As 2024 draws to a close, I’ve hit personal records for the most pieces of writing submitted in a year (75 as of Dec. 2) and the most pieces accepted (eight, so far). With a few dozen stories currently in the hands of journals across Canada, the U.S. and the U.K., I’m hopeful I’ll hit double digits by the end of the year.
Basically, when it comes to getting my babies out in the world, I’ve become the literary equivalent of a cod fish, known for producing millions of eggs. They follow the strategy that if you spread enough of these things around, at least a few will survive. Some writers are much more selective, submitting their work slowly and focusing only on the ideal markets, in terms of exposure, prestige and payment. You could say they’re following a primate’s selective mating strategy.
If I had the track record, credentials and connections to be a literary primate, I’d be one. But that’s not an option for most of us. I believe that in the age of online literary submissions — which allow anybody to submit anywhere at any time and often with no cost — wide dissemination of submissions is the approach you have to take unless you have achieved a level of fame and prestige that opens doors for you. I find markets on Chill Subs, via the Substack page Sub Club, and on Twitter, where magazines or anthologies will often announce temporary submission openings (better still, free openings), and I pounce quickly. I have a number of stories and non-fiction pieces ready to be submitted on a moment’s notice when I find a place that looks like a potential home.
In the old days of mailed paper submissions, the expense and inconvenience of printing and copying manuscripts, stuffing self-addressed reply envelopes inside and affixing the necessary postage meant that literary magazines dealt with only a small fraction of the submissions they do today. Today, a moderately selective journal you’ve never heard of will publish one to two per cent of the submissions it receives. A prestigious journal, the kind whose writers often end up in best-of-the-year anthologies, will be an order of magnitude harder to get into. So the way to get your work published (aside, of course, from working on your writing and developing a unique voice and all that) is to send it out everywhere.
In addition to submitting to many different markets, I’ve submitted many different kinds of writing. Here’s my 2024 in successfully submitted stories and essays.
March
An odd little memoir piece (titled 9th & Hennepin) about working late nights for a small-town newspaper turned up in Major 7th Magazine, an online journal featuring writing with links to music.
An essay on literary diversity initiatives and discrimination (titled A Likely Story: The Diversity Myth Consumes the Canadian Literary Scene) was published by C2C Journal, an online magazine focusing on politics and culture. At the time it was published, in a journal funded by the conservative Manning Foundation, I was a little worried that the essay would hurt my standing in the literary world. But now that many of my fellow centrist liberals are admitting that left-wing culture-war overreach on race, gender, Palestine, crime and other issues helped elect Donald Trump, maybe I can admit to writing this without becoming a pariah.
April
Flash Fiction Forum, a California-based online series of flash fiction events, had me read a short humour piece riffing off Ernest Hemingway’s famous six-word short story (“For sale. Baby shoes. Never worn.”) There’s no copy online, but hey, I got paid $25 US for 200 words. In the 21st century literary world, that’s amazing.
October
Erato Magazine, an international online magazine with an Ireland-based editor, published my short story I Know You, a first-person narrative told by a cynical, decadent charmer hiding out on Haida Gwaii an archipelago off the northern British Columbia coast.
November
A New York-based online magazine, Roi Fainéant Press, published my satirical story @vanlifewithJosh&Siobhan, about a pair of influencers travelling to Grasslands National Park in Saskatchewan to create inspiring content.
Saddlebag Dispatches, a U.S. magazine dedicated to fiction and non-fiction about the old West, selected my story Clay Allison’s Girl as a finalist in its annual short fiction competition. I’ll post a link once the magazine is available and once I know whether I’ve won the big prize. This same story had also been accepted by another journal in the fall, so I had to withdraw from that one in order to be in Saddlebag (but an acceptance is still a win!)
Another U.S. magazine, Clockhouse, associated with a creative writing MFA program in New England, accepted my memoir piece about my small role in a search for two downed aircraft in the Alberta Rockies in 1986. It will be published next summer.
A Canadian magazine has indicated that they’re tentatively accepting an essay from me to mark the 30th anniversary of Martin Amis’s novel The Information in 2025. It’s an odd piece, combining literary criticism and my personal connection to the novel, which I had with me at Calgary’s Foothills Hospital the night (early morning) my son Sam was born.
The newest of these stories, @vanlifewithJosh&Siobhan, only came into the world in March of this year. The oldest, Waypoints, has been bouncing around to and from various journals for at least five years. As I’ve gradually been eliminating stories from my unpublished list, I’ve been adding new material to my repertoire. In 2024, I wrote five new short stories, all of which have been submitted at least once.
So there you have it. A year of shooting my babies out into the world and hoping they survive. A year of small successes and high hopes. And a year of writing new stories to swim in the vast ocean of words.