Carrie Clickard: Doing the Submission Shuffle (Part One)

Who's ready to go back to school? 

Back to school isn't just for the kiddos, you know. Us writerly types need instruction and motivation too, so I've brought in my good friend, author and expert rear-kicker Carrie Clickard to do the job.

As a TLD contributor for the last four years, Carrie taught us the ins and outs of writing in rhyme with her Rhyme Crime Investigation series. She was also featured as a spotlight author and shared some jinxes, hexes, and curses just for fun. Now she feels we're ready to tackle the serious business of taking ourselves seriously as writers—by submitting our work.

When Carrie approached me with this topic, I thought it was a fabulous idea, but probably too much for just one post. As a result, she's gone above and beyond, offering a two-part series that's chock full of useful information and helpful resources. Today we begin with part one of Doing the Submission Shuffle.

Get out your planners and pencils, folks, class is in session!


Doing the Submission Shuffle (Part One)

I’m going to do it.  I’m going to use the dreaded “S” word.  In fact I’m going to use it all over this post. So gird your loins, poets. It’s time to set aside your quill pen and hand-crafted leather journal and get down and dirty with submissions, submissions, submissions.

If you’re like most writers, it’s a horrible thing, this idea of treating poetry as a business.  Hawking your lovingly crafted words from editor to editor makes you cringe.  You feel like one of those kids selling raffle tickets outside the grocery store where no one meets their eyes. What if they don’t like it? What if they say something horrible?  The very idea makes you want to

Agreed.  It’s a much more comfy world when we only share our gems with friends, crit buddies and knowledgeable, appreciative family. It’s not about the money anyway, it’s about expressing ourselves. Besides, who wants to spend time finding the right markets, and perfect the cover letter, and all that (shudder) noncreative time-sucking organization when we could be writing?  WE DO.  Because deep inside we want our art to be loved, almost as badly as we want to be loved.  We want every reader... er... editor to say:

Now if you truly don’t ever want to see your poetry between the covers of a magazine, anthology or book, you can stop reading right here.  We’ll wait while you collect your things.

Ok. Now, for the rest of us who crave that moment of OH-MY-GOD-THE-EDITOR-SAID-YES!!! My poem’s going to be PUBLISHED!! this post is for you.  We’re going to share some tools that will make choosing where to submit your poetry easier and hopefully more effective.  Let’s get to work.


Where do I start?

Whether you have a stockpile of poems looking for a good home or you’re willing to write specifically for open markets, the first thing you need to know is who is out there publishing what.  Then you can match your whats to their who-ses.  And if you are anything like me, plowing through hundreds of 2005 deadlines and defunct publications in Google or Yahoo search results can end up in

We all get to that space sometime during the submission journey, but let’s put it off as long as possible.  Thankfully, some clever online people have already done part of our work. We just have to pick out the tools that sound best and make them work for us.


Printed reference books & writing magazines

I’m going to assume most readers of this blog are pretty online savvy creatures. But if any of you out there crave real books you can mark up with highlighters, paperclip or dog-ear to your heart’s delight—don’t despair.  The Children’s Writers & Illustrators Market guide and The Poet’s Market are put out yearly in print and ebook format. Both are great sources of info, well organized, especially if you use the searchable ebook version. Poets & Writers Magazine is another great monthly source of publishing opportunities. It has a section for writing contests, grants and other publishing opportunities in every issue. (It’s online too, shhhhh!) You may be lucky and find copies of all three at your local library—if not, then your favorite bookstore.


Resources from writer groups

Many writer organizations and groups, like SCBWI, maintain printable and searchable lists of open markets—usually alphabetically and sometimes by genre. Some of these are reserved perks for members, some are publicly available. All of these can be great for general browsing and long term planning, but I find them a little less effective when I want to pinpoint specific subject or genre markets for those high gear all-my-subs-done-in-one-day sessions.


Submission aggregators online

Warning, click-addictive material ahead. If you’re not already using them, once you try out submission aggregating sites like Duotrope, The Submission Grinder, and Submittable’s new “Discover Opportunities,” you’ll find yourself surfing there all the time. They’ve done a lot of the legwork creating convenient databases of magazines, ezines, literary journals, anthologies and chapbook publishers you can search. 

All three of these sites give you a wide selection of poetry, fiction and non-fiction markets, the ability to search those markets based on genre/pay/fees/etc, and also tools to track your personal submissions onsite, should you choose to do so. Though there is a wide overlap, not all markets are listed with all three, so it can pay to visit all of them. Duotrope also has a newsletter you can subscribe to that delivers upcoming deadlines directly to your email.

To their credit and your potential addiction,  Duotrope and The Submission Grinder also let you see daily lists of recent responses from real life users, both acceptances and rejections. The Sub Grinder even gives you comparison charts for each market’s turnaround times—so you can obsess while you wait for email responses. Sure you’ll go there first with a stack of poems, seeking good matches to any open submission calls. But then you’ll find yourself clicking through just in case an anthology was posted that’s perfect for your yoga-goat sonnet. Or to find out if any adult reader publications actually pay for metered rhyme. (Rare as unicorns, but they do exist.)  Or to check if anybody else got a response from that #$!%# magazine that’s been thinking about your awesome villanelle for 10 months now.

None of the three is strong in tracking children’s poetry market responses currently. Most of the users are focused on subbing work for adults. So you don’t get the obsessive charts, but all the major kidlit players are listed, like the Highlights magazine family and Cricket Media’s mags. If you need kidlit magazine response times, try the market response listings on SCBWI’s Blueboard.

The major difference to most users at present is that Duotrope charges a $5 monthly or $50 annual fee—while the other two are free. Duotrope does give new registrants a one-time 7-day free trial, which should let you determine whether the fees are worthwhile for your particular needs.

There are lots of other online resources you can search (bloggers, forums, social media) and we’ll cover those next week in Part Two, along with some tips on how to track what you’ve sent where.

In the meantime, get out there and sub those poems!

Wait ... what? Not quite ready to shove your babies out in the harsh, cold light of professional poetry markets?  OK. My bad.

Here’s an alternative. Before we measure ourselves against the big scary markets, how about we try sharing our poetry with a friendly online group of fellow poets? Think of it as a dress-rehearsal.  There are several warm and welcoming groups out there you can submit to. You won’t be getting national kudos (or even paid) but you'll get valuable practice writing and sharing your poems in a safe space, and sometimes you'll get a little feedback or other incentive. You might even end up with a poem that you can submit to a poetry market later! But a word of caution: some markets do not accept work that has been previously published on blogs. Always read submission guidelines, TWICE.

Here are a few poetry sharing groups and forums we can personally recommend:

• The Ditty of the Month Club at Today's Little Ditty (well, duh!)
  

• 15 Words or Less Poems on Thursdays at Laura Purdie Salas's Writing the World for Kids

• Word of the Month Poems for adults and for young poets at David Harrison's Connecting the Dots

• Seasonally-themed "Galleries of Artistic Expressions" at Carol Varsalona's Beyond LiteracyLink

• The February Daily Poem Project hosted by Laura Shovan on Facebook (currently closed to new members)

• Wednesday Poetry Prompts at Robert Lee Brewer's Poetic Asides Blog on WritersDigest.com

• Poetry Friday—become a regular visitor to this weekly roundup of poetry offerings and you'll undoubtedly find invitations to share your own poems on a variety of blogs—especially during April (National Poetry Month), but throughout the year as well. You might even consider starting your own blog to share your work!

If we’ve missed one of your favorites, or you have something else to share, please chime in with a comment. Thanks for joining us today and stop back next week for part two of Doing the Submission Shuffle.

Oh, we'll be there, Carrie! 

I hope you'll join me in thanking Carrie for all the terrific information so far. Wait till you see what she has lined up for next week!

Carrie L. Clickard is an internationally published author and poet, with books published by Simon & Schuster, Holiday House and Flashlight Press.  Look for her latest rhyming picture book from Simon & Schuster/Paula Wiseman Books, Thomas Jefferson and the Mammoth Hunt: The True Story of the Quest for America's Biggest Bones, on January 1, 2019. Her poetry and short stories have appeared in numerous anthologies and periodicals as well, including Spider, Muse, Highlights, Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine, Havok, Myriad Lands, Clubhouse, Spellbound, Penumbra, Haiku of the Dead, and Underneath the Juniper Tree.

If you missed last week's interview with Naomi Shihab Nye, her DMC challenge for September is to write a letter to yourself in which you ask some questions that you don't have to answer. We've gotten off to a great start, featuring daily ditties this week by Diane Mayr, Rebekah Hoeft, and Jessica Bigi. Post your poem on our September 2018 padlet.

This week's Poetry Friday roundup is being hosted by Carol Varsalona at Beyond LiteracyLink.  Her "Art of Summering" gallery is nearly ready for its unveiling!