Submitting Short Stories

I must admit, I have been more focused on working on/polishing what I refer to as my POS (piece of sh**), but others may call it a WIP- Chasing Manson. The first draft is complete, but I need to make some se-riou-s changes to it. Anyway, in the mad fervor to compelte my novel, I forgot about it's ugly, red-headed step-child- the short story (short stories are almost one of my nemesis-people ALWAYS think my short stories are part of a longer piece). I am in a MFA program so I wrote a few short stories, but I need to complete more to meet my word requirment for my creative thesis- and I just want to write more short stories. I was reading the Writer magazine and an article pointed out how good it looks for a writer to have their stories published in a literary magazine- well, duh!

So, I am trying to get to work on some new short stories to submit to various magazines. I have a short-short that I sent to a few mags back in October and I only recieved one rejection- the others haven't bothered to contact me yet. When I work on more quality material I will follow the advice from John Matthew Fox (he's published fiction in Tampa Review, Los Angeles Review, and Pedestal Magazine, and nonfiction in teh Los Angeles Times and US Airways Magazine) and his article in the Writer magazine's April 2010 issue:

• He offers up the best and worst times to submit to lit mags- best is in September, worst after Christmas, and university mags are closed during summer breaks so don't submit to those in May and June.
• The length should be around 4,000 words.
• Submit to local lit mags
• Go for issues that have a theme
• Don't worry if you have no pubish credits to your name
• KNOW the journal that you submit to (research it)
• And don't stress over the cover letter

There is more details in the article that will help if you are interested. You can also visit John Matthew Fox's blog to get more of his insight on short stories and publishing.

You can go to The Writer Website to get some insight on various lit mags. Click on Writing Resources :) (You have to become a member to view) Have fun!