This morning I sent off several pieces to magazines: two short stories and three or four poems.  I have an essay I need to send out as well, and that will probably find the door sometime this evening.  This was an important step for me, because my submissions had tapered off of late.  A piece or two would get rejected, thus becoming available, and then sit lonely on my hard drive for days, or even weeks.  And the new pieces I had been writing, such as those written for my poetry class, languished.

I did not even realize how much time had passed.  I had my head so far inside my thesis that I didn’t have time to think about other concerns.  That makes sense.  My thesis has a very real deadline that is not so far away as it might look on a calendar.  This novel is just about all that stands between me and graduation next August.  Thus, my thesis gets top priority, and for good reason.

But letting my submission rate decline was a mistake.

You might wonder why I say that.  After all, my ultimate goal is to be a professional novelist.  Why should I care about submitting short stories, poems and essays.  Aren’t they a distraction?  Any time I spend writing short pieces (like blog posts) is time I’m not spending on my novel.

Well, forget about me.  I may have idiosyncratic reasons.  Let’s say you want to be a professional novelist.  Why should you care about submitting short pieces to magazines and anthologies?

There are three reasons you should care: distraction, business, and audience.

First, although they are a distraction from the larger work, to my way of thinking they are a useful distraction.  Novels are huge projects that will have you writing, revising and rewriting the same story for months on end.  Your creativity might enjoy the chance to come out and play beyond the parameters of that one story.  Writing short pieces allows you to play with voice, point of view, and other craft elements in ways you are not in your novel.  This can broaden your perspective so that you see possibilities in your novel that you might have missed.  And spending some time completely inside another story may freshen your perspective on the big project without requiring many days off.

The second reason involves business rearing its ugly head.  Yes, you are a writer, and you might loathe the business side of writing.  But the fact is that writing novels as a career requires more than writing novels.  I’ve heard it said that this was not always true, but the point is moot.  You will have to spend time looking at royalty statements (even if they represent reasons you aren’t getting a check this quarter), following up with publishers about scheduling, book design, publicity and more.  You will also probably have to dedicate time and effort to your own publicity, from guest blogs to readings and more.  If you can’t find a few minutes to send out work you’ve already written, what are the chances that you’ll take time for the business end when your rent depends on the novel you are writing?

The third reason is that every writing credit helps you build an audience.  Every piece you publish will be read – whether it’s by fifty people or fifty thousand – and some of those people are bound to like your work.  They may never meet you, visit your website or write you an e-mail, but when your first novel comes out they may recognize your name – because of something you’ve written.  You can’t buy advertising better than that.

Among the endless stacks of books in brick-and-mortar stores, libraries, and online, getting a reader’s attention in the first place is critical.  The difference between a reader choosing your book and someone else’s might be that one submission sitting on your hard drive.

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Submissions Update: Since I last posted, I have submitted to Poetry Magazine, Daily Science Fiction, and Midnight Screaming.

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