The first collection from my February flurry of submissions. Great turn around time. I wasn't surprised that it came back as I'll fully admit that it was the least researched off all the markets I submitted to. I spent more time reading selections from the other publications that I submitted to. And, in turn, I had a better feel for what to send them. It's the cardinal sin of submitting: not knowing your market. And I committed it knowingly.Mostly I just wanted to submit this story somewhere. And as it is a long story, my options of who would accept a long, winding, serious story were limited. Should I continue to work on it? Yes, of course. Should I have submitted it to the Colorado Review at this point? Most likely not.
Because of this, I contributed to the problem.
Poor under staffed, over worked, and ill paid offices of literary magazines get swamped with submissions. Everyone wants to be a writer and no one wants to read. If they read the magazine at least a third would find that this is not a market for them. That the such-n-such review doesn't do aliens. And another third would realize that their piece, at that moment in time, was no where near the quality it would need to be for publication. The remaining third are appropriate. So I added to the problem by blindly submitting something that I couldn't compare against the measure of the magazine because I'd never taken the measure. My bad.
The upside? I gained a paper clip in this exchange. That hot commodity was definitely NOT there when I sent in.
