All successful writers write every day, at least most every day, no matter how they’re feeling or what mood they’re in.
But serious writing goes beyond this. After all, if we expect to get published, we must sell our manuscripts, which means submitting them to magazine editors and book agents, depending on what we’ve written. Here I’ll share a tip for submitting articles and short stories to magazines. It’s called “The Rule of Ten.”
The Rule of Ten
For every ten manuscripts we have in circulation, at least one will get accepted for publication. After its acceptance, send out another one to keep ten making the rounds. For those that get rejected, send them out again to another magazine. The more manuscripts we have circulating, the greater our chances of one of them finding a publisher. This is the rule’s basic idea.
However, I do not recommend submitting articles and stories to multiple magazines at the same time. This is called simultaneous submission, and though some magazines accept simultaneous submissions, I’ve never done this. I think it limits a magazine article’s chances of acceptance. Why? Because most periodical publishers like the idea of being the only one to print your work. Authors can sell various rights to them—first rights, second rights, one-time rights, all rights, reprint rights, etc. I may get into those in a later post.
One other good thing about this rule is that it softens rejection. If an editor rejects a manuscript…hey, we know we have nine more being considered.
I like this Ray Bradbury quote, something he said years ago in Writer’s Digest: “Just write every day of your life. Read intensely. Then see what happens. Most of my friends who have been put on that diet have very pleasant careers.”
Ray Bradbury by Alan Light
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