Month: August 2016

The Night Before College

Too many years ago, August, I was a recent high school graduate. I had a party at our house, the last of the summer. The next morning I would be heading to college.

The party wound down late into the night, and I collected the friends and put them to bed / couch / floor space, getting everyone situated.

I then went out the front door and sat on the steps under the clear night and cried until I couldn’t breathe.

You see, these last two years of high school were some of the best for me. I hadn’t fit in well most of the years before, and it was here, in Maryland, I had finally found a place, found myself.

And I knew that tomorrow that would change forever. This next stage of life was coming for all of us. We were separating, spreading out, not just going to college, but leaving the area and each other. (And a good number of us wouldn’t connect again until social media started.) All starting tomorrow.

I started to sing to myself. The first song that came to mind. I sang and the words broke through the tears, calming me.

Yes, everything I knew would be changing. But I was ready, prepared. I wasn’t the same insecure kid who had moved here two years before. I had found myself amongst the amazing friends I had made. I knew I could do this.

That song? the tune that got me through this moment? the one I would remember forever? The one that I still turn up when it comes on the radio, sing along to and think of a time and friends long ago?

Where’s it At? by Beck.

Ok, so life’s soundtrack isn’t always perfect. But that’s ok too. This song would bring me strength and memories all the days to come, and all the days yet to. Tomorrow is coming. It will be time to go to school, move, find new friends, learn new things, it will be time to see who you will become.

Sing along as you go.

What Happens to your story before Publication

So, ever wonder what happens to your story in-between the submitted Word document and the final output? Here is a quick overview of what I do.

  1. I copy and paste the story into plain text. This strips out all formatting, all styles, but most importantly, all of the sins of the word processor used to create it.
  2. It is Find and Replace time! Remove the Tabs, and double spaces after punctuation. Change it so ultimately it is two hard returns after a paragraph, with no hard or soft ones in-between.
  3. Quotes are straightened, single and double. Each dash and hyphen is inspected to ensure it is the correct punctuation mark.
  4. Any spacing between sections is normalized. I use either * * * or just blank space.
  5. I open up the original again, and reformat any italics in the piece. I check to make sure the paragraph breaks are correct, all the section breaks were marked.

And now I have a clean and correctly formatted version of your story in a TXT file. From here, I can convert it to DOCX or EPUB or just about anything I want without formatting worries. If there is a change to be made, I can make it in the TXT file, and it is changed everywhere.

Submittable Status Changes (a primer)

There are a few different statuses offered by Submittable to the reader as they go through the review process.

The mostly obvious ones are “withdrawn”, “accepted” and “declined”. These three are pretty clear. “Accepted” appears in green, and “declined” in red to further the point, but with each the word is sufficient.

The trouble comes with the first ones you see: “received” and “in progress”. Specifically that “in progress” one causes much confusion.

“Received” for the most part is self explanatory. The confusion comes with the how, when and why it changes to “in progress”. For the most part, this change in the status offers little to no real information to the writer, and I would prefer it to be removed all together.

Here are the things that cause that change:

  1. Voting on the submission
  2. Leaving a note
  3. Changing the editor assignment (does not require opening the submission)
  4. Opening for editing (does not require opening the submission)
  5. Adding a tag (does not require opening the submission)

Things that do NOT change the status change:

  1. Opening the submission
  2. Reading the story
  3. Forming an opinion on the story

In other words, the editors and readers can interact with your submission and the status won’t change at all. Or, in the case of changing editorial assignments, cause it to change to “in progress” without even opening it.

That means your status can go from “received” to “accepted” without ever seeing “in progress”. It also means it can go to “in progress” without anyone ever looking at it. Either way, the status is offering not much to the writer other than confusion.

The more you know…. star swoosh