A tip for all the aspiring and/or newbie short-form writers: when you’re submitting your writing to a magazine, make sure your file formatting, subject line, and email content follow every guideline to the letter. An editor I recently met at Worldcon told me that 70% of submitters fail at that earliest stage.

Part of my success with selling as many stories as I do (in addition to constantly improving my craft) is that I read and re-read those guidelines pages over and over: every submission I send out perfectly matches that publication’s requirements. That alone puts me ahead of ~70% of the others.

Don’t fail at the very beginning.

And hey… good luck.