No, it's not a type of cereal. Camp ends at the end of the month, and I'm behind. Not just, "write a bit more these days and you'll be fine" behind. More like, "pull some marathon writing sessions and you might come out of it" fine.

​My word count is around 15k out of my 50k goal. However, I am missing some words I wrote because I don't like to include ongoing edits without editing the entire part. Also, I have been doing a lot of planning and brainstorming, which generally leads to less words on the page until they all pour out at once.

Can I still make it? Yes, of course.

Will I? That depends on my situation. I lost a couple days to feeling ill, so I plan to write like crazy this weekend, spew out words like a wood-chipper generates splinters, and see where I am.

Good luck to all my fellow Wrimos out there!

A good book speaks for itself and conjures up its own images in the reader's mind. A good book, however, still needs a good cover.

Literary magazines today rely on shorter content, especially online magazines, because reading long paragraphs isn't as easy on the web. But almost every lit mag benefits from visual material.

Online lit mags with no cover images, branding, and/or web design seem...too plain. Unprofessional websites are a huge turnoff for me when I'm seeking new places to send my work because I want my work to not only be published, but also presented.

Thus, I don't think that visual/literary pairings always work, but I think every lit mag needs to explore visual ways to presentation. Some of the best, most memorable lit mags and sites--take a look at Synaesthesia's website and any of their issues--incorporate visual features.

The bottom line is that lit mags often need art. Although Duotrope doesn't list art as a separate 'market,' I have a process for finding and submitting to markets that has worked well for me. This does require a Duotrope subscription, which I highly recommend to keep track of all writerly and artistic submissions:

• Filter deadlines by date (I often research markets the month they close for submissions), check "include unthemed," and search for 'fiction' or 'poetry.' I use this method at the same time of looking for fiction/poetry markets, so I can cover more opportunities at once.
• Search through the names, open them in new tabs, click through to their site, and find their submission guidelines. Again, Duotrope doesn't list visual art as a market, so you must look manually. However, I like to vet all markets by looking at their guidelines page before I'll even consider submitting. I also like to check out the format of their issues so I understand how they publish work.
• Save links to the guidelines or submission managers of the 'good' ones, with a note about what work they accept, whether they have esoteric requirements, when the deadline is, and what piece(s) you might want to send them. I do this so that I can start matching submissions to markets, and, if there's a specific piece I want to shop, so that I can gauge whether I need to find more potential markets for that piece.
• Before I submit, I double check the guidelines and make sure I'm sending the right type of work in the right format. (I don't send to magazines that have really esoteric requirements as a rule because my time is valuable--for art and writing).

Then, it's submission time! I'll talk more about the content of the artistic submission process, standard formatting, and my procedures in upcoming posts. 

Last week, I wrote about tips I'd learned at AWP on starting a lit mag. I distilled what I considered universal knowledge from the panelists in the sessions I'd attended. Today, I'm going to talk about some of the binary choices they made, and some decisions that were not unanimous.

• University affiliated? Although relationships with their sponsoring universities differed, some magazines preferred the freedom of only answering to themselves. They also cautioned that academic affiliations don't give as much funding as it might seem to outsiders. However, the benefits of affiliation seemed clear: a reputation and audience overnight, some funding and administrative assistance, and a steady volunteer stream.
• Print or online? While most journals have been increasingly answering both to this question, new journals must consider whether it's cost-effective to fund a print publication, which necessarily has a smaller circulation than an online-only mag. Against online-only journals, panelists said two things: first, it's great for Kickstarters and other campaigns to have a print product--although you should offer more than "just" your product as rewards--second, there's the undeniable joy of having created a physical object.
• Multimedia or more traditional? Against the wave of new media pairings and presentation is the unfun reality of hosting costs. If you host a lot of video content, you must have somewhere to store it--and if you intend to archive it electronically forever, you have to keep increasing storage space, which can add to the already-high costs of having a web presence.
• Professional design and tech support, or DIY approach? Some drew the line at potentially causing more harm than good; others saw it as cool that running a lit mag forced them to develop a jack-of-all-trades skillset. However, all the panelists insisted that once you know your personal limits, it's best to have professionals step in if you can't deliver an acceptable standard of quality. Even if the professional is your best friend that you've wheedled into a bit of pro-bono work.
• Paying for submissions or unpaid? While most agreed that submissions should be free, others held that paying even $1 for something makes people more cautious about whether their work is ready to send or not. Most agreed that trying to find and diversify income streams is a good idea in any case.
• Submittable? There are undeniable benefits to using a submission manager, but even Submittable's steep discount for lit mags still puts the price at a premium for most new lit mags. All of the people with a lit mag startup I met at AWP agreed that some capital was necessary to begin the lit mag. However, it's perfectly acceptable for new magazines to just have an email address for submissions. Again, this one probably depends on how much money you can spend on upfront costs, and where to allocate those costs.

I hope this advice helped. Please check out Hapax, my new literary venture, and comment or share if this post helped you!