Don't Wait to Submit

When I shared with one of my kids that I had books coming out in consecutive months this year, he nodded with appreciation. That’s right: Books releasing this year are in June, July, August, September, October, November and December.

 

Then he made a suggestion: Don’t get all of my books published so close together.

 

I am not sure why he suggested this, but perhaps he thought that this might build an expectation from readers that I’ll have a book coming out every month. (Spoiler: This won’t happen in 2025.) Or maybe he thought I would run out of books to submit (which is kinda funny, considering ALL of the books I have in either writing stage, revision stage, or editing stage). Or perhaps he thought I might run out of ideas for things to write – which is actually not possible, either, because I have loads of ideas for books in my files and plan to tackle them after I get through the first round of books.

 

Either way, while I appreciated my child’s suggestion, I wasn’t ready to take it. I’m one of those people who believes that I must do things NOW. Not later or “when I have the time” or “after my kids grow up and move out” or “when I’m rich and famous.”

 

No, I need to do things now. I can’t put things off. I can’t wait.

 

Maybe it’s because I’m 50 now.

Maybe it’s because I have had one brush with death too many.

Maybe it’s because I feel driven to DO stuff.

 

Whatever the reason, all I know is that if I am able to do something now, I will do it now.

 

I get it that not everybody feels this way. More importantly, I understand that there are writers out there struggling with insecurities and uncertain about whether or not they are ready to submit their writing.

 

It’s tough getting over the anxiety and dread of submitting your work for publication. I struggled with this before I became a freelance writer. I read ALL of those articles that were published and thought, “I could never write like that.” So I practiced first. I wrote practice articles. This gave me enough confidence to submit my writing. After several months of persistently submitting and querying, I finally got published.

 

You have to have a lot of faith in yourself to submit your writing out there into the world. But most of all, you have to have a lot of guts to get your work out there. I often say that writers need to have thick skin and this is especially true in making the leap to submit your work.

 

Don’t wait for the right time; now is the right time. Go for it. Submit your work, query that magazine, pitch that agent. Tomorrow is never promised, so if you want to get your work published, then get it out there so that it can get published.