Submitting

This weekend Jenni and I have been working super hard on Behind the Naugahyde. I finished my part of chapter 8 and Jenni is coming along well on her part while also managing to educate our future leaders which is a super tough job. YAY Jenni!
My office is now clean, well, organized, I guess. I'm sure it won't stay that way for long but I sure do feel like I get more done when I can find what I'm looking for.
Today was once again submission day. I try to do those every Sunday. They are my absolute least favorite part of trying to be published. Creating a story is the best, editing is somewhere in the middle and then at the very bottom is submissions but if you want to be heard you have to send them out.
So I sat at my desk and sent out boring submissions. Just so everyone has some idea how boring and time consuming it is let me share the process.
After writing a story and doing tons of editing I am ready for submissions. I usually start with my Writer's Market but once I've went through that I search around on-line. I figure out what genre my story would qualify as and how many words it's got then I go through Writer's Market and find companies that the story might qualify for. Then I go to their website if possible, try to read samples and makes sure that my story does qualify. I also check my previous submission list and make sure I haven't sent another story to them in case they do not accept multiple submissions. Then, if I've already sent the story to another company I make sure they accept simultaneous submissions. I also check to make sure they are currently taking submissions since a lot of publications are run by universities and only accept manuscripts during the school year. After that I format the script to their guidelines, write a cover letter and ship it off hopefully by e-mail but usually by snail mail. Once I'm done I put it in my submission log so I don't send it to the same place twice and for several other reasons.
It's not all that boring though. I've had several occasions when I realize that I wrote the wrong story name in the cover letter, wrote the wrong publication name in the letter, or spelled the editors name wrong. I've also stapled the pages together upside down (although I've heard you're not suppose to staple the manuscript at all so I've stopped). Also, I've written on the envelopes so that they were upside down and I can't count how many times I've accidentally written Ashley Review on my Self-address stamped envelope just because I'm so use to writing " _________ Review". Sometimes I catch it but I'm certain other times I don't. It's okay though because I like to pretend that all the magazines didn't except my story because I made some stupid mistake and not because my story was crap. It was probably a combination of both but I can pretend. I am a fiction writer after all.

Just saw: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
Just watched: last week's episode of Smallville