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.

Inside information

So, a quick reminder:

Traditional publishing happens when an author submits a work to a market and the market decides to publish the work.

Our featured market for this month is anthologies, collections of work that are assembled based on a theme. That theme could be as specific as “1,000 word stories containing these three words and featuring a horse” or as loose as “writers who used to live in this geographical area as children.” Or anything in between! If you like to work in short-to-medium length stories or essays, and you don’t feel ready to put out a collection of your own work (we’ll be honest, selling a collection as a previously unpublished author can add levels of difficulty to your search), anthologies are a great place to find a home for your writing. For purposes of this month, we’re going to treat things like genre magazines, journals, and one-time collections as “anthologies,” because their intent and requirements are fundamentally so similar for you as aa writer that it would be silly to disaggregate them. They’re wildly different on the back end in terms of funding and structure, but what you see? Same enough.   

Like all traditional publishing options, anthologies have advantages and drawbacks. Many of them are the same as publishing your own book, with the added bonuses of not having to write a full-length work and being able to share credits with others who may have more name recognition than you (or less, and thank you to the “big names” who keep sharing their shorter work and helping draw readers in!).

To publish in an anthology you’ll need two things: your work, and a suitable anthology. Here’s the tricky part! These two things can come in either order. Let’s look at how that works, and the advantages and disadvantages of each method.

Anthology first

So you want to get published, but you haven’t written anything and don’t know where to start? Many anthologies are assembled from prompted stories. To get started, look through some calls for submissions. Here’s a handy guide for getting started, including links to sites that aggregate calls for submissions.

A call for prompted submissions will include the prompt, word count, and due date. It will also include how to submit and in what format. Don’t wreck your chances by missing the deadline, skipping the prompt, or failing to read the submissions standards correctly! As we discussed last month, those rules are there for a reason.

If prompts stress you out, check out our previous work on the subject!

Prompted anthologies are a lot of fun! Some prompts are incredibly loose, while others are a tight list of requirements. You can pick and choose your favorite style, and there’s no pressure. You didn’t sign up for a class and this isn’t a test. If you don’t finish by the due date, you’ve still written something and you can polish it up for another market later.

Speaking of another market… what if you’ve already written something?

If you’ve got a story looking for a home, anthologies are still a great place to get published. Many are assembled loosely around a genre or author identity. As you scroll through the calls for submissions, look for anthologies your story already fits into. Then sit with it for a minute—does it need to be tweaked for word count? Have you had at least a beta reader look at it? Once you’ve checked format and any other submissions requirements, send it in!

And then what?

Once your story is submitted, it goes into the slush pile. This is every story the anthology has received between putting out the call and ending submissions at the due date. If the anthology is popular, your story will likely be read first by a slush reader or junior submissions editor. These folks make the first call about which stories are definitely not suitable for inclusion in the anthology. Like any reader, they want to pass each story on up the chain. However, many stories get cut at this point for things like lack of editing, unsuitability for the anthology’s theme, or failure to include the prompt. Still others aren’t passed along because the writing quality isn’t to the anthology’s standards either structurally or qualitatively. Sometimes this just means that the author has sent a YA story to an adult-targeted anthology. Other times it means that the story has baked-in racism or sexism to the point where it couldn’t be readily edited out. Slush readers will rarely give you a reason for the rejection, and in fact many places have a policy to not give a reason.

For stories that made the first cut, now an editor or submissions editor reviews them. This is a more careful review, looking for a group of stories that will fill a certain amount of space and read well together. You’re more likely to get a personal note if you get rejected at this stage, but it’s still uncommon. If your story is rejected at this point it’s more likely for a reason like ‘we already have a robot story we like’ or ‘we can only publish ten stories in this edition and another one resonated more personally with our editors.’ This is definitely a story to look at again and polish up for another market.

If your story makes it all the way through, congratulations! Usually the anthology will have its own editor take a look at your work and suggest edits after you’ve accepted the offer of publication. If you’re at all stressed about working with a professional editor, we’ve got a guide for that, too! Don’t forget to read the offer carefully and make sure you’re comfortable with the terms. You may want publication rights to revert to you after a certain amount of time, for example. Check this year’s primer on copyright for a reminder about what rights you have in your work and which ones you may want to sell or retain.

How to evaluate your anthology!

Not all anthologies are created equal, of course. Here are a few things to keep in mind:

• Will you get paid? Especially if the anthology is sold for money, you should be getting paid for your work. In more than an author copy. (Most of our team makes exceptions for charity anthologies, but then you’re making a mindful donation, not having your work stolen for someone else’s profit.)
• How is the anthology distributed? Does it matter to you if it’s an online-only journal or has a print edition? What does the site look like if it’s online—is it professional-looking and something you’d be proud to link to in your resume?
• What is the anthology’s reputation in the community? Use your search engine before AI scraped summaries destroy your ability to do research (not bitter, I’m not bitter) or ask around. People will know. Look at previously published authors—are you comfortable sharing a title page with them?
• Do you have to pay to submit? If so, what are you getting out of it? Some markets offer feedback as part of all paid submissions; others use the money to publish the anthology or pay the authors.

In conclusion…

Anthologies are a wonderful way to get eyes on your work as an emerging writer – your name will be there right next to a well-known author, or in a book with an exciting theme that draws readers in. And as a more established writer, they’re a fun way to flex muscles that maybe you don’t get to use that often, a shorter work or a neat prompt. They’re also a great way to rack up some publishing credits if your resume feels thin to you, and even to be eligible for genre awards like the Hugo or Pushcart. So if they’re not on your radar, consider upgrading your sensors. While you wait at the metaphorical mechanic’s shop for that to happen, consider dropping by this month’s SQS meeting! (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).

THIS MONTH’S SPECIAL GUEST

Genevra Hsu

Genevra Hsu learned to read at three years old, and has had loud opinions about writing ever since. She’s a queer martial artist, gardener and baker who lives in a 140-year-old house in Southwestern Virginia with her husband and two peaceable housecats, and when she’s not reading, writing, cussing at bindweed or coming up with weird cupcakes, she can reliably be found watching Chinese dramas. She keeps an Instagram full of garden photos at www.instagram.com/foxwatchful.

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 still TBA while we work out scheduling. (Summer, amirite?) 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