Out the Door

The biggest, and most effective tool in separating amateur and professional writers is the submissions process. Historically, it involved typing (or causing to be typed) query letters, manuscripts, securing postage for both legs of the trip, and then months of waiting for hypothetical response most likely to be a rejection letter.

I have done all these things. I have agonized over novel summaries, outlines, formatting, postage, and my own quite inadequate handwriting on the envelope itself. I have checked the email every day for a year, waiting to see a letter justifying my efforts.

Tonight, I submitted three short stories within 20 minutes of one another, using exactly the same technology I needed to write them. I researched paying markets, guidelines, did final edits, and then sent my digital children out into the ether in hopes of success. I used previous rejection letters to narrow my attacks on the editors’ sensibilities, and my own opinions on what those pieces were supposed to say, and what they actually convey tot eh hypothetical reader.

In short, I wrote. I haven’t done that in some time, other than quick story treatments and brainstorming. This fall’s convention circuit has re-instilled in me my biggest failing as a writer.

Apathy.

It is so blindingly easy to send work out into the world, there is no excuse for my stable of stories not to be circulating at all times. If they are not being submitted, clearly there is something wrong with either them, or with me.

And I think they’re pretty good.

So tomorrow, I’ll be selecting more homes for more pieces. I’ll be collecting feedback on other stories in preparation for other submissions, and maybe I’ll even dip into the brown notebook for another piece of low-hanging fruit.

Or, and this is crazy talk here, I could continue work on the two novels also not being submitted right now.

Occupying Apathy is not a way to end the tyranny of procrastination. It’s time to move on, move out, and move up in the world.

It’s time to write.