From the back cover: “This unique collection includes over fifty articles by more than thirty-five diverse American women who revisit, celebrate, and share defining moments in their lives. Readers will see the universal in milestones of body, mind, family, career, and personal empowerment—whether joyous or difficult, chosen or unexpected, common or rare. These are poignant passages of women, told by talented and award winning writers: intimate glimpses into the lives of our sisters, friends, aunts, mentors, wives, grandmothers, partners, mothers, daughters—ourselves.”

It depends on how you define good. Ultimately, you want markets that you would feel proud to have your work in. Early on, I submitted poetry blindly. What that means is that I responded to calls for submission without ever checking out the publications. That was a mistake. Though I got a lot of work published very quickly, it came out in journals I would never want to be associated with. For instance, one of my poems was published in a journal full of clip art images of mirrors in which to write personal affirmations. Is the name of it listed on the Publications & Performance page on this site? No. Is it listed anywhere? Nope.

The second thing you’re looking for is a market that publishes work resembling yours in style, subject matter, or layout–especially when you’re writing poetry. The best analogy is musical genre. You’re not likely to hear hip hop on a classical station. Don’t send your narrative poem to a journal that solely publishes language poetry. Also don’t send your personal essays to a market that only accepts fiction.

Another thing to consider when finding a market is that there are different tiers of publication depending on where you are in your publishing career. You’re not likely to get into The New Yorker early on. Does it mean you shouldn’t try? Absolutely not. But don’t limit yourself by only sending to the big boys. Be willing to start in the proverbial mail room and work your way up.

So how do you find these markets? First of all, read. Read literary journals and magazines at a bookstore or library. Read online journals. Read books in your genre, both by single authors and collected works in anthologies. Find the writers you like. Learn from them. The content of their work will teach you something about writing, but you should also read their bios. In a journal, read the author’s bio to see where else s/he has been published. Then check out those publications. If you’re reading collected works of a writer, look at their acknowledgements. Where else has the work you find most comparable to yours been published? Read those publications. Then read the bios of the authors in there, and so on.

Also, look for unlikely places that publish your genre of work. It may be that a gardening magazine has a section for short stories that have gardening in them. You might even try searches like “gardening short stories” and see what comes up. Try anthology calls for submission as well. Maybe somebody is putting together a collection of poetry about parenting right now. Think outside the box and you may find a journal that doesn’t get enough subbmissions for its literary sections.

Once you’ve got the names of these publications, how can you go about finding them? Use Duotrope’s Digest for poetry and fiction listings and Poets & Writers Literary Magazines listings for poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction. Duotrope’s has over 2500 listings and sends out a weekly newsletter (if you want it) with recently added paying and non-paying markets, markets that have reopened/closed for submission, upcoming themed publication deadlines, and any other market updates. I like the format of the P&W listings better but Duotrope’s are by far more comprehensive. Once you find a possible market, make sure to read sample work on their website or at least one of their issues, which you can usually buy directly from them, at some cool bookstores, or maybe read at the library depending on how established the publication is.

Is it worth it to buy or use some version of Writer’s Market (Poet’s Market, etc) or The International Guide to Literary Magazines and Small Presses? Not really. You’ll find much more up-to-date information on the web.

Now you’re ready to research.

Photo “Literature 1″ by James 119

Create a Submission Tracker file in Excel.  My file has three worksheets: 1) Poem Index, 2) Published Poems, and 3) Need Editing.

The Poem Index includes the following columns:

• Location – The folder where the poem is located on my computer (may be organized by year or other system)
• Title -  alphabetized list of submission-worthy poems
• Length of poem -  Even though many publications do not list a line limit, journals have a tendency to publish short poems, medium, or long ones so having the ability to do a data sort by length is helpful.
• Type/Form – This categorization may include narrative, lyrical, prose,  haiku, sonnet, etc.
• Subject/Theme -  This makes it easier to remember what each poem is about and to find poems if a market is doing a death issue or looking for poems about bats.
• Tone – The subject of the poem doesn’t dictate its tone. A poem about death could be funny, frantic, somber, etc. When your favorite journal is publishing a humor issue, having the Tone column will help you find your best work.
• Former title - Sometimes after I’ve changed a title, it keeps sticking in my head the other way. I can use the Find function to search for the title I remember.

I use a color highlighting system for the Poem Index so I can easily see what the current status of a poem is.

• Green if a poem is ready to go out but isn’t currently submitted anywhere
• Red for no simultaneous submissions (so I don’t send a poem to two places if it’s not allowed–or if they’re really freaky about SS)
• Bold face if a poem is out to one market
• Orange for out to two markets,
• Purple if a poem is out to three+ markets (this is rarely, but sometimes used).
• Blue (my favorite color) for published (in the instance a market takes previously published work)

The Published worksheet includes the following fields:

• Market – Name of market in which the poem was published
• Details – volume # and other details from publication
• Link – If the poem was published online, this gives me the location.

The Need Editing worksheet is for poems I’ve stopped submitting but I don’t want to give up on. Having a list of these gives me a place to move a poem and its details if I decide to stop submitting it and start working on it again. The Need Editing list makes a good starting place for a revising day.

I used to also track the market submissions for each poem, but doing this in Excel was a messy process because what I really needed was a database. Fortunately, Luminary Writer’s Database has created a free online tracker that allows users to see what poems are out to which markets, how long they’ve been out, and what their current status is (pending, rejected, accepted, and withdrawn).

Add all the titles you’ve got in your Submission Tracker. The reason you want your own Excel file and not just to use Luminary is that you can add all the details/fields to choose which poems you’ll submit.

You’ll also add markets to the tracker though you may not want to fill out all of the available fields in the market tracker. I add the title, website url, and any notes of my own (like what type of poems they’re publishing, if I have dealt with them before, etc). When I’m ready to submit, I always go to the market’s website and reread their current submission guidelines so it didn’t serve me to add those details on Luminary.

Between your Submission Tracker in Excel and the Luminary Writer’s Database, your poems will be so organized that when you find places to submit, you’ll be able to choose the best poems for that market and know exactly where your poems are: waiting to be submitted, pending, or published.

Your next job is to find some markets for your poems. Stay tuned for the next installment in my Submission series and I’ll help you do that.

So I’ve starting tracking my current writing practices. I’ll share them with you as well as the discoveries I make about my writing patterns, routines I’d like to create, and tasks I need to add. I’ll do a summary report once a week usually. To start though, here are the last couple of weeks. In future process posts, I will include more about the time of day I was working, how long things took, and what things I’m noticing or want to tweek. so that my picture of my process is more detailed.

Sunday, August 30th - Totally rethought the focus and goals of this site.

Monday, August 31st – Moved posts from sonyafeher.com to mamatrue.com, my parenting blog

Thursday, September 3rd

• Submitted to Gargoyle magazine. Poets & Writers listed September 4th as the deadline. I went to their website and the editors had a note that the latest issue was almost full but they still needed short pieces. I submitted five short poems online.
• I printed out poems and cover letter to send to Lilliput Review, a publication I was featured in years ago and thought had stopped publishing. It turned out they just hadn’t had much of a web presence and still only accept snail mail submissions. I’d sent in one submission, received a rejection with encouragement to send more poems. They only accept poems that are 10 lines or less and you can send in up to nine at a time, which is amazing since most places only accept 3 -5 poems at once. Serendipitously, I had nine more poems that were that short. I printed them three to a page as suggested in submission guidelines and put them in an enveloped to be mailed on the 4th.

Friday, September 4th

• Mailed Lilliput Review submission
• While our part-time nanny spent three hours with my son, I wrote a blog post then went bead shopping. Doing other creative work outside of the realm of words often frees me up to write more and not have the editor so engaged.

Saturday, September 5th – Received nice note from Gargolye editor that they were already full with dates for next submission period.

Sunday September 6th – Wrote three blogs posts on new format for website and scheduled them for subsequent days so I wouldn’t add all the content at once and people could read it in the order I intended.

Tuesday, September 8th

• Published one of the blog posts I’d written on the 6th.
• Wrote post on morning and evening routines with kids for mamatrue.
• Shared link for both posts on through Twitter and Facebook in separate updates.
• Started post on my poetry submission process.
• Met with Mastermind group and learned that I should have Creative Commons licenses on my web content.
• Started reading journal to decide if my poems would fit the market. Too tired. Added date to my Yahoo calendar so I’ll read it later.

Wednesday, September 9th

• Wrote book review blog post for my book challenge and fed it to Facebook and Twitter
• Added new page to website with Feminista’s Top 100 books by women. I realized I was sending traffic to a library’s website and it was always possile they’d take the content down. Also, having the information on my site allows me to format it with progress updates for my book challenge.
• Set up Creative Commons licenses on both my website and blog

Thursday, September 10th

• Received acceptance for a poem from Literary Mama — woo hoo! This is a market I’d known I wanted to be published in since I found out about them while i was pregnant. They emailed to say the poem would be published in the October 4th  Returned publication contract.
• After my son went to sleep, I wrote ablog post for mamatrue.

Friday, September 11th – Wrote blog post for this site and finished up last of 5 part series on night weaning on mamatrue

Saturday, September 12th - Talked to a bunch of my mama buddies about my book challenge. and invited them to join me. I also asked for suggestions for the top 100 list I’m creating.

Monday, September 14th

• This is the one week a month I moderate posts as a contributing editor for API Speaks. I edit posts for grammar and content then add tags and categories and schedule them as well approving comments. I scheduled one post, saw there were many more to be read, and added Blog Moderating to my calendar for the 15th.
• Responded to comments on my mamatrue blog.
• Went through my submission calendar and moved dates tasks I hadn’t completed to future dates.

Tuesday, September 15th

• Read five posts for API Speaks, edited and scheduled them for publication.
• Corresponded with representative from a website that has been using some of my posts from mamatrue. They’re changing their practices and want to know if I’m still interested in working with them. I asked for more clarification.
• Sent letter to editor of online magazine I’m supposed to be starting monthly column for. Asked for more details and dates.
• Wrote and published this then fed it to Twitter and Facebook

Let me know what kind of details you’re looking for. How can my evaluating my writing process help you?