Hello from the Writing Attic!

I don’t know about y’all but I’m in a considerably better mood now that the sun is shining and I’ve got two doses of Pfizer in these arms.

I’m in such a good mood, I wanted to give away a free annual subscription to Poets & Writers to one of you lucky ducks. You just need to be a subscriber to this newsletter (congratulations, you’re in the raffle!).

If you already have a PW subscription and know someone else that needs one, send them my way and tell them to subscribe. Winner announced on the next newsletter.

Now, let’s gossip.

Submission Success Story — “Bibbidi-Bobbidi-Boo-Hoo” at Longreads

I’m pleased to hand this over to Christy Lynch, essayist and one of the funniest writers I know:

“I wrote the first draft of this essay in 2016 and published it three years later. As in—it took me three stupid years to get this piece where I wanted it. Inexplicably, this is a normal timeline for me. I like to work slowly, preferring to set things aside for several months at a time and come back to them with fresh eyes. There are, of course, pros and cons to this approach. Pros: I get to take my time, be careful with my writing, make sure I’m happy with it before I send it out into the world. Cons: By the time I finish an essay, I’m usually so sick of it because I’ve been working on it off and on for years. That was certainly the case with this essay! But ultimately I was so grateful to have it picked up by Longreads, a publication I’ve always loved.

Here are the details: 

Total time spent on submission (i.e., how long it took from very first submission to acceptance): Technically 340 days, but more like 13 days. (More on that below.)

Response time from Longreads: 13 days 

Total rejections received before an acceptance: 3-ish

Pay: $500

* Special note: This is a relatively long essay, so my options for publication were always limited. I first submitted a 7,100-word draft to Longreads, Guernica, and Tin House in September 2018, but I ended up withdrawing it from Guernica and Tin House after deciding it wasn’t ready yet. (Longreads’ policy is that they only respond if they want to publish your essay, and I didn’t get a response that time.) In August 2019, I tried again with a new draft I’d been working on that was 6,828 words. I pitched it, with a completed draft attached, simultaneously to HuffPost Personal (never got a response), Buzzfeed Reader (got a response; editor said it wasn’t right for them), The Atlantic Family (got a response; said it wasn’t a good fit for them), and Longreads, where it was accepted for publication. My editor, Katie Kosma, graciously cut 2,258 words out of this essay so that the final word count was 4,584. (Longreads likes essays around the 4K-word mark.)

The biggest difference between my first and second attempts at publishing this essay was how I pitched it. When childless millennials who go to Disney World were in the news in August 2019, I had the heart-stopping realization that this was my chance to strike. So I ultimately pitched my essay as a timely story connected to something that was rampant on Twitter at the time. I can’t say for sure whether this was what did the trick in the end, but it certainly didn’t hurt!

There’s a different editorial staff at Longreads now than when I published this essay, but the previous essays editor, Sari Botton, wrote this guide to pitching that is still invaluable for writers looking to publish with Longreads—or anywhere else, really.”

Read Christy's piece here.

Writers Ask:

This one comes from a conversation I had with a writer friend about literary fiction versus upmarket and what even are these genres and who makes the call anyway?

Hoo-buddy. This one is a spicy hot take suitable only for the courageous and jaded. We get into capitalism. We get into the patriarchy. We get into white supremacy. There may or may not be a JVN sighting at the end.

Buckle up your butts and let’s dive in.

(Do you have a writing question? Email me at lisa@allthingswords.com and I may feature it in an upcoming newsletter.)

Must-Have Resource:

Duotrope: Find markets. Track submissions.

I would be lost without Duotrope. Basically, this is a massive database of lit journals, magazines, small publishers, and even agents where you can see acceptance rates, response times, and similar publications to help your submission strategy. You can even record your submissions, track responses, and hit the brag box when you get a win.

I can get an easy snapshot of how many rejection a piece has received, where I’ve submitted to before, and where I’m on submission currently. It’s $50/annual but I’ve paid it happily since 2016 and never again used a spreadsheet for my myriad of simultaneous lit submissions.

Wins!

Two wins in the Nashville Scene this week!

Christy Lynch with “Escape to Escape to the Country” — Remember how I said Christy is one of the funniest and finest essayists I know? This one doesn’t disappoint.

Kim Baldwin’s “Monday Morning Nudes” — Y’all. Kim is a force to be reckoned with and y’all can get to reckoning by reading this incredible essay. Double congrats as this is her first published piece!

More good news from Publisher’s Lunch:

“Founder of Twitter pitch event #DVpit and literary agent Beth Phelan has created DiverseVoices, Inc., a nonprofit for marginalized book creators. Phelan is president, joined by Kat Cho (vice president), LeKesha Lewis (treasurer) and Norma Perez-Hernandez (secretary). The programs team includes Nina Grauer and literary agent Peter Knapp. The organization will run DVpit, DVart, DVcon and mentoring programs DVmentor and DVdebut.”

Do you have some good news? Email me at lisa@allthingswords.com. I love to hear it!

That’s all, folks.

Y’all come back now, y’hear?

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Venmo: @lisabubert