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.

Writers Need A Brand

 

Lovely Lavender Lilacs

A number of years ago, I attended a conference at a beautiful state park in Virginia. One of the speakers talked about 'branding' for writers. The term was new to many of us, but for Mary it was more than familiar as she ran a company that helped organizations and businesses get known to others. 

Branding for writers is doing all you can to let people know who you are and what you write. You should stand out as an individual in a large group of writers. Why and how are you different in some way? Your objective is to get yourself known well enough in the writing world that, when people see your name, they will associate certain things with you. Maybe the genre in which you specialize or a special trademark that you have developed. Or a particular topic you write about. 

Think about a few well-known authors. Say the name and what comes to mind? John Grisham--mysteries. Nora Roberts--mystery/romance. Steven Spielberg--horror stories. Dr. Seuss--children's rhyming books. They have each developed a brand. Your readers' perception of you is your brand.

A lot of writers would be perfectly happy holed up in their home office writing every day, not meeting the public at all. You can do that, but you do yourself disfavor. If a writer, whether of books or short pieces or poems wants to be known by the public, he/she needs to work at it. He/she should work at creating a brand. 

A few ways you can develop your own brand: 

Use social media. I know that many of you don't want any part of the social media world. You should do it to keep your name visible. That means you don't hop around Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, Instagram, or the newest one--Tik Tok once a month. Post something at one or more of these every day, or at least a few times a week. If you're a book author, start your own group page. Readers who like your books will gravitate to it quickly. Pop in now and then to make a comment or a new post. Readers love to hear from you, the author. Once you start using social media, you can easily develop the habit. 

Have a website or blog. Or both! If you're a well-known author, you won't have any problem getting viewers, but if you don't have a readily recognized name in the writing world, it will take longer to get followers. This is quite an important step in the branding process. Doing this will strengthen your image to readers and perhaps sell more books. Having a website or blog lets people know what they are getting when they read your work.

Be a Guest Blogger.  What better way to find new readers and let them know who you are and what you write than writing a post on someone else's blog. Bloggers are good about trading. You be a Guest Blogger for me, and I'll do it for you. Once again, you're getting your name out and letting readers know who you are, what you write.

Try a tagline. Not everyone can come up with a terrific tagline which they use everywhere they appear, be it social media, posting on another blog, their own blog etc. It should be short and tell who you are. Your tagline is no different than the slogan a major company uses for its product. You see them so often, you recognize them in a flash. That's the purpose of creating your own tagline. Perhaps mine is the title of my blog--Writer Granny's World. It tells you I'm a writer, a grandmother so family is important to me and in my writing, and I invite you into my writing world. I could even use something like 'family stories from the heart.' You want something catchy, not too long, and that people will remember. 

Writing involves far more than the writing itself. As writers, we need to sell ourselves to the readers. It's all part of the job.

College Application Essays

First Day of School

Years ago, the day after Labor Day brought a new beginning for children. It was the standard day for schools to start the new year. With that day, we considered summer to be officially over. Not so today, since many schools begin anywhere from the first week of August clear up to the first week in September. What do you remember about those first days of school? I did a post earlier last month about adding to your memory books, recalling what those first days of school were like as you moved from the kindergarten class all the way through your senior year in high school.

Late in my senior year, I applied for college. I think I had to fill out a form with name and address and checked a box saying I'd like a state scholarship. Surely there was a bit more on that paper but not a lot. I asked my husband, who went to a private college as opposed to the state school I attended, whether he had a big application form, including writing an essay. His application was little more than what mine had been. I asked a friend yesterday afternoon what hers had been like and all she remembered was the line where it said Send money. 

We had been discussing it because our oldest granddaughter, Alexis, is applying for colleges now. She is just beginning her senior year of high school. She's applying to four schools but has her heart set on one. She's got her back-up plan with the other three in case the favorite doesn't work out. It's a whole different game today. She's a very good student, ranking #11 in a class of over 900. Even so, the admissions person she interviewed with at the #1 choice told her that may not be good enough. Scary! 

It didn't deter Alexis. She spent this past weekend working on the application form. Part of it was an essay to be written from a prompt given that would show the applicant's character traits. She wrote the essay, then emailed to me and her other grandmother, who is a school librarian. "Would you look at this and edit it for me?" It goes without saying as to what our response was.

Only two weeks earlier, I'd read an article in the Wall Street Journal about the essays sent with college applications. Apparently, there are parents who pay big bucks to have someone write the essay their child sends in as their own. Hope it was not on the same subject as the one Alexis had to write. Character traits, indeed! One man reportedly paid $10,000 for his daughter's essay. It made me wonder whether, even if she gets into that school, she'd last very long.

I became curious enough to google guidelines for college application essays and I was totally amazed at the number of articles that popped up. This is now big business. I read several to get a feel for what they want and what they don't want before I edited my granddaughter's essay. Many of the articles suggested that the student ask two or three people to edit their work. To be honest, that kind of surprised me as I would have thought they want the student's work without having any help. That might happen, I suppose, in a perfect world and we all know there is no such place. 

Yesterday afternoon, I did a second reading of the essay and then proceeded to write a list of things I hoped my granddaughter would take into consideration. Next, I did a critique in the same manner as I would for a submission from a member of my online critique group. I did let Alexis know that these were only suggestions and that she was the one to decide whether to use them or not. I also explained that it was not being critical but to help her grow as a writer, the same as in my crit group. 

As for the essay she wrote--this grandmother is very proud of what she chose to write about and the way she wrote it. It was quite well done, and the suggestions I made for changes were actually very minor things. A polishing rather than major revisions. 

And next comes the wait. Alexis won't be waiting alone, her entire family will wait with her. She's a very sensible, mature young woman, and if this doesn't work out, she'll swallow her disappointment and move on. 

Have any of you had experiences with the college application essay process in today's world?