#24: The Spreadsheet

Here’s the layout of my main piece submissions spreadsheet if you want to copy it at home:

In the first column, drop the link to the submissions page you’ve found.

In the second column, write what types of piece the journal or magazine is accepting (poetry, memoir, reviews, academic essays, short stories, play scripts, etc.)

In the third column, plug in the closing date for submissions if it’s listed or ROLLING otherwise – this means they accept pieces year-round.

The fourth column refers to how much the journal or magazine pays. Note that it does not refer to the submissions fee. Obviously you don’t have to copy me to the letter, but my philosophy here is I only submit to magazines and journals which offer payment and no fee to submit. I recognise that I am providing work for them, and object to the idea that I should pay to work. However, I understand that not every journal and magazine has the means to offer what we would usually think of as a fair payment for the hours sunk into a piece. That’s why I’ll submit to journals and magazines which offer any payment – whether it’s $3 or $300. Even if it’s only a small honorarium, it’s a token of respect for the fact that you are doing work. As for fees, I’d rather monetarily support a journal or magazine by just buying copies and donating.

(Jacaranda Journal does not offer all contributors payment but I was recommended to submit by a former teacher and couldn’t find it in my heart to say no.)

In the fifth column, write the name of the magazine or journal.

The sixth column refers to whether the magazine or journal accepts ‘simultaneous submissions’. This is where you submit the same piece to multiple outlets. And this is possibly the most important thing to keep track of in the spreadsheet – if you submit a piece to an outlet that doesn’t allow simultaneous submissions, and they haven’t gotten back to you, you need to withdraw it before submitting it elsewhere. If you’ve already submitted it to an outlet that does accept sim-subs, you cannot then submit it to an outlet that doesn’t without withdrawing from the first one. If you – like me – get bursts of motivation to submit your work and then drop off for a while, you’ll need to check this column of your spreadsheet when the motivation hits you in case you’ve forgotten about any pesky non-sim-submissions. Personally, I favour outlets that offer simultaneous submissions and outright avoid outlets which don’t allow them and also don’t give you a reasonable estimate (within three months) for when they’ll get back to you.

The last column refers to the status of your piece: whether you’ve submitted it, withdrawn it, it’s been long-listed, short-listed, accepted or rejected. When you submit, you can also write in this column the date you expect to hear back by. Many magazines and journals will give an estimate – a number of weeks or months – of when writers should receive a response, or let you know on the submissions page that if you don’t receive one by then you can consider yourself rejected. If they don’t note the latter, you can take the number of weeks or months as their deadline and follow-up if you don’t hear back. This is the second most important part of the spreadsheet to keep abreast of, as letting a piece languish in an outlet’s slush pile might prevent you from submitting it elsewhere.

When I’ve submitted a piece, I usually highlight the row yellow to immediately signify to myself that something is out-standing. I colour-code the row green for accepted, red for rejected, purple for withdrawn, and orange for long-listed or short-listed. This helps me quickly focus on what I need to address when the spreadsheet gets a bit long, but you might prefer a different method.

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