Submission #1 – Living the Vision

Well… it’s done.

Today, I submitted my first short story, “In Morte, Omnia” to my first professional market, Clarksworld Magazine.  This process took weeks,  I don’t even know how long anymore, I’ll have to look it up in my Writing Journal!  Five drafts total, four wonderful betas, 3200 words (rounded up to the nearest hundred).  Every spare moment of many days spent researching possible literary markets, only to then remember the SFWA and find a whole new list of membership-qualifying markets that actually PAID.  So.  Many more days spent researching those qualifying markets.  Exhaustive hours spent comparing response times and pay rates, etc.  Only to then discover The (Submission) Grinder, which does all of that for you.  So.  There’s that.  *headdesk*  But I suppose at least this way I have my own private list of SFWA-approved markets with all the details handily available at any time.  🙂

Out of a list of 19 specific markets, I ended up with six potential homes for “Omnia”.  I then sorted the list first according to response time, since none of them accept simultaneous submissions, I figured I should get the quickest out of the way first.  And then based on pay per word.  Clarksworld ended up being the first pick, and that was perfect.

Since this is my first submission, I will wax poetic for a moment here, so bear with me!  😉  … This is the first and only time in my life that I can say I have officially submitted my own original work to a professional paying market FOR THE FIRST TIME!

These simple words of text completely belie the emotions I’ve been feeling since the second I hit that “Submit” button… heck, since I very first clicked on the “Go here to submit your stories” button.  As I clicked it, a rush of nervousness gripped me, sending adrenaline firing down into my fingers and stomach.  My hands began to shake just slightly; I even began to sweat a bit.  I had never done this before, remember.  I didn’t even really know what I was doing, exactly.

I had to wing it, and the official line between “published” and “unpublished” hung in the balance.  Sure, I’ll have a bazillion more chances to cross that line, for sure, but this was my FIRST ATTEMPT EVER!!!  Serious business, let me tell you.  I read the instructions many times.  Checked the format of my document several times.  Filled out the requested info in the handy-dandy submission page’s fields and then…..

came to this: “Cover Letter:”

I… suddenly had a panic attack.  Cover letters were pretty easy, I’d thought before.  I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it.  No big deal, just blather about your story and yourself, can’t mess that up, right?  But now that damn bridge stared me right in the face, and it was a very long, very thin, very precarious bridge with no handrails or ropes to hang onto.  I was terrified.  I had to sound professional, I had to sound like I had done this before, like I knew what I was doing, even though I didn’t and NOT like a nervous idiot like I was at the time.

At last, I turned to the Savior of Us All – GOOGLE.  And found Cover Letter Advice for Fiction Writing.  WHEW.  I was SAVED!  I did have to modify the cover letter slightly, however, due to the fact this was an electronic submission and not a postal submission.  But the article gave great advice and offered wonderful examples.  In the end, I was pretty happy with my cover letter.  I even saved it as a template.  Then….

I pressed…. SUBMIT.

O_o

And then… I almost fainted.  And almost cried.  At the same time.

SIXTEEN YEARS… trying to do this one little thing.  Well, not exactly this same one little thing – specifically the sixteen years have been spent planning to publish a novel – and, writing a novel, or even a short story, is really not a little thing at all, as the many, many days I have spent on this one “little” project will prove.  The point being… imagine wanting to do something for sixteen years, really for even longer than that, and then finally, finally, after soooo much time, you finally scrape together the motivation and the willpower and you DO IT.

The first step is always the hardest.  I have taken so many first steps just since October of 2012 towards this long-elusive goal, each bringing me closer to this first step.  And this first step will bring me closer to the next first step – having something professional published, and getting paid for something I wrote.  And that in turn will bring me closer to the next first step after that – revising the novel so that it’s in a condition to send to agents, which will turn into the next first step of publishing that novel.

And then.  And then.

I imagine I just might float away in my complete and utter glee.

“What you do is create a vision of who you want to be, and then live into that picture as if it were already true,” Arnold Schwarzenegger once told Steve Chandler, author of 100 Ways to Motivate Yourself (among others).  This was before Arnold was famous, and he told Mr. Chandler that his plans for the future were to become the next number one Box Office star.  And it happened.

Unrelated to Mr. Chandler’s book, (though I’m enjoying reading it now!) I decided to live into the vision I’d had for myself all these years back in August of 2012.  I decided to really get focused.  Since then, I have taken a three month Writer’s Digest workshop and received very positive feedback on my novel idea and writing from it, discovered an awesome local writing buddy and scheduled weekly meet-ups to discuss writing projects and progress with her (that would be A Girl Who Writes, go follow her Blog!), signed up for and won NaNoWriMo 2012, finished and submitted this short story, started ideas for three other short stories, composed multiple new poems, and continued work on the novel in the meantime!

I have created a vision for myself, and today is yet another concrete action of me beginning to live that picture.  It is truly exhilerating.

What is your vision for yourself?  Think about it.  Then go LIVE IT!