Mission: Get Published

I'm sitting here, looking at the writing & submission schedule I made for myself on Monday, and convincing myself I'm really going to do this. Man, is that a lot of work. But more than that, it takes lots of kahunas (an area where I'm sadly lacking) to call editors and deal with rejection on a consistent basis. Still, my goal is to have 20 submissions out and circulating by June. Rumor has it that once 13 are circulating, there's a good chance that one will be accepted, so here goes.

I broke down the 20 submissions into weeks, so that I'll end up writing 2 full articles and 2 (unrelated) queries per week. I'll also mail out 4 each week. Even though there are a ton of other writing-related things that I want and need to work on, I'm going to make these articles and submissions my priority, because I really, REALLY want to write personal experience pieces and articles for women.

I've also marked my calendar so that once a submission has been out there for 3 months (if it's someplace I can't - gulp - call), I'll send it somewhere else. In the past, once I got a rejection or worse, no answer at all, I'd get discouraged and stop submitting for awhile. Or move on to another article. But this time, I've got a plan: I'm going to do the market research for each article before I send it anywhere. I'll make a list of all of the publications I want to send an article to, and then write out the envelopes, etc., ahead of time. That way, when I get a rejection I won't have to do any work to get the article out to someplace else. I just stick it back in an envelope and re-mail it.

The plan is actually one I'm stealing from someone in my old writing group. And she paid her kids' way through school with her articles. I've decided to implement Mission: Get Published on Monday. One last weekend before the nail-biting begins...