How I manage my writing submissions
I’m not interested in the hustle. The hustle will not save me.
As you may guess from the fact I’m doing a PhD in Creative Writing, I am very interested in both the craft and process of writing.
This year, one of my creative goals is to submit more short stories to publications. In the past, I haven’t done very well at this for a number of reasons. So I’ve done a lot of reflecting on how I can increase my submission numbers.
(Note: I’m using ‘short stories’ here as a blanket term for all the short pieces I write. These are usually 3,000 words or less and are either short stories (i.e. fiction) or creative nonfiction. Saying ‘short stories and creative nonfiction and whatever other weird short things I’ve written’ is a bit of a mouthful so I’ve simplified it for the purposes of this piece.)
I took a big break from submitting short stories while I was getting my Master’s degree, especially in the second year (2024).
Once I finished my thesis, a lot more time freed up in my schedule. It got me thinking about getting back out there again.
But the real big motivator behind this goal is the fact that I won the Boroondara Literary Awards in October.
Early in 2025, I wrote a list of lifetime writing goals which included winning a short story competition. I didn’t think I’d tick any of that stuff off in the same year. The win gave me a lot more confidence in my writing.
Hence, I have a renewed enthusiasm to submit more and have done some reflection about how best to do so.
So far in 2026, I’ve had two stories published: ‘Embracing being ‘wasian’ with a little help from Laufey’ for ABC Lifestyle and ‘The sad little park’ for TEXT Journal.
Part 1: Setting the scene
So as the year ticked over into 2026, I thought about the barriers to submitting. What’s stopping me? What has stopped me in the past? It all really comes down to one thing: time.
Ah, the classic problem of time. Coincidentally, also the subject of my PhD. Wouldn’t it be great if I knew the magic answer! I can’t think of a single writer I know who would turn down more time to write.
I figured there were two solutions: either 1) I needed to find a way to get more time or 2) I needed to be smarter with the time that I’ve got.
Option 1: Find more time
Famously difficult. Everyone leads a busy life. At the start of this year, I knew my free time was actually going to decrease due to starting the PhD.
Sure, it’s a PhD in Creative Writing, so it’s definitely a move towards making more time to write. But it’s more time on a specific, big project, not working on short stories of my own personal interest.
So I quickly identified that option 1 was likely a bust.
Option 2: Work smarter
So I figured option 2 was a go. I decided one of my mantras for 2026 would be to work smarter, not harder. How could I work smarter? What changes could I make to my writing process and routine?
Part 2: Writing
The biggest change I’ve made to my writing is that I only write stories that I want to write.
This might sound really obvious. But in the past, I’ve done a lot of writing in response to callouts. This is partly because I function really well when I use external deadlines as a motivating force to write.
But it’s certainly encouraged me to tweak certain things about my writing: the word count, the style, the subject. Once I even wrote a whole story that I didn’t even really like because I wrote it in the style of this particular magazine. I learnt my lesson once it got rejected and never did that again.
So in 2026, I have decided that I can use callouts as inspiration for stories but it must be something I am happy with sending out to other places afterwards.
The story must always interest me. It must excite me. The idea needs to really sing. If that’s not true, it doesn’t matter if it feels like a perfect fit for a publication. It’s not a perfect fit for me.
Overall, as much as I can, I’m trying to focus on separating the process of writing from submitting as much as I can. I want to write a story without thinking about who might publish it. To write for myself first.
Then I take those stories and put them into a ‘story bank’ which I can draw from whenever I see a callout. Instead of writing something frantically at the last minute in response to a callout, I will consult the story bank to see what I have ready to send out.
The hustle of being a writer is overwhelming and sometimes ultimately necessary but I want to minimise the hustle as much as I can. There’s no glory in the hustle. The hustle cannot last forever. The hustle burns me out at some point every year. Therefore the hustle is not my friend.
Part 3: Submitting
I told you I would talk about time so let’s get back to that. How am I managing to write these short stories when I also have a PhD to do?
Here’s how I got myself more writing time.
I didn’t change anything about my writing time, actually. I write the same way I have for the last two years: on my two dedicated writing days (Mondays and Fridays) plus some combination of late at night on the other weekday evenings and on weekends.
What I did was shift my submitting time.
There’s plenty of advice out there about how to find more time to write. A lot of it involves writing in the margins: write early in the morning, on the commute, at the train station, late at night. Whenever you have a spare fifteen minutes.
I’ve done this before. Once I wrote while waiting for Lizzy McAlpine at a concert. This strategy works for me in bursts. But it’s not sustainable.
Like I said above: long term, I’m not interested in the hustle. The hustle will not save me.
I narrowed in on one piece of advice in particular: using the time spent on my commute. I did think this was ‘wasted’ time in my week which I could use better. I mostly spend it pointlessly scrolling social media. I figured this would be okay if it makes me happy. But does it? Not really.
So I put my commuting time under scrutiny.
I commute to my office for my lawyer job twice a week. In addition, I spend a lot of time on public transport even outside of that, heading to the theatre and the football. Added together, that’s probably at least five ‘wasted’ hours a week.
Of course, I’ve thought about writing on my commute before. In the past, I’ve always found it very hard to write in that time. I’ve never been a morning person. How could I write on my way into work? I’ve gotten a lot better but miracles only go so far.
I had a brainwave: what if I used that time to chip away at the submitting part of the writing process, instead of the actual writing itself? Then, when I got to Monday/Friday, I could dedicate a bigger chunk of that more valuable time towards actually writing and the final act of submitting only. I could buy myself more writing time by getting the small, annoying things done in fifteen minute bursts.
Once I’d had the brainwave, coming up with a system to facilitate this easily followed afterwards.
I figured my biggest barrier was the fancy spreadsheet I’ve used in past years to track my submissions. A lot of writers have some kind of submission tracker – Writers SA and Devon Halliday offer templates, as an example.
The first thing I did was redesign my submission tracker so that it would be optimised for use on my phone. No more fancy columns or tabs or colour-coded rows. If it wasn’t super simple to edit on my phone, I got rid of it. I switched from a google sheet to a google doc. I turned my spreadsheet into basically one long list.
The list is split into the following categories:
Opportunities: All the details of different callouts and opportunities where I can submit my work: the name of the publication, when their submission window is open, fiction/nonfiction, word count, etc. These are listed chronologically with callouts closing soonest at the top.
Acceptance limbo: stories that have been accepted for publication but aren’t out yet. A place to keep track of whether I need to do edits, etc. I have one story in here at the moment.
Pending submissions: everything I have out at the moment with the date I’m expecting to hear back.
Story bank: a list of all my finished stories that are ready to go out with their word counts. Easy to consult as I go through the opportunities.
I track my rejections in a separate document – no need to think about those when I can avoid it. Once I get a response on a pending submission, a story moves up into acceptance limbo or over to the rejection document.
It’s only been four months of this system, but I absolutely love it. It’s working so well.
Whenever I find myself needing to kill time at a train station or on a train, I get out my phone. Instead of wasting fifteen minutes doomscrolling social media, I go through my submission tracker instead.
What I have really noticed from this change is how much of a mental load I’m carrying simply with regards to deciding which opportunities I actually want to submit to and which story I’m going to send out. It does actually take a lot of time to consider these decisions on most occasions.
Sometimes the instinct is really strong – a story is immediately perfect for a particular callout. But often it’s a balancing act of deciding and getting that done before I even get to my desk on a writing day means I arrive with a clearer head.
Part 4: Money
I’ve talked about money here before.
I’ve reaffirmed a lot of my payment principles recently and here’s where I’m currently at in relation to short stories.
I’m not interested in publishing a short story without payment unless a valid exception applies (unfortunately one of these is the fact that it’s standard practice in academic publishing not to pay, and these places offer me value for my PhD). There are many publications out there that don’t pay and they are welcome to exist but they are not for me right now.
If a publication’s website doesn’t mention payment (and ideally also rates), I will assume they don’t pay. I’m not reaching out to double check. If I can’t find the info within five minutes, I will give up on it entirely and not bother submitting.
I have extremely mixed-to-negative feelings about submission fees. If we look at the positive outcomes of my previous submissions, results are mixed: I paid $25 to enter the Text Prize. I got shortlisted which was amazing for my career, but I did not win. Still out $25 at the end of it. I paid nothing to enter the Boroondara Literary Awards; entry was free. I won $2,000 in prize money.
Currently, I don’t pay submission fees for general callouts. I may pay them for competitions and prizes.
I evaluate each competition on an individual basis by weighing up the specific circumstances. How much is the entry fee? Is there decent prize money on offer? Is it shared across several writers or all attached to the winner? Is there a publication opportunity attached? Some of my absolute nos: I do not pay to enter competitions where there is no prize money (yes, these exist, I found two new ones recently) and I do not pay to enter competitions where they do not publish the winning story, even if there is money attached.
I’m considering giving up paying entry fees entirely or at least setting a very harsh maximum limit. I definitely want to reevaluate this at the start of next year.
Final thoughts
This is the system working for me at the moment. I’m always interested in ways that I can work better. Like I said, one of my mantras for this year is to work smarter, not harder.
If you’re a writer, please tell me about your submission process! I would be genuinely interested in hearing about it.