Submissions, ain’t they a bitch, right?
If you’ve ever been a writer, you’ve thrown yourself into the sacrificial pit of judgement called submissions. Submissions, for the uninitiated, is the process of having optimism that 95% of the lipstick lesbian trust fund kid people that are looking for the next big fucking thing that slipped from their ass cracks as they took a shit becomes an overnight success.
The other 5% are the holdovers that remember when the Jews that didn’t have a stick shoved up their ass was looking for the realest things they could get their hands on regardless of your race, creed, or color and wanted to give you a break and get the work out there. You know, publish the shit people actually wanted to read.
Not everyone is in the corporate culture of gatekeeping virtue signalers going on with submissions with sensitivity readers and lipstick lesbian trust fund kid agents they have to answer to lest they lose funding from PenguinRandomSchuster acolytes and their minions. Amazon cut out all the indies from their Subscriptions Massacre of 2023 that even Cosmopolitan barely got out unscathed, so there’s some hope if you’re looking for real humans to give your best work to that don’t have all the hang ups.
Writers, stop treating every submission process (not just one particular submission) like you’re trying to please the American corporate censorship overlords and submit substandard work not because you can’t write better but because you’re intentionally watering down stories/OpEds as if hoping a lipstick lesbian virture signaling gatekeeper in the American literary cabal will give you a golden ticket to the big leagues of bullshit books. And by all means, do not use AI to keep in tow to the fine line of American literary censorship, because people absolutely, positively DO NOT WANT ANY DRIVEL THAT WOULD GIVE A SENSITIVITY READER A HARD ON before they called themselves a perv for it.
Translation: do not have bad submission etiquette.
1. Do not submit work and then feel so uncomfortable using curse words that you self-censor them out with strikeouts and asterisks. Writers are the last bastion of freedom of speech – if anybody you submit to has a problem with seeing the word FUCK or SHIT in 2026 in adult publications, tell them to kiss your black ass down to the dark crevice and blackball their asses. Pro tip: What you don’t do is be a pussy and get to ass tricking asterisks.
2. Do not submit work and you need AI to help you formulate the beginning and ending of your story, then need more AI to help you make it “flow”. Nobody wants to read AI generated prompt rehashments and that what AI is, because if 1,000 people asked AI to submit the same similar prompt you did, what the fuck did you think as going to happen. All you are is a low brow thief with bad comprehension. Pro tip: don’t bad mouth the people at any publication that are anti-AI. If you want to hasten your demise that’s fine, but don’t think everybody is going down the road of AI hell with you.
3. Do not submit work after going on a heavy personal racial rant on social media and then block key people on the publication you’re trying to get in. Sure, some publications absolutely stand by freedom of speech, but there is a lot who won’t. Great editors like the late great Asa Barber overlooked a lot of antics of Hunter S. Thompson’s ass and antics, but are you that good for him to do it? Writers have to put your fucking dick and balls in a story to make somebody like that defend your ass, and that ain’t going to happen if you’re submitting egg cream work that’s curdled on arrival. Pro tip: keep it classy and professional; use a personal account that’s locked from general public eyes if you want to be David Duke and you write like a creampuff.
4. Don’t talk shit about a publication just because you got shitted on by another publication and now everybody is the villain. Yeah, a lot of those lipstick lesbian corporate places got criteria up the ass, like you can’t have multiple subs here, there, everywhere. And yeah, you might be waiting to hear back up to 500 days. That’s no reason to clown the smaller publication who probably is a indie, because guess what dingus, 75% of commercial publications do not take unsolicited work, while 99.99999% of indies do! Pro tip: The indie community is biggie smalls, so anything you say or do will be circulated.
5. Don’t submit rehashments from known properties. Nobody wants to read 1,001 Vibrator Rabbit tale rehashments of Gone Girl or whatever is the “hot happening thing” in that American genre. Write some real shit. Something people can relate to. Root for. Not just tropes remixed to death because you think it’s going to get you a head pat into the 120lbs of unwashed chitterling shit of PenguinRandomSchuster. Pro tip: stop trying to follow the templated themes of PenguinRandomSchuster, because everything they’ve been coming out with since 2001 is DOA and NOBODY wants to read it that cares about good American literature.
6. Don’t submit work for fucking sensitivity readers! Boycott any publication that uses them. You’re a fucking adult. You’re not submitting to be judged on use of language or cultural stylings. You don’t pander to Karens and Chad’s that only care about checking boxes and you missing a couple not including BIPOCS or LGBTQQAIs or whatever bullshit up their asses they think fits into their morality crammed up their predominately uptight assholes. Be true to yourself and your characters, not some asshole hiding behind a computer screen that thinks the entire country’s morality is going down the tubes because you said fuck. Pro tip: Read #1 carefully, then tell those publications to kiss your Black ass down to the dark crevices.
7. Don’t submit to places with a laundry list of things they don’t allow. Boycott any publication that has a list. Again, you;re a fucking adult. Nobody gatekeeping virtue signaling asshole should be telling you what you can and cannot write lest you offend some prick and they fear of being cancelled by the sheep herd they pander to. Again, be true to yourself and your characters, not some asshole hiding behind a computer screen that thinks the entire country’s morality is going down the tubes because you wrote a prostitute come up dead in an alley with semen in her air, killed a few animals, and had some racist asshole give an instruction manual on how to make ladens for a noose. Pro tip: Read #1 and #6 carefully then tell those publications to kiss your Black ass down to the dark crevices.
In other words – send your best fucking shit to publications, the work you want people to remember you for when you die that’s so good they miss your dead ass when you go to glory.
Nobody likes submissions once they understand the literary business. That’s the honest fucking hard ass truth because who in their right mind is cray-cray enough to like to be judged by a predominately uptight asshole collective? But you’re doing it, so act like its 1970 and go into a submission process like the world can take being offended. No one cares what you are, who you are. Checkboxes haven’t been invented yet. All you want to do is tell a good story and tell it damn well.
It isn’t hard to ask if you’re a real writer.
