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.

Finishing is just the beginning

So, a quick reminder:

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

Whether you’re looking for a slot on the roster of one of the Big Five or a byline in a free online newspaper, at some point you’ll have to do the scary thing and send your work out into the world. This month we’re talking about exactly what that looks like. No, really, that’s not a euphemism for describing the process. We’re going to tell you exactly what you see in front of you before you hit “send.” Or at least we’ll tell you how to figure that out. Ready? Are you absolutely sure you found all the typos? Let’s do this. 

Post haste

Back in the Olden Days (so, approximately until our EIC graduated college) submission was a slow process. You had to figure out where you were sending your manuscript, article, etc., type it all up, add a cover letter, and put it in the Actual Physical Mail. I know. Then you had to wait for a reply – also by mail – after the publisher decided. Now the process is slow for other reasons, but one thing hasn’t changed: the essence of what you’re sending.

What has changed is that because of the ease of copying, pasting, and formatting, individual publishers and publications can have a little more leeway to ask for something they find easy to read and process in bulk. But it all starts from the old style of submission, so we’ll start with the original beast:

Manuscript format

Manuscript format is designed to ensure that your submission is easy to read, looks professional, and contains all the information needed to identify and contact the author as well as replace any loose pages. While you probably don’t have to worry about pages falling out of your .pdf, some submissions editors and agents still find reading in bulk easier on paper, and they will print your submissions, so keep that possibility in mind while you’re doing any design work and formatting.

Manuscript format means:

• 12 point font, usually Times New Roman
• double spaced
• one inch margins
• first line on paragraphs indented 0.5″

For longer submissions like stories, novellas, and books, you will need to include:

• in the upper left corner of the first page, put your name and contact information. You may, if you wish, include relevant professional memberships.
• in the upper right corner, include an approximate or exact wordcount (depending on the type of work you’re submitting, and to where)
• add a header to page 2 and all subsequent pages indicating your surname, the title of the work, and the page number, separated by forward slashes (i.e. Austen / Pride and Prejudice / 3)

The only time you should deviate from this formatting is when you are specifically instructed to. This is not the time to use Zapf Chancery because you think it looks pretty.

Some word processing programs will turn your work into manuscript format from whatever you’re writing in at the push of a button. Others (looking at you, Word) won’t, so the closer you can keep your preferred writing style to manuscript format the better (maybe get the margins and tabs set correctly so that you only have to change the font and line spacing?).

To cover letter or… not

For this one, there’s no default. You’re going to have to go look at the submission guidelines. And then you’re probably going to have to go through the dance of “they said they want a cover letter with all this information, did they mean just put it in the email or should I attach another letter?”

OK we lied, there is a default, and the default is don’t try to get fancy. Your cover letter is going to someone who reads all day for a living. They do not, and we cannot stress this enough, want to contend with your photo essay cover letter in five fonts with centered headings in bold and three font sizes. What they want is something they can assess quickly and without additional eyestrain.

You may be tempted to use AI here. DO NOT THE AI. If you need to use it to generate a sample cover letter that you will then personally rewrite every word of to get it in your own voice? Go for it, but honestly the market you’re submitting to will often provide a sample or a link to a sample if they are asking for a cover letter, so why not take the actually easier route and just use that one as a form?

This isn’t — or it doesn’t have to be — the same kind of stress as writing a cover letter for a resume. It is SHORT, and there will be a list of REQUIRED CONTENT. You can do this! It’s a prompt! You know how prompts work! You’ll need a salutation, a please consider my [type of work],[title] for [publication/representation/etc], a list of your credits if any (and if not, a sentence saying you’ve very much enjoyed works from that publication and would be honored to be included), and a goodbye. That’s it, that’s the tweet. Or whatever we call tweets now.

And now for something completely different

Whether you’re sending a pitch or a complete manuscript, a query or a contest entry, you will always have the same question: When will I hear back and what should I do about it?

Remember the advice you got about editors? Double it for submissions editors, agents, and publishing houses. We. Talk. To. Each. Other. Bear that in mind as we walk through your next steps.

First, make sure that you get all your submissions in your spreadsheet! You do have a spreadsheet, right? Start one. In that spreadsheet you’re also going to note the estimated turnaround time. Put a calendar reminder for yourself at that time (Rowan, like many ND people, actually sets an alarm instead because calendars are a lot of visual noise) and then do your best to forget you ever submitted anything. Either you’ll hear back by then or you won’t, and no amount of thinking about it is going to make you more confident or affect the outcome. If the place you’re submitting doesn’t have an estimated turnaround time, make one up based on similar pubs, and find a way to note that this is your estimate rather than theirs. But if they’ve listed a turnaround time, that’s a clear signal that they don’t want to be bothered before then.

Now, sometimes an amount of time passes that is more than you think is reasonable. This is especially true if you’re submitting an article or personal essay that needs to be timely. In that case, it’s fair to follow up with a short note asking if your work is still being reviewed because if not you’d like to be able to submit it elsewhere (this assumes that the market has a no simultaneous submissions policy, which many do). There’s no need to re-send the whole thing; you’re more likely to get a reply if you make this a quick, polite email that’s fast to parse and just needs a yes/no answer. This is the one you should have AI help you write, and then you can edit it to make sure that a person can answer it in very few words and that the central question is visible and clear. But there aren’t a lot of great forms for this and you’re nervous, so if you’re inclined to use AI there’s no good reason not to. (There, see? We told you we weren’t against AI, just that it has its place and creativity is not its place.) But remember, keep it as simple as “do you like me? check yes or no.” The person should be able to respond in one sentence: “yes, we’re still considering your work” or “I’m sorry, you should have received a letter, good luck finding a place for your work.”

When you’re rejected, and you probably will be at least once in your career, note it in your spreadsheet. Acknowledge that this market and your work didn’t feel like as good a fit to them as it did to you. And move on with your life. Do not, under any circumstances, contact the editor, publisher, agent, etc. to let them know they’re making the biggest mistake of their career. Because, ironically, that might be the biggest mistake of yours. And don’t broadcast “BigPub is just a bunch of cowards, they’re not ready for a real book” all over the internet, either. Eat a pint of ice cream (or sorbet if you’re lactose intolerant), cry on your best friend, and get on with the next thing, which is going to have a much better chance of getting published if it’s not associated with a name you’ve personally dragged through your very own mud patch. We talk! To each other!

How do I know for sure?

Look, nobody wants to throw your work away before reading it (no promises about after, we don’t know you or them). So please believe us when we say THEY WILL TELL YOU WHAT THEY WANT. The New York Times does it. They tell you exactly what email address to use, what to put in the subject line, that your essay needs to be attached as well as pasted into the email… everything. And for the bits they don’t tell you, like how to format that MSWord-readable file? Default to manuscript format. Academic publishers do it. Literary agencies do it. 

And if this feels like a lot to manage? Many authors keep their work in, you guessed it, manuscript format, and save off a new copy that meets the guidelines for submission when they send it out. Most places don’t deviate much from manuscript format, so even if you miss a bullet point somewhere, you have a high likelihood of being almost right.

In conclusion…

We hope this month’s post didn’t feel dry and preachy, but if you’re left wanting a bit more than “please read the submissions guidelines on the website,” come hang out while real life publishers and submissions editors talk shop and share stories in 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 GUESTS

Victoria Barrett

Victoria Barrett is the founder, editor, and publisher of Engine Books, a boutique fiction press. In that role, she has published more than 30 titles, including winners of Lambda, IPPY, and PEN regional awards, garnering stellar reviews in NYTBR, O the Oprah Magazine, People, Entertainment Weekly, Publishers Weekly, Kirkus Reviews, and more. Her own fiction and nonfiction have appeared in The New School, MonkeyBicyle, Gay Magazine, Colorado Review, and Washington Post, among other outlets.

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 Thursday, June 13, at 6pm 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