Which Publication Should I Submit To?
A Newsletter of Humorous Writing
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There are certain questions about humor writing that Luke and James get asked more often than others, and every now and then, we like to tackle one of them for our subscribers. Today we're talking about how to decide what publication to submit your finished piece to. After that, we’ve got a couple of recommendations in honor of David Lynch.
Which Publication Should I Submit To?
Okay, so you’ve got a finished piece. Congrats! (If you’re not sure if your draft is actually finished, go check out our “How do you know when a piece is done and ready to submit?” newsletter and then come back here.) Now you have to decide where you’re going to send it.
It’s good practice to make a list of target publications you’d like to submit your work to. (If you’re looking for ideas for different places to submit to, Points in Case has a great list of outlets that publish short humor, and Caitlin Kunkel put a great one together too.) How you organize and order your list is, of course, up to you. You might put the highest-paying outlets at the top, or the ones you feel are most prestigious, or maybe you have some complicated formula based on how much a publication has made you, personally, laugh. Whatever works for you!
Once you’ve made your list, you can start by submitting to your number one dream outlet, and work your way down from there. It’s also not a bad idea to keep notes on your submissions so that you don’t accidentally submit the same piece to an outlet twice.
However, there are times when it might make sense to skip one of the outlets on your list. As we’ve mentioned in the past, it’s important to be aware of what kind of work different outlets publish so that you can be sure that you’re sending them pieces that are a good fit.
Obviously if your submissions list includes a publication with a very specific focus, like parenting humor, you wouldn’t send them a piece that has nothing to do with parenting. (Conversely, if you have a piece dealing with an extremely esoteric subject, you might decide to START by submitting to a publication dedicated to that hyper-specific subject, if such a publication exists.)
But sometimes a piece can be a poor fit for a publication in a less-defined way. For example, Luke generally submits his work to The New Yorker first and then McSweeney’s second, but for his piece “White Noise or White Noise?” he sent it to McSweeney’s right off the bat. He did this not because of anything specific in The New Yorker’s submission guidelines, but because he’s read a lot of what The New Yorker publishes and knows that, generally speaking, they don’t really publish super-short list pieces of that kind.
It can be tough to make these calls, but the key is being honest with yourself. If you’re getting ready to submit a piece and you find yourself thinking something like, “Well they don’t USUALLY publish pieces like this, but maybe they’ll take this one anyway,” that’s probably a sign that the piece isn’t actually a good fit for the outlet.
Another thing to consider when submitting: Do you actually LIKE the work that the outlet publishes? Would you be proud to have your work featured next to the other writing in the publication? And do you trust the editors of the site to do right by your work? As we’ve said time and time again, you don’t want to get published just for the sake of getting published.
This is another reason to make sure you’re familiar with the different outlets you’re thinking about sending your work to. If you haven’t read the writing a site has published, take a beat to make sure you’ve at the very least read a few recent things they’ve run. This sort of site evaluation is something friends and writers’ groups can help you with too. It’s worth asking people if they know or like a site, or if they’ve had any personal experiences with it, in addition to getting feedback about whether they think a particular piece will be a fit.
Every now and then we’ll also hear from people who tell us that they wanted to submit a piece to their first-choice publication, but didn’t, because they thought the piece wasn’t good enough. Ideally, you should feel that ANY work you’re submitting to ANY outlet is good enough for the outlet at the top of your list. Of course we all have ups and downs in our writing, and it can often be difficult to objectively evaluate your own work, but if you really think a piece is just so-so, maybe it’s not something that you actually want to have out there just yet. Don’t rush yourself: there’s always time to rewrite.
Some David Lynch Recommendations From James and Luke
James recommends Twin Peaks. If you haven’t watched Twin Peaks, you should. It’s a wonderful, strange, and very funny show that miraculously aired on ABC. And the final season not only stands on its own as a series, but is as interesting and touching of an ending as I’ve seen.
But I think what I really love about Twin Peaks, and Lynch’s work more generally, is how much it gives to its audience. The many parodies that Peaks inspired are one thing: the show’s strong style and tone are an invitation. Everyone wants to try their hand at something Lynchian.
The first time I saw Twin Peaks was in college. My friend Jesse took me to a screening of the first few episodes at the Brattle Theater in Boston. We were fully surrounded by Lynch-heads, and experiencing the show through the eyes of fans was a wonderful introduction to the devotion and conversation his work inspires. The lobby, the cold sidewalk outside, and the subway platform were full of folks comparing theories, sharing favorite moments, shouting “there was a fish in the percolator” at each other. This kind of community has always seemed like the ideal audience, and the kind of thing an artist would be proud to have inspired. To make something that people not only enjoy, but also want to discuss, share, and unpack is the mark of someone who has made something unique, and taken risks with their work.
Luke recommends The Straight Story. A movie about an old man driving a riding mower to visit his brother? How interesting could that possibly be? Friends, let me tell you, The Straight Story is riveting. It’s filled with wonderful oddball characters, is fully imbued with Lynch’s wonderful sense of humor, and builds to a deeply emotional ending—perhaps one of my favorite endings of all time.
SPOILER ALERT FOR THE END OF THE STRAIGHT STORY
Legendary character actor Harry Dean Stanton (who worked with Lynch a number of times) appears in the movie’s final scene, playing the main character’s brother. He’s only got around three minutes of screen time—about eight or nine shots total—but he should have won an Oscar for those three minutes. (Sorry, Michael Caine.) It’s a scene that always brings a tear to my eye.
See you next week!
@lukevburns & @jamesfolta
We started this newsletter with our dear friend Brian Agler, and we want it to always honor his memory and his love of all things humorous. You can find our newsletter tribute to Brian here.
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