Writing for Literary Journals

There is something rather exciting about literary journals. Your story can suddenly find itself alongside writers you've admired, being read by people you don't know, in a publication you might never have discovered otherwise. But where do you start?

The first thing I'd say is read the journals. Don't simply find a list of publications and fire your story off to every one of them. Spend some time reading what they actually publish. You'll soon get a feel for the kind of stories, voices and subjects that appear there.  Many of them have archives and issues online, free to read.

And don't fall into the trap of thinking you need to make your writing sound “literary”. You don't. Good writing is good writing. Concentrate on the story, the characters, the language and what you are trying to say.

Then there are the practicalities. Read the submission guidelines carefully. Check the word count. Check whether simultaneous submissions are allowed. Check the formatting requirements and whether the journal has a particular theme or submission window. And then submit.

This is where it can become difficult, because rejection is part of the process. A story can be very good and still not be right for a particular journal. There may be hundreds of submissions for a handful of places. Sometimes the editor simply isn't looking for the kind of story you've sent. Sadly, this is part and parcel of being a writer who submits, so don't let one rejection convince you that the story isn't good enough. Try somewhere else. And somewhere else.

The more you read literary journals, the more you'll discover what you like as a reader as well as what might suit your own work. You may even find publications you hadn't come across before.

A little challenge for this week: choose a literary journal you've never read before and read three stories from it. What do you notice? What do the stories have in common? And, most importantly, did you enjoy reading them? Because ultimately, that's what we're looking for as writers too: somewhere our stories might make a reader want to turn the page.