Keep On The Sunny Side
So I achieved a bit of a writing milestone this week.
For a while now, I've been trying to get published in one of my favorite magazines of all time, The Sun. A few years ago when they were only accepting submissions by mail I sent a story or two only to get polite rejections back by mail a few months later.
More recently they have started taking digital submissions for their issues. This makes the submission process much easier, though I am guessing it makes the acceptance percentage much lower. Most of these magazines get hundreds if not thousands of submissions for each "Call for Submissions." Because of this their rejection or, "slush pile" as it is called, probably gets much bigger.
The Sun features a section called Readers Write, devoted to a topic that is structured entirely around readers' stories. Most of these stories are only two to four paragraphs long and take different twists on the theme at hand.
The topics are posted months in advance of the publication date which allows the editors to filter through the submissions. The theme for July of 2019 was "Smoking," so I thought I had the perfect story for it. Click here to link to the story.
So, I typed my submission and sent it in. Because I am submitting my work to multiple places at a time, I sort of forgot that I had sent this one in. It happens.
Then, on Monday of this week, my wife got the mail and said "Why are you getting a manila envelope from The Sun?" I wasn't sure, frankly, so I opened it up to two copies of the magazine and a note informing me that my piece, had been accepted and I was awarded a free year to my subscription! I remembered that I had submitted the article and I can't say how happy it made me.
Now, it was a short article, and not a feature story. But when you look up to a publication, like I do to The Sun, it's sort of a big deal as a writer. It's a decent source of validation for me. I am probably making more of it than I should, but hey, cut a guy some slack.
My next step, I guess is getting a full featured story into it. I've got a few ideas, but no time at the moment. It would only be like the biggest accomplishment of my writing life to have it happen, so I think I have to keep trying.
I have a bunch more submissions out and about, so I hold hope that they will get recognized.
But for the moment, I'm going to rejoice in this one a bit. Maybe I'll even celebrate with a cigarette.
Blogging off...
For a while now, I've been trying to get published in one of my favorite magazines of all time, The Sun. A few years ago when they were only accepting submissions by mail I sent a story or two only to get polite rejections back by mail a few months later.
More recently they have started taking digital submissions for their issues. This makes the submission process much easier, though I am guessing it makes the acceptance percentage much lower. Most of these magazines get hundreds if not thousands of submissions for each "Call for Submissions." Because of this their rejection or, "slush pile" as it is called, probably gets much bigger.
The topics are posted months in advance of the publication date which allows the editors to filter through the submissions. The theme for July of 2019 was "Smoking," so I thought I had the perfect story for it. Click here to link to the story.
So, I typed my submission and sent it in. Because I am submitting my work to multiple places at a time, I sort of forgot that I had sent this one in. It happens.
Then, on Monday of this week, my wife got the mail and said "Why are you getting a manila envelope from The Sun?" I wasn't sure, frankly, so I opened it up to two copies of the magazine and a note informing me that my piece, had been accepted and I was awarded a free year to my subscription! I remembered that I had submitted the article and I can't say how happy it made me.
Now, it was a short article, and not a feature story. But when you look up to a publication, like I do to The Sun, it's sort of a big deal as a writer. It's a decent source of validation for me. I am probably making more of it than I should, but hey, cut a guy some slack.
My next step, I guess is getting a full featured story into it. I've got a few ideas, but no time at the moment. It would only be like the biggest accomplishment of my writing life to have it happen, so I think I have to keep trying.
I have a bunch more submissions out and about, so I hold hope that they will get recognized.
But for the moment, I'm going to rejoice in this one a bit. Maybe I'll even celebrate with a cigarette.
Blogging off...
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