Submission Process Quotes

Like pretty much every short story writer, I submitted to every market under the sun and hoped for the best. The rejection letters I've collected over the years can probably make a book of their own.

I started to submit when I was twelve, and obviously at that time they weren't good enough, and I suppose in my heart of hearts I knew it. But you have to start sooner or later, you have to dig in.

When I first started submitting my work professionally - and we're talking years and years ago - I had no patience for editorial response times. I hated waiting to hear back from people, hated waiting to see my work in print.

There are times when I'll send a manuscript to an editor, and I'll think it is the most likely project I've ever sent them. And they might call me the next morning and say they couldn't tolerate it. That happens so frequently that I've given up any expectation of knowing what anybody's going to like.

A typical agent in New York gets 400 query letters a month. Of those, they might ask to read 3-4 manuscripts, and of those, they might ask to represent 1.

You do it a day at a time. You write as well as you can, you put it in the mail, you leave it under submission, you never leave it at home.

I wrote short stories for seven years and used to mail them out. You couldn't send them by e-mail. I called them manila boomerangs. I'd seal the self-addressed stamped envelope inside an envelope and I'd mail it off, and it would come back six weeks later with a rejection letter in it.

You were told how much space so it was a matter of whether you could send in two paintings or three paintings, you know, pending where the show was being held. You did submit work to be accepted. Once you were accepted that was it. You did your own selection of what went in.

As an actor, you do feel very powerless... you are at the whim of the agent who submits you for a project, and then at the audition, you are at the whim of the casting director who will cast you or not.

No agent wants to see a book until he or she has decided whether to pursue the relationship.

I tend to turn down books originally published as e-books. As for selling books directly to e-book publishers, I would do so only if all traditional publishers had turned them down.

I was sending off my plays almost like an 8-year-old would send letters to Santa Claus. So it was a bit of a miracle when the Blank Theatre Company actually called and selected a terrible little play that I wrote.

With 'California,' editors were reading it, and fast, and others were emailing my agent to request it. Ultimately, there were a few editors interested in the book, and it sold at auction about two weeks after the submission process started. I couldn't believe it!

A good many young writers make the mistake of enclosing a stamped, self-addressed envelope, big enough for the manuscript to come back in. This is too much of a temptation to the editor.

Editors of open anthologies actively seek submissions from all comers, established and unknown. They are willing to read whatever the tide washes up at their feet.

I used to submit to anthologies and magazines when I was a student - but I knew I was never going to be picked up.

Manuscript: something submitted in haste and returned at leisure.

If you want to write, write it. That's the first rule. And send it in, and send it in to someone who can publish it or get it published. Don't send it to me. Don't show it to your spouse, or your significant other, or your parents, or somebody. They're not going to publish it.

It didn't get into Sundance although I showed a rough cut which is a mistake to all filmmakers out there.

After I had done a handful of cartoons I was satisfied with, I started submitting them to the magazines.

You have to be submitted for the Pulitzer, and unbeknownst to us, a choral director whom I know had submitted us.