Unsubmit...Unacceptable!

by Nancy Sackheim

You toiled for hours/months/years on your short story/poem/manuscript before finally submitting it. 

 The wait begins.  24 hours/three days/a week.  No response.  What can possibly be taking so long?

You pull out/up your masterpiece and the self doubt begins as you obsess about that less than elegant sentence/the redundant paragraph/the typo in your cover letter. Maybe you should have submitted your other work of genius and kept revising this one.

Now you're grateful there's been no response.  Maybe no one has read your submission yet.  Maybe it's not too late to...unsubmit.

Before you log on and hit the withdraw button, take a deep breath.  How will withdrawing make you look?  Nathaniel Tower, creator and managing editor of the former online lit mag Bartleby Snopes, opines barring acceptance elsewhere, there's virtually no acceptable excuse for withdrawal.  His exasperation as an editor is clear in this Bartleby Snopes Writing Blog excerpt:

"Once you send out a story, you just need to wait. Found a typo? Okay. Just wait to hear back from the venue. One typo isn’t going to be the difference between your story being published and being sent to a literary wasteland. Be patient and have some bloody confidence in your abilities.

It may not seem like a big deal--after all, it only takes a few seconds to withdraw. But it is. And not just because it wastes an editor’s time.

Withdrawal makes you look bad as a writer. It sends the message that you don’t take your time on your work and that you don’t care about the editors. Withdrawing a piece for a reason other than “accepted elsewhere” is the equivalent of telling that venue: 'I am an amateur.' And that’s really the best case scenario. ...

 If you want to get accepted, you need to send out stories only when they’re in publishable condition. You also need to act like a professional. Nothing says unprofessional like pulling your work away before a venue even has a chance to respond. If you withdraw, I promise they will remember you. And not in a good way. "