Submitting Into the Void

There is a specific kind of email that takes longer to write than it should. The subject line alone gets revised four times. The attached file gets renamed, reopened, reread one more time even though you've already read it seventeen times and changing it now would only delay the sending further. The send button sits there looking innocent and you look at it for a moment longer than necessary and then you press it and the email disappears into the internet and you close the laptop and go do something else and try not to think about it.

And then you wait.

Submitting creative work is one of the more psychologically complex activities in a creative life, which is not obvious from the outside because from the outside it looks like sending an email. But the submitting is not really about the email. It's about releasing something you made into a process you can't control, to be evaluated by people you don't know, according to criteria that are only partially visible to you, on a timeline that may be very long or may never end because some places never respond at all.

The waiting is the hard part. And almost nobody talks about how to do it well.

What You're Actually Doing When You Submit

Submitting is an act of hope with a high probability of disappointment built into it, and going in with clear eyes about that changes how you manage the experience.

The acceptance rates at most literary magazines, grant programs, residencies, and other competitive creative opportunities are low enough that rejection is the statistically expected outcome for any individual submission. This is not a comment on the quality of your work. It's the math of many applicants and limited spots, of editorial taste and timing and what a publication already ran last month and what they're looking for right now that they couldn't fully articulate even if asked.

Most submissions get rejected. This is true for writers whose work you admire, for people who have been doing this for decades, for pieces that eventually find homes elsewhere and go on to be loved by readers. The rejection is almost never the final word on the work. It's the response of one publication at one moment to one piece, filtered through everything that's happening in that editorial context that you can't see from the outside.

Knowing this in advance is useful because it reframes what you're actually doing when you submit. You're not asking for a verdict. You're participating in a process that will sometimes say yes and more often say no, and the no is part of the process rather than a conclusion about the work.

The Submission as a Practice

The writers and creative people who navigate the submission process most sustainably tend to think of submitting as a practice rather than a series of high-stakes individual events.

A practice has a rhythm and a consistency that doesn't depend on any individual outcome. You submit because submitting is what you do, the same way you write because writing is what you do. The individual rejection doesn't derail the practice any more than a difficult writing session derails the writing practice.

This requires a volume approach that most beginning submitters find uncomfortable. Submitting to one place at a time and waiting for a response before submitting elsewhere means the process moves very slowly and each rejection carries the full weight of being the only current prospect. Submitting to multiple places simultaneously, where it's permitted, or maintaining a consistent submission habit regardless of what's currently out, diffuses that weight across a larger number of prospects and makes the individual rejection smaller relative to the whole.

It also requires decoupling the act of submitting from the hope of a specific outcome. Submitting because it's what you do, rather than submitting because this particular piece to this particular place feels like the one, produces a more sustainable relationship with the process. The feeling that this one is the one is not a reliable predictor of outcome and giving it too much power makes the rejection hit harder than it needs to.

The Waiting

The window between submission and response is where most of the psychological difficulty lives, and it's worth thinking about directly because most submission advice skips it entirely and goes straight from how to write a cover letter to how to handle rejection.

The waiting is its own experience. It can be brief, a few days for some publications, or very long, six months to a year is not unusual, or indefinitely extended because some places never respond at all and you eventually have to decide for yourself when the non-response has become a no.

During the waiting period, the submission tends to occupy a background presence in your mind regardless of whether you're actively thinking about it. You know it's out there. You find yourself checking email with a quality of attention that's slightly different from usual. You notice when the expected response window is approaching, or when it's passed.

The most useful approach to the waiting period is to fill it with other work. Not to suppress or avoid the awareness that something is out there, but to make sure the something that's out there isn't the only thing going on in your creative life. The writer who has only one piece out tends to give that piece's fate much more power than it deserves. The writer with multiple pieces in various stages of drafting and submission has more of themselves invested in more places, and the individual outcome matters proportionally less.

This is the principle of not putting all your creative eggs in one basket, applied to the submission process. It's practically useful and also emotionally protective, and it tends to result in more submissions over time, which increases the overall chances of finding the right home for each piece.

When the Silence Is the Answer

Some publications respond to every submission, even the rejected ones. Many don't. The non-response, the submission that simply disappears without any acknowledgment of its existence, is one of the more deflating experiences in the creative life, and it's worth having a policy about it in advance rather than deciding in the moment.

Most submission guidelines specify a response window, and most also specify whether the publication responds to all submissions or only to acceptances. If the guidelines say responses only for acceptances and the response window has passed, you have your answer. Not a satisfying one, but an answer.

If the guidelines don't specify, or if you've been waiting significantly longer than the stated window, it's generally acceptable to send a brief, polite inquiry. Not a follow-up that expresses frustration or implies the publication has done something wrong, just a simple check-in asking whether the piece is still under consideration.

Some places never respond even to inquiries. At some point you have to decide for yourself that the piece has been rejected, note it in your records, and send it somewhere else. This decision requires a somewhat arbitrary timeline that you set yourself, and whatever you set will sometimes be wrong in one direction or the other. That's the nature of the process.

The Tracking System

One of the most practical things you can do for your relationship with the submission process is keep a tracking system. Not complicated, not elaborate, just a record of what you've sent where and when and what the response was.

The tracking system serves several functions that are worth having.

It keeps you from accidentally submitting the same piece to the same place twice, which happens more easily than you'd think when you're submitting actively over a long period.

It gives you a realistic picture of your submission activity over time. The writer who feels like they're submitting constantly but hasn't actually sent anything in three months finds that out from the tracking system rather than from a vague sense of having done something recently.

It makes the rejection history visible in a way that's actually useful rather than just discouraging. A piece that's been rejected twelve times is not a piece that's failed twelve times. It's a piece that hasn't found its right home yet. Seeing the history in a tracking system makes it easier to hold that perspective than trying to hold it in your head, where the number tends to feel larger and more definitive than it actually is.

And it gives you data about the process over time. Which publications tend to respond quickly. Which ones take a long time. Which ones have never responded to anything you've sent. Which ones have given useful feedback alongside rejections. This information is worth having and accumulates in a tracking system in ways it doesn't accumulate in memory.

What to Do While You Wait

The practical answer is to write the next thing. Not to abandon the piece that's out there, not to emotionally detach from its fate, but to be in active creative work so that the waiting isn't the only thing happening.

The next piece is where your creative energy is most productively directed during the waiting period. It's also the best insurance against the specific form of paralysis that comes from investing everything in one submission and then freezing while you wait to find out if it paid off.

The creative life that depends on a yes from a single submission to continue is a fragile creative life. The one that continues regardless of any individual outcome is much more sustainable and tends to produce more and better work over time.

The Records You Keep

Beyond the tracking system, some writers keep a record of the pieces that have found homes and where. Not to brag, not for posterity, but as a reminder that the process works sometimes.

In the long stretches of rejection and silence, it's easy to forget that pieces do find homes. That the piece you sent to seventeen places finally got accepted by the eighteenth. That the grant you applied for three years running finally came through. That the residency that rejected you twice said yes the third time.

The record of yeses, however small it is, is a counterweight to the ambient experience of rejection that the submission process tends to produce. It's evidence that the process is not a wall but a road, and that the road eventually goes somewhere even when it's not going there yet.

Showing Up for the Process

Submitting into the void requires a particular kind of faith that doesn't come naturally to most people and isn't particularly well supported by the process itself. The void doesn't thank you for showing up. It doesn't acknowledge your courage in sending the work. It processes submissions according to its own criteria and timeline and returns its verdicts without much consideration of what the sending cost you.

The faith required is not faith that it will work out. It's faith that showing up for the process is worthwhile regardless of any individual outcome. That the practice of submitting, maintained over time, is itself a form of taking the work seriously. That the yes, when it comes, comes to the people who kept sending.

It does come to the people who kept sending. Not because persistence is magically rewarded, but because persistence is the only way to generate enough attempts for the statistics to work in your favor.

Send the work. Keep the records. Write the next thing.

The void is not indifferent to the work. It just takes a while to say so.