Hey there! For the past few weeks, we’ve been talking about submitting our poetry. Today, I want to share the #1 tip I would give to you if you want to submit your poetry to literary journals.
If you are like me, you’ve been writing a lot of poetry and I think it’s time to put some skin in the game. I’d like to start by just saying that it will be a miracle if any of our poems get selected to be published in a real, legit, published, literary journal. Like— can you imagine?!
I just read an editor’s personal stats that of the 600 submissions she received, she accepted just 28. That’s a 4.6% acceptance rate.
Just so you know, it’s easier to get into Stanford University, an Ivy League School and one of the most competitive colleges in the USA, at a 5% acceptance rate.
So don’t feel too badly if you don’t hear back. Seriously. Easier 👏 to 👏 get👏 into👏 STANFORD.
This is a dream, but it will never happen if you don’t try. And since I feel as though this is a scary step, I wanted to document my experience to show you all that it’s totally doable.
The journey of a thousand miles begins with one step.
My #1 Tip for Submitting Your Poetry
Are you ready? Here it is:
RESEARCH.
But I know that’s vague, so let me help you get started.
The very first thing I would do before submitting your work is to head over to Poets & Writers, an online resource for, you guessed it, poets & writers.
This is a fantastic website that you should seriously bookmark. (Go ahead, I’ll wait!) There are tons of resources here, but the thing we are interested in is the listing of literary journals that accept submissions.
Once there, we can see, alphabetically, 2River is the first journal. (**More on 2River next time 😄).
After a quick peruse of their submission guidelines, I can already see right off the bat that I need a 50-word bio and a cover letter before I even think about submitting my work.
So without further ado, here are some resources to learn how to do just that:
Now I want to know, what’s holding you back from submitting your poetry?
Let me know in the comments!