My First* Submission

Confession: Less than fifteen minutes ago, I got the call that my 93-year-old grandmother had died last night. I had also just sat down to write. I'm going to try to keep writing anyway, but I'll forgive myself for stopping if it gets too hard.

Reading:

• Master of the Cauldron, by David Drake

Writing:

• "Ferian Fetlock Cures a Horse"

Today, I made my first real submission. Now let me explain some parts of that right away. I have written and submitted stories to contests in the past. Most recently I've competed in the 24 Hour Short Story contests run by Writers Weekly. Before that, I competed in a Read magazine contest back in high school, and got to take a trip to DC to read a selection from the story at the Library of Congress. My elementary school held a liberal arts fair, and I got my first (and to date, last) first prize on a short story in the contest held while I was in Kindergarten.

But as for actual magazine submissions, this was my first. I sent "Illuminated" to Realms of Fantasy magazine, not as part of a contest, but because I want them to read it, like it, and buy it.

I think it's a strong story. It's got a good shot. But this was a big step for me for a couple of reasons.

First, I had to get off my ass and actually submit. That meant an early morning trip to K-mart to buy envelopes, and more rigid editing than I usually subject myself to. It even meant going to the post office.

That was going to be my confession earlier... I have an irrational distaste for the post office. I think it's because it feels wrong to pay them and then give them both my purchase and something else I had with me. There have been several times I've tried to walk off with whatever I came to mail, and they had to call me back.

Second, I had to have enough confidence to send it out into the world. Like many writers, I tend to be apologetic when asking people to read something of mine. It's like I try to downplay their expectations from the beginning, so that if it sucks, well, they weren't expecting that much anyway.

When submitting for a contest, you see, the magazine (or whomever holds the contest) is asking for my submissions. If they don't like it, it's their fault. They asked for it. And anyway, I'm used to losing contests by this point. There's no real surprise in that.

But this time, Realms of Fantasy did nothing to attract my prose other than producing a good, entertaining magazine that I quite like to read. And I just swooped down out of the blue and sent them a 11,000 word story (with cover letter, thank you very much) that I expect them to pay me for. About $500, based on the calculations they helpfully provided in the guidelines.

I'd take $50 and three copies. Hell, I'd take one copy and a pat on the back just to get published in a mainstream publication. Don't tell them that.

I've had people tell me that my stories are good. The odd thing is, I believe them, at least in the sense that I believe they mean that. But are they good enough? Where is the dividing line between the gifted amateur who can impress his friends and relations, and the professional wordsmith who thrills the masses with his prose?

I'm starting to understand that there is no difference, not really. Sure, someone who has been successfully publishing for thirty years probably doesn't worry whether or not their next book will be published. But I bet they do worry about whether it will be well received, and if they don't, well, I probably wouldn't want to read it.

I think we become the establishment that others look up to accidentally, and so gradually we never notice. I remember when I was ballroom dancing back in college. Some background... I'm a clumsy, galumphing, 6'2" Irish/German goofball, whose last real physical activity had been a year of fencing about three years before. (I sucked.) But I didn't know anyone there and thought, what the hell, give it a try.

And I did. I got to know the other people, realized they were just as bad (if not worse), and got better. The next year, I moved up from the beginner class to the intermediate class, the only other class there was. That meant I was still bottom of the barrel, and that's how I thought of myself and my dancing. But during our group practices, I got to know that year's newcomers, and gave them a hand.

The next year, we started an advanced class for the first time, and I took both that and the intermediate class concurrently. Oh, and the beginner class was held in between, so I stayed to help out with that. And I also taught some of the social dance classes. Even so, it came as a surprise to me when I found out that some of the newcomers thought of me as one of the best dancers, who had obviously been doing it forever and knew what I was talking about.

I didn't feel like I knew any more. Sure, I had made progress since I started, but I was measuring my progress against those people who were great when I started. They had continued to make progress themselves, of course, so I didn't feel like I had really closed the gap.

And that's how it is with everything, at least for anyone who maintains a healthy level of humility. And the easiest way of doing that is my focusing on how much farther I have to go.

Of course, at this point I've only submitted one story, and it hasn't been accepted. Humility is rarely my problem. The other problem is confidence, and you handle that by focusing on how far you've come. Submitting was a big step, and it will take a lot of big steps to reach my goals. I hope that by this time next weekend, I'll have taken another step just as big.