Women, Submit Your Work!

In this one area, your writing career will benefit if you act more like a man

Photo by Matt Ridley on Unsplash

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When I was teaching in Goddard’s MFA program, Visiting Professionals would come to each residency to speak with our students. One year we invited my friend

Tom Lutz

, Founding Editor of LARB— LA Review of Books—and he shared an insight that I still find as disturbingly true as it is galvanizing.

He told us (paraphrased from memory):

“Women typically submit once, and if we reject their work, we never hear from them again, even if we tell them we liked their submission, even if we give them feedback, even if we specifically invite them to try us in the future. Men, on the other hand, will resubmit within minutes, even if we send them a form rejection to make it clear their work is not a good fit for us.”

Tom was describing me and, judging from the expressions around me, every other woman in the room. We could make a million excuses why we quit submitting— I’m too busy for this. They don’t pay anyway, who needs them. I really should just focus on my book and not bother with short pieces. I wouldn’t want to be published by any of the magazines that would publish me, and the ones I like never will. But our real problem was that—unlike men — we took every rejection as a sign that we simply weren’t good enough.

Now, I don’t know that this categorical statement is still accurate. According to a 2023 study of the book industry, women now produce the majority of published books and “growth in female-authored books has delivered a roughly equal proportionate increase in the female-authored shares of consumption, book awards, and other measures of success.” A great many women recently, it would seem, have found the grit and fortitude to submit until they succeed. But I know that I still fight the impulse to retreat into my shell every time my work is rejected. And maybe you do, too.

So I thought I’d offer this pep talk/instruction manual. It’s not gender-specific, but if you need to be lured out of your shell, I hope it will give you a little extra encouragement .

How to keep your submissions flowing

I’m going to focus on literary magazine submissions (as opposed to mainstream periodicals, contests, grants, etc.) because that’s where most of the action is for emerging literary writers. If your short work is published in a respectable literary magazine, then you’re more likely to attract an agent for your book-length work. The catch is that there’s even more competition for spots in good lit mags than there is for good agents (simply because more people are churning out essays and stories than have the patience to write whole books). So, Rejection is the name of a game we must master.

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First, you write

Quality is always the first caveat in any discussion of publishing. There’s no reason to worry about any of this unless and until you’ve produced work that’s as cohesive, coherent, meaningful, and polished as you can possibly make it.

Don’t rush for publication before you truly believe the work is ready. We’ve all done it. I certainly have. But rushing just wastes everyone’s time and guarantees rejection. So rely on your most ruthless readers and critical writers’ groups to vet your work and help you make it gleam. Then, when you feel in your bones that it’s ready, proceed.

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Target Your Research

When I was starting out, I’d submit my work everywhere, starting at the top. New Yorker? Sure. Atlantic? Why not? Boston Globe and Mother Jones, Yale Review and Commonweal. I was 23 years old and brimming with hubris and ignorance. And when these out-of-reach magazines rejected my work, I quit submitting anywhere. (Instead, I went to work writing for trade papers and began ghostwriting for my boss, ditching my literary aspirations for over a decade.)

I should have done my research. I should have realized that magazines are like communities of readers and writers with specific interests and styles. I should have gone out of my way to match each submission to the publication that was most likely to welcome and respect my particular voice, approach, and subject matter. I should have paid careful attention to reading periods and contest deadlines.

Today, I do that research before submitting anything. And here are a few of the information sources I rely on: