Went to submit to a journal yesterday. Reading through the submission guidelines and I came across a list of things they wanted with the submission:
- list of previous paid publications,
- list of awards and other accolades,
- list of degrees/courses related to creative writing.
One, I’m lazy and don’t feel like typing this up. But two, what does my story have to do with any of those things? Shouldn’t my story be judged on its own merits, rather than prejudiced on how much external umph I have before now (which is low-medium – nominated for some awards, but never won; published in some journals, but usually littler ones). Shouldn’t they want to read my story and then if they like it, ask all that? I don’t want to be presorted because I’m still at the starting-out part of the game. That hardly seems fair. I’d rather blind submissions. I always advocate for that, even when I was refereeing academic papers. I don’t need to know who wrote something – I only need to know if it’s good.
So I don’t know. I should keep submitting. I actually think my story is a good fit for this journal, but I don’t know if it’s even worth my while when I can keep submitting to littler things that actually seem happy that I am submitting, rather than important journals making me feel like I’m going to get rejected straight out anyway. Plus, I think the turn-around time is something like nine months. I don’t have nine months to wait on everything.
Big, important journals: boo!