Hours Spent Gambling

I blew a big chunk of today researching submissions. Years ago, making submissions was exciting because maybe something would happen! Experience has taught me better. With the vast majority of submissions nothing's going to happen that anyone will like. And maybe nothing will happen at all.

Submitting work for publication is a lot like gambling. No matter how much time you spend checking out publication websites, trying to read journals to see what their editors are interested in, and following the rules, you're still rolling the dice and hoping something good will turn up. A big percentage of the time, you're going to be rejected and you're sort of vague on why. You have a general idea that you haven't played your hand correctly and that maybe you don't even know all the rules of the game. But you don't know how to become a hustler.

(Hey, did I extend that metaphor enough? I've been reading Walden. Man could Thoreau extend a metaphor.)

Nowadays I feel that my time would be better spent on writing. Though, being the kind of writer who wants to see her work published in her lifetime and not discovered after she's dead (though that's my fallback plan), I do need to go through the angst of submitting.