), you don’t want to burn bridges. Because you never know when you might encounter the editor in the future.
Speedrun Options
My idea with the January speedrun was for you to feel how racing through the create–revise–submit–embrace stages can flex your creative muscles (#0067). I encouraged you to create something new to lower the pressure with the initial speedrun practice.
If you, like my new writing accountability partner, work better with more than one thing going at the same time, speedruns are a great option. Instead of getting distracted by shiny things that take your brain away from a longstanding project, put them to good use by crafting something to submit. You get those tangential ideas out of your head to then focus on your main project(s).
For those of you who want or need to stay the course with your one-and-only work in progress (WIP), never fear. Speedruns are still a wonderful opportunity. Whether your WIP is intended as a chapbook or book, consider submitting standalone bits for submissions. If you get a poem or story published in a journal, you demonstrate to potential agents, editors, and publishers that your work has already been curated.1 When you look at the Copyright and Acknowledgments of books, often some (a handful of poems, a chapter or three) has been published previously in journals and magazines. Tip: Just don’t publish everything ahead of time.
Now I present to you two speedrun options. Think of them as The Tortoise and the Hare.2
Keep in mind that last month, you relied on my research for recommended maximum lengths and some prompts in Week 1 and the submit list in Week 3. Now you’ll have to insert research time to find places to submit somewhere in these speedrun schedules.
If you don’t know what to write or make, research places with themes or prompts at the beginning, during Create. Maybe today?
If you want to excerpt from your WIP, after you know what you want to match, research places, probably during Revise. Or research places at the beginning then look for a good match in your WIP.
If you don’t know where to look or how to research for places, check out some previous posts, including the footnote in Week 3: It’s Go Time! (#0069), the Duotrope research section of While waiting for the rejections to roll in (#0054), and my takes on submission trackers, which often include info on places to submit: Oh, The Places You’ll Go (To Submit) [#0032, featuring Chill Subs, The Submission Grinder, and Poets & Writers, along with links to #0031 about Submittable and #0030 about Duotrope].
If you enjoyed the pace of last month’s speedrun, then — quick like a bunny — jump into the February speedrun. Want to slow down? Take a gander at the Winter speedrun. Either way, we’ll be able to embrace rejection together.
February Speedrun Schedule
Create: February 2nd–8th THIS WEEK
Revise: February 9th–15th
Submit: February 16th–22nd
Embrace the Rejection: February 23rd–28th
Winter Speedrun Schedule
Create: February 2nd–15th BEGIN THIS WEEK
Revise: February 16th–March 1st
Submit: March 2nd–15th
Embrace the Rejection: March 16th–31st
A couple of possibilities. For the February Speedrun prose writers who are ready to submit right now, check out Waffle Fried’s Flash February. Poets and prose writers of tortoise or hare pace, the Singapore-based online literary journal Eunoia Review publishes four times daily with promised response time to subs of 24 hours.
Brief Update
Last time I alluded to something still in process. I lost steam and missed the submission window. (See subtitle for reason/excuse.) As far as the image-prompted fiction submission? Ummm, well, they published the issue with two responses to the image. Neither of which was mine. That’s a “no response” response to a sub. Tragically, such rejections happen more often than perhaps warranted in civilized society. But makes for a nice segue to…
Next time: Types of rejections
Curated vs published explained by Rattle magazine editor Tim Green.
Hence the hare and tortoise illustrations! Shout-out to Alexander Chee for sharing the Public Domain Image Archive.
I put up the $6.97 and submitted to Typishly. Though rejected, the email included a positive response including a quote from my flash fiction.
January was something of a miss for me, even with all the great suggestions. Crazy month. But I did pitch something I was revising. One rejection, waiting to hear on the other.