Welcome (back) to the Scarlet Quill Society!

In 2024 YeahWrite’s free workshop is taking you all the places you want to be published — or at least helping you have the best chance possible at getting there. Check out the bottom of this post (and every post) for a roadmap to the year. We’ll be updating it with links each month as the posts go live, so that you can navigate through easily. And don’t forget to check out the Writing Resources tab up **gestures vaguely upwards** there to find our previous workshop series on prompts and editing (not at the same time).

The biggest bonus of the Scarlet Quill Society is that there are actual club meetings. That’s right! Once a month we’ll get together with you and talk about that month’s subject, answer questions, and record the chat for posterity. So if you have an easier time taking in information that way, or if you’re left with lingering questions after a monthly topical post, you’ve got a chance to get the full picture! Check out the full description at the main Scarlet Quill Society page.

Are you ready?

When Rowan was in college, working on that Fine Art degree [Ed’s note: how’s that working out for you lololol /everyone] friends would often say “wow I’m jealous, your classes only meet twice a week! mine is three times plus homework!” to which her reply was, of course, “I would absolutely trade you my two three-hour classes for your three one-hour classes, how am I this much better than you at math? you are a physics major–and at least you know when your homework is done.”

We suspect it’s the same for creative writing majors.

Knowing when you’re done is one of the hardest parts of any creative endeavor, because you can always do more. If there’s a submission deadline, then you at least have a cutoff, right? But you’re still missing an important piece of information: how done is done? Not to circle back to last month’s topic too soon, but a submissions editor friend notes that one common complaint from writers rejected for not meeting basic grammatical and structural requirements is “but you’re the editor, I thought all I had to do was write, and if I got something wrong you’d fix it!”

Spoilers, submissions editors don’t do that.

So this month, as our last topic before we dive into actual publication, we’re going to talk about knowing when you’re done and when you need to do more. This will depend on many things, of course, like individual market requirements as well as the genre you’re writing in. But before we send you out into the world to start submitting, let’s clean up the last few things you’re actually in control of. Ready? Here we go.

Put a fork in it, it’s…. conceptualized?

The shape your work needs to be in when it’s submitted will depend on a few things. And we don’t want to be unrealistic here: one of those things is your relationship with the person or publication you’re submitting to. If you have a trust relationship with a submissions editor you’re going to have a much easier time getting  a less polished work read. And we don’t want to elide the effects of racism, sexism, etc. on your capacity to form those relationships. So with that caveat, here are the broader strokes of what will affect how your work needs to look before you submit.

What genre are you working in?

Nonfiction

Creative nonfiction, journalism, sensationalized journalism, self-help

For nonfiction writers, it’s common to “pitch” a book or article idea before writing starts. Depending on the length and complexity of the work, pay may be arranged on completion or in installments during the production of the work. However, while that article or book isn’t written yet when you pitch, you are usually expected to bring a portfolio of comparable works so that the market you’re pitching can get a sense of the style and quality of your writing. When you are done, make sure you know how the market wants you to turn in the work, from file type to font to method.

Academia

Typically in academia you are expected to have articles about your research completed before submission. How far it is through any relevant peer review process will depend on the market you’re submitting to – some journals may want control over the review process; others may want proof of review before submission. More general academic articles may have different rules, but are still likely to be expected to be complete before submission. And when we say complete, we mean edited. Also, on behalf of all the law students on all the law reviews in all the law schools? Please check and format your citations before handing in your article. (If you don’t know what we meant just there, obviously this doesn’t apply to you; if you do know, don’t be a jerk, law school is hard enough.)

Fiction

Novels (genre and literary fiction)

In general, unless you’re an established author, your novel will need to be complete before you submit it. Yes, we all know the stories of people whose novel was picked up on spec, or who successfully bluffed their way past a “submit the first 25 pages of your completed novel” process, but don’t count on being the one-in-a-million authors that happens to. And when we say complete, we mean past a proofreading stage. Now, do markets sometimes want major changes to an essentially complete book? Yes, they do, but that doesn’t let you off the hook for spellchecking!

You’ll also want to familiarize yourself with standard manuscript format. Not every agent or publisher requires it, but the ones that don’t? Won’t be surprised by it, whereas the ones that do want it may reject you out of hand for not following it.

Short fiction (anthologies and competitions)

The good news is, you have a deadline. You’ll know when to stop. The bad news is, you’ve got to cram in writing, editing, any beta or sensitivity reads, and final edits before this deadline. That’s it, that’s the story. Often the trick here isn’t knowing how much to do (your story should be in publish-as-is shape) but being able to fit your whole story and all those edits into a finite wordcount, which is a completely different topic, and one we’ve talked about at length before.

The other trick here is following the submission guidelines. There are often a LOT of them, from what font you use to how your name does or doesn’t go on the work, to how the filename is structured. You’re going to need to get those right or your story may be rejected unread.

Poetry

One of the least fun things for an editor is trying to figure out if something in a poem is on purpose or not. For example, Rowan’s inescapable typo is “sould” for “soul.” Yeah. Almost every time. But in a poem, that might be a clever play on words implicating televangelism. WHO KNOWS? That’s why it’s even more critical that your poem has been checked and rechecked before it goes out. Anything that’s important to the poem like a unique spelling or grammatical structure will need to be clearly on purpose and not a mistake. Just ask e.e. cummings.

A special note for poetry: if your poem depends on a VISUAL structure, make sure you’re submitting to a market that supports that. Some publications won’t take poetry that needs to be displayed in five different fonts and eleven different justification points. And that’s fine – both that you like writing like that and that they won’t print it – but don’t waste each other’s time with it.

In conclusion…

What’s done is done, right? Not always, as we hope we’ve shown you. Taking your project from inception to publication does actually look a lot different across genres and project types. And we haven’t addressed every permutation, either. For example, while one fiction book might need to be complete, a series rarely is. So that submission might look more like a combination submission and pitch: here’s my book, if you like it there can be more of it, and we can set deadlines and deliverables on those unwritten books.

Want to know more? Great news! This month’s panel is here to answer your questions (SQS members, don’t forget to email us or hit us up on Discord with questions you want answered if you can’t make the panel) and talk about their own publication experiences. We’re excited to bring in some nonfiction writers as well this time!

THIS MONTH’S SPECIAL GUESTS

Jennifer L. Pozner

Jennifer L. Pozner is a journalist, media critic, and founder of Women In Media & News, a media analysis, education, and advocacy group. Her journalism has been published in the New York Times, Chicago Tribune, Village Voice, Newsweek, Ms. Magazine, Bitch, Bust, Macleans, Elle Canada, and Politico, among numerous other news outlets and anthologies. Her first book, Reality Bites Back: The Troubling Truth About Guilty Pleasure TV, was called “required reading for every American girl and woman” by former MSNBC host and scholar Melissa Harris-Perry. Her second book, a critical media literacy graphic novel, is forthcoming from First Second Books in 2025.

Find her at:
BlueSky https://bsky.app/profile/jennpozner.bsky.social 
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jennpozner/

RF Jurjevics

Your turn!

Got questions? Let’s continue this conversation in the Coffeehouse on Facebook or Discord. And keep an eye out for the next face-to-face (face-to-Zoom?) meeting of the Scarlet Quill Society. 

Join the Scarlet Quill Society!

Live Scarlet Quill Society meetings take place once a month. This month’s meeting is Friday, April 19, at 2pm Eastern Daylight Time. Future dates and times TBD based on member and guest availability, but we’ll try to accommodate as many folks as possible. (Yeah. We know. It’s best to have a fixed time. But we think it’s even better than best to be able to accommodate a diverse slate of exciting and qualified panelists, and we hope you’ll agree.)

You can also sign up for a monthly membership! Each month, paid Society members will receive an email with a link to the Zoom meeting. If not every topic interests you, you can also purchase one-time access passes to each month’s meeting via Ko-Fi. If you can’t make it to the meeting, or you don’t like to speak on camera, you are welcome to submit questions before the meeting that our editors will answer in the meeting.

• $5 one-time access to this month’s Zoom session.
• $5 monthly subscription (Pen level): Access to all the live meetings and recordings as soon as they’re uploaded, as well as a private Discord channel where we can discuss tropes in more detail, and your topical questions will be answered by YeahWrite editors! Pen level members can also suggest tropes for future live discussions – our goal is to give you what you want and need!
• $3 monthly subscription (Pencil level): Access to the meeting recordings as soon as they’re uploaded and to the private Discord channel!

A week after the meeting, recordings will become available to all at no cost, but if you find them useful we encourage you to leave a tip in our tip jar—it helps keep the lights on over here and allows us to keep bringing you the high-quality workshop content you’ve come to expect from us, as well as acquire some exciting guest panelists. You can also sign up for a $1/month Paper level membership just to show us you love us.

Index

Wondering what the next meeting of the Scarlet Quill Society will be about? Not sure what we've covered already? Here's our club agenda for the year.

September:

• Read:
• Watch: September meeting

October:

• Read:
• Watch: October meeting

November:

• Read:
• Watch: November meeting

December:

• Read:
• Watch: December meeting

About the author:

Rowan submitted exactly one piece of microfiction to YeahWrite before being consumed by the editorial darkside. She spent some time working hard as our Submissions Editor before becoming YeahWrite’s Managing Editor in 2016. She was a BlogHer Voice of the Year in 2017 for her work on intersectional feminism, but she suggests you find and follow WOC instead. In real life she’s been at various times an attorney, aerialist, professional knitter, artist, graphic designer (yes, they’re different things), editor, secretary, tailor, and martial artist. It bothers her vaguely that the preceding list isn’t alphabetized, but the Oxford comma makes up for it. She lives in Portlandia with a menagerie which includes at least one other human. She tells lies at textwall and uncomfortable truths at CrossKnit.

rowan@yeahwrite.me