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Keeping Track of Submissions

© Laura Elvin

This is the part that is unappealing to those of us who procrastinate because it just doesn't work if you don't KEEP ON IT.

The idea is this: you have to log what you send out, where you send it, when you send it, and when you expect it back. If you don't do this, you run the risk of sending your story to an editor who's already rejected you (this IS one way of getting noticed, but it usually backfires), you run the risk of letting a magazine sit on your story for 6-12 months, you run the risk of not realizing that you've sent your story to a dead magazine and won't EVER hear back from them and could have had your story actually doing something more productive that whole time, you run the risk of sending your story without realizing someone else already accepted it and/or has recently published it, and finally you run the risk of not even KNOWING that all along you had a story just sitting in your possession instead of on the desk of some editor.

I will tell you exactly what my "Submission Tracker" (as I call it) looks like.

I have a table that I created in Word (my word processing software) that has 8 columns across and 6 rows down (to start). I make one table to represent each story I have written (and am trying to sell).

Above each table I write the title of the story and the date I complete the story.

The column headings across the top of the table are these:

Word Count (because it does change from submission to submission if I alter the story any)

Sent To (name of magazine)

Date Sent

Date Due Back (the outside window of the magazine's response time based on THEIR guidelines)

Date Back (actual date response received)

Responder (name of editor or whoever responded)

Response (choice of: Accept, Reject, Reject+ [a nice, close, or helpful reject], NHFA [never heard from again... means they folded or something because they never responded], other [wrong word length, closing, etc.])

Comments (anything helpful the editor said, etc.)

This is a great visual format for seeing what's going on with your stories. For example, is someone late responding to you? If I haven't heard from an editor 30 days BEYOND their latest claimed response time, I send a follow-up letter. I politely remind them of my submission and ask if they've received it. Take it from there. Tf you still don't hear from them in another month, sent a final letter withdrawing your manuscript submission.

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