WHAT’S YOUR PLAN?

There is nothing like the thrill of finishing a story or article or book. You’ve worked hard on it, you know it’s the best you can do, and you’re probably still a little in love with it. Now all you have to do is send it out. So you scramble for an agent or market. You discover it’s harder than you thought to find a place that really fits with what you’ve written, and that’s discouraging. But you pick somewhere. It fits okay. You send it out. And then you either haunt your mail––whether digital or snail mail––a lot. For days, weeks, maybe months.

And then you get a response. It may be a rejection. So what do you do next? (I mean, besides mope?) It may be an acceptance. But are you sure you want to go with that agent? That publisher? How much did you know about them? What do you do next, besides panic? Or maybe you don’t get any response.

What do you do, wait forever?

The complexities of submission are why it behooves every one of us to have a submissions plan. To develop yours, listen to the full episode.