How to Get Published, Part 4: Reasons to Send Work Out Other Than Getting Published

O.K., I know this series of blogs is about getting published. But the reality is that there is a crucial reason to send your work out that is only peripherally related to seeing your writing in print or on the Internet.

When you’re preparing to send your work out, your eyesight as an editor of your own writing suddenly becomes incredibly sharp. Why? Because you’re putting yourself in the shoes of a potential reader of your work, rather than looking at your writing the way a dog looks at its owner. This objectivity is something we strive for constantly as writers, but most of us only achieve it sporadically. When you think about sending out your work, you scrutinize your writing with that objective glance that is so hard to find.

In fact, I would say that I never see my work with as much clarity as I do the moment after I click the SUBMIT button.

Don’t lose that precious moment of sharp-focus objectivity. Even if you’ve just sent your work to a journal or a publisher—especially if you’ve just sent your work to a journal or a publisher—capture that second of cold honesty to help you rewrite the work you just sent out. The mistake that you glimpse right after you hit SUBMIT is exactly the one you want to correct. Don’t worry that the publisher you just sent it to won’t experience the revised version. You can always change the text later if it gets accepted.

Meanwhile, you’ve been granted a sort of divine omniscience, if only for a split second, as if a magician had momentarily conferred on you a temporary superpower. Put your trust in that sharp vision. Don’t waste the opportunity. After all, the goal is not only to get published. Yes, that is one goal, but your real job as a writer is to finish the pieces you are working on as well as you possibly can. If you do that part well, publication will follow in the fullness of time.

Other recent posts on writing topics:
How to Get Published: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4
Getting the Most from Your Writing Workshop
How Not to Become a Literary Dropout
Putting Together a Book Manuscript
Working with a Writing Mentor
How to Deliver Your Message
Does the Muse Have a Cell Phone?
Why Write Poetry? 
Poetic Forms: Introduction; The Sonnet, The Sestina, The Ghazal, The Tanka

Praise and Lament
How to Be an American Writer