On Contests and Publication Challenges or What to Do, What to Say?

So I just submitted another story (“The Numbers” from Wednesday/Thursday this week) to another contest (New Millennium Writings). Hooray, she said! I wanted to submit two – there was another sponsored by Boston Review, but their 2011 submissions were already closed (grr, argh). While they were willing to accept 2012 submissions, I was not so much wanting to submit something for a year from now… I mean, who knows where my writing will be/what I will feel like in a year – eek, she said.

The reasoning behind the contests: I am trying to figure out how to get my work reviewed/garner some feedback and put my writing in front of people who have the potential to help me get published. I have heard one story so far of someone who got a book deal as a result of a publisher seeing their book posted serially on their blog. More often, though, I am seeing things that make me leery of posting anything that I intend to have/try to have published on the blog. The reason: the concept of publication.
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Turns out, a lot of people/places (including many contests, journals, magazines) consider a story posted on your own personal blog to have been “published” – and therefore ineligible for submission. On one hand I certainly can understand this – magazines/periodicals that people pay for do not want to be in the business of making subscribers pay for things they could have had for free. I get it. But on the other hand, I don’t really see how posting something on my blog constitutes “publication” of any scale to threaten the sales statistics of a journal/magazine. My precise circulation is unknown, but I do know that I have less than 100 followers each through Google and Networked Blog/Facebook, plus however many people subscribe to the feed and/or just view the site on a regular basis. The New York Times, it ain’t, folks.

So what is the problem, you ask? Well, I will tell you. It takes time to write. That is the problem.

It takes time to write blog posts, time to write short stories/flash fiction, time to write book reviews, time to muse, and time to write my “real” fiction (i.e., story compilations and novels). A surprising amount of time. And if I have to write each of these as completely separate entities that cannot be repurposed or leveraged for more than one submission/post, I run smack-ass into the time problem. You see, no matter how hard I’ve tried or how persuasive I’ve been, I’ve never been able to make a day longer than twenty-four hours. And believe me, I can be pretty persuasive. But on this one, nothing. Zip, zero, zilch results. A day simply will not get longer for me.

Each hour I spend working on book reviews or blog posts is an hour I am not spending working on my “real” writing – fiction. I don’t mean to denigrate reviews or posts – I enjoy both and believe they are perfectly valid forms of writing. But they are not what I got into this game to do. I did not set out to be a blogger or book reviewer; I became those things as a means to (a) make myself start writing and (b) get some exposure for me/my writing ability. Oh yeah, and (c) to get free books. Teehee. And I have been surprised to find how much time it takes to think up interesting (at least to me – I hesitate to speak for you, oh beloved readers) things to write about or comment on, or to write book reviews. I’ve been especially surprised at how long the reviews take me, honestly. I mean, I’ve always talked about books and given my opinions more than freely. But I’ve found that writing reviews now is rather like writing book reports used to be in grade school. Not the worst task, but one that gets surprisingly monotonous over time, even when the books are different.

So what am I left with, you ask? Well, I guess I have to keep plugging away and stockpiling writings so that I have enough to use in all the various places/formats I can find. And that I also have to keep hoping that the networking and outreach and postings I’m doing are getting me out in front of some people who can not only enjoy my writing but one day actually do something about it. In the meantime, I’ll keep trying to find contests and publications that will take things that I have already posted on the blog. They do exist, I have found some already. It just takes a little bit of time to find things that I consider reputable/worthy (teehee – I’m such a snob) and then to winnow out the ones that are good fits. But hey, I can do that – all it requires is time… 😉