Speed

I'm always skeptical of when a literary agency, journal or competition has a rapid turnaround.

On one hand, it's great to have a clear idea of when the result will arrive. The average eight-week (but usually longer) waiting time can be agonizing. I'm often tortured by regret that I didn't send a better version of a story, poem or opening of my novel, simply because at the time I submitted, the piece was in the best state it could possibly be. I'd workshopped it, edited it, rinse, repeat; but I hadn't caught that one trite line, shitty word choice, or complete restructure necessary to strengthen it. So in sum, the brief waiting period leaves little time to moan and pine over what could have been. If I'm accepted, all that worrying was for nothing. And if I'm rejected, it was a quick test-run of what the piece could become.

On the other, I have to ask why the wait time is so short. Do they not receive many submissions? Do they not invest much time in reading their submissions? Given how little transparency there is around the submission/consideration process, and how frenetic us writers can be, it shouldn't be surprising that paranoia rears its head in these circumstances. Especially when one of the most common excuses inserted in a slush pile email is "we received such a high volume of submissions and had to forego so many beautiful pieces". The smallest violin plays even louder when you consider word limits, number of readers on staff (which is often very few), and other factors that all point to the hunch that, just maybe, they dropped your piece after reading about 100 words. Or, in the case of poetry, they skimmed the title, maybe a few lines, and didn't vibe with it.

This is a cruel assumption, but it's worth discussing. Why set a high word limit and quick response period if you cannot devote a suitable amount of time to reviewing your submissions? When a competition/agency has a long review period, I'm confident that the readers or judges devote a suitable amount of time to reading each submission and reviewing its merits. This is especially the case with prose. The expectation set is tantamount to the journal or judge's capacity, publication plans, and other factors.

Obviously I could be wrong, as my only experience reviewing journal submissions was for The Sarah Lawrence Review. We were a small, student-run publication. We did receive a considerable number of submissions, but the turnaround time was not one week. We didn't over-promise our capacity to give each piece the consideration it deserved. I remember setting aside a few evenings and structuring my coursework around reviewing poetry submissions to make sure I didn't just skim them while rushing to do something else. But this was just one experience, at one student publication that only opened its submissions to other members of the college. I imagine the publications that are open to the public take that into account, and are therefore quite ruthless in who they shortlist or publish. So then why, and how, does a one-week review period work?

I welcome anyone who works for one of these presses, who stumbles across this article and is infuriated that I would underestimate their processing power, to explain what exactly takes place during a tight submission turnaround. How do you sustain it? How much are your readers paid to undertake this labor? What's your acceptance rate? This is the level of transparency we should be asking for.

In lieu of personalized feedback, us writers are owed at least an explanation of how submissions are reviewed, because at the moment it all feels like it's based on vibes or a bullet-point list of do's and don'ts that we can only access if we sacrifice £30-£200 for a one-night-only Zoom workshop or Agent 1-2-1.

My skepticism around turnaround speed is also derived from personal experience. A couple months ago, I submitted a poem to a journal that had a one-week response time. I checked their social media afterwards and saw they were quite frantically reaching their submission limit, so I crossed my fingers that I made it into their inbox in time.

Sure enough, the poem was rejected, and that wouldn't have been anything to bat an eye at. What surprised me was that I received a response within hours of submitting.

I want to be clear that my skepticism didn't arise from bitterness, but from surprise. That poem did need work, and it's undergone some edits, so I'm glad it was rejected. I'm glad I can submit a more polished version to another journal. But without any sense of how this journal considered my work, I'm left to assume they gave it a skim and passed on it.

I don't think us writers should settle for skimming when we spend hours, even days, writing and editing these pieces—and often contorting them to fit submission guidelines. It is right for us to ask, to kick up a little fuss, to understand what happens to our creative expression in the hands of someone else.