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Fiction & the Real World - Publication
Unit Completion Date: End of Week 13
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Publication can serve other purposes, which can make the process worth the time and effort. It can serve as a reward for all of those long hours spent in front of your computer, and an encouragement for the long hours to come. If you are interested in pursuing a graduate degree and perhaps teaching at some point, a publication history can strengthen applications.
Perhaps the most useful way a writer can use publication, however, is to gauge the quality of his work and receive some outside confirmation of improvements in his skill. A few pieces placed in small literary journals can tell you that you're on the right track. Having your story published in a major magazine usually means you must be doing something very right. Even rejection notices can be good news, if you know what to look for.
Gauging your work through publication requires an understanding of the literary marketplace, if only a very basic one. You must generally be able to distinguish between those publications that are likely to help your publication history, those that are coveted publications and those that are likely to hurt your chances of getting published in better magazines. You need to have an understanding of how to approach the good ones and how to avoid the bad ones. To make it all more complicated, the market also changes depending on the genre in which you write.
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