“You must keep sending work out; you must never let a manuscript do nothing but eat its head off in a drawer. You send that work out again and again, while you’re working on another one. If you have talent, you will receive some measure of success – but only if you persist.”
― Isaac Asimov
The above quote is a favorite of mine for aspiring writers. It is agreed that for most writers, especially the semi-sane ones, keeping up a sustained campaign of submitting work is burdensome: submitting…waiting…waiting…waiting…REJECTION SLIP (Or no word at all — ever: the scoundrels!)…submitting…waiting…waiting — well, you know the drill.
My own submission ethic has been an erratic one at best. At times I have submitted work relentlessly but that was always followed by exceedingly loooonnnng periods of submission hibernation. But that’s not an effective approach, as we all well know. I will say that the ability to submit work online is definitely a great convenience to writers — it’s cheaper, faster and easier — and probably one of the reasons why more people are exploring their creative interests and then actually submitting that work — and submitting that work more often — for possible publication.
Regarding Mr. Asimov’s statement about not letting a manuscript self-cannibalize in a drawer, I will share this with you: I had written a poem in 1997 while living in Seattle that I finally got around to submitting in late 2017 and which was then published in 2018 in Sandstorm, a Texas literary journal. Imagine that! Twenty years in a drawer and that poem got to celebrate its 21st birthday in print — but only because I took it out of that drawer and then sent it out into the world.
I hope that this provides a little bit of encouragement to you in your writing quest.
Yours truly,
The Editor
