by Suzanne Lieurance
Most writers who want to submit more don’t have a motivation problem. They have a system problem.
They wait until a piece feels finished enough, then spend a few scattered hours researching markets, then lose momentum and move on to something else. The submission never goes out. Or it goes out once and then nothing happens for several months.
A submission habit works differently. It removes the decision-making from the process so the only thing left to do is the doing.
A Simple Submission Habit
Here’s what a simple, sustainable submission habit looks like. You pick one day a week — Friday morning, Sunday evening, whatever fits your life — and you call it your submission day. On that day, you do one submission-related task. That’s it. Not five. One.
Some weeks that means researching one new publication and adding it to a running list. Some weeks it means polishing a piece that’s almost ready. Some weeks it means actually submitting. The point is that something happens every week, even if it’s small, so the habit stays alive even during the weeks when life is demanding.
The running list matters more than most writers realize. When you have a document — even a simple one — that tracks which pieces you have, which markets you’re considering, and where things have already been submitted, the research burden disappears from each individual session. You open the list, you do the next thing, you close it.
It also helps to release submission from outcome. If you’re waiting to see what happens with each piece before you submit the next one, you’ll spend most of your time waiting. Submissions go out. Responses take weeks or months.
These two timelines should run in parallel, not in sequence.
Send the next thing before you hear back about the last one. Keep the work moving. That’s the whole system.
A submission habit won’t guarantee publication. But it will guarantee your work is consistently out in the world, where it has a chance.
This month’s issue of Manifesting Monthly magazine goes deep on what it means to build a visible, sustainable writing life. Subscribe at [link] and make June the month everything shifts.
Suzanne Lieurance is the author of over 40 published books and a transformational Law of Attraction coach for writers who are ready to stop waiting to feel like the real thing. At Write by the Sea, she guides writers through the identity shift that changes everything — not just the writing, but the whole life built around it. She is the publisher of Manifesting Monthly magazine and the host of Monday Morning Manifestors.
