Submissions and Lessons Learned

 Today's photo has nothing to do with the topic. I liked it and wanted to share with you. The topic today is the saga of a reprint and another story that was long thought to be a rejection. Submissions can take you on surprising journeys. Read about both of them below.

Some years ago, I had written a personal essay about how my father, who had a problem acknowledging handicapped people, learned to accept his first grandchild who was born with spina bifida and hydrocephalus. Those two handicaps proved a big burden for our sweet baby girl, but also the catalyst for helping her grandfather change his attitude. 

I posted the essay on a website for writers where anyone could post whatever they’d written. Some were very amateur in substance and writing while others were well done. I received an email from an editor who had read the piece at that website. She invited me to submit my essay to an anthology that would be published by Guideposts. This was a paying market, whereas the other was not. They accepted my personal essay after I submitted it.

In mid-summer of 2019, I happened to notice a listing for a magazine called Kaleidoscope published by the United Disability Services. Their guidelines at https://www.udsakron.org/kaleidoscope-magazine/submit-article/ stated that they liked stories written by people who had a disability, but would accept stories from other writers, too. I pondered a while and then decided to submit “The Perfect Grandchild” since they accepted reprints. 

Months later, there was no response so I placed a big NO next to the listing I had made in my Submissions Chart and moved on. After more than a year, an editor from Kaleidoscope contacted me with the news that they ‘might’ want to publish “The Perfect Grandchild.” If interested, I was to fill out a form with information about me. Again, they restated that publication was only a possibility. 

What was there to lose? Nothing. I filled out the forms and returned them, and then waited several more weeks. Hearing nothing, I figured it was a no-go deal. Not long after I had crossed the possibility off my list, I heard from the editor saying he would like to publish my work in their next issue. Again came the statement inferring it might be pulled at the last minute. 

I felt a little like that donkey and the carrot dangling in front of its nose only to be unreachable. Another lesson in frustration.

A year and a half after I had originally submitted to Kaleidoscope, I received a link to the new issue of the magazine, which included my story, and a check arrived shortly after. The quality of the magazine and the stories published in it pleased me. 

Even though it took some time and a lot of wondering on my part, “The Perfect Grandchild” found a home once again. We know very little happens in a quick 1-2-3 fashion in our writing journey. My two keywords as I have traversed my writing path are ‘patience and perseverance.’ I had to use a measure of both when submitting to Kaleidoscope. Would I do it again? Absolutely. 

Some time after the Kaleidoscope saga, I had a letter of acceptance from Chicken Soup for the Soul for a story I had submitted in November of 2019. I had long since considered it a NO. Yet, here was the letter saying “The Four-Legged Nanny” would be in the book titled My Heroic, Hilarious, Human Dog to be published in September 2021 with a $200 check to follow. 

I learned two lessons through these experiences:  Reprints work. Never count a submission out even when more than a year has passed since submitting.