I have a Spring resolution to begin submitting poetry to literary journals, with the hope of getting at least one piece published this year. I’m not sure yet if this goal is modest or naive, but I figure you’ve got to start somewhere, some time. So I selected some university journals to submit to, and began the task of choosing and refining the pieces I wanted to offer.

Now, one of the questions I had had about blogging, right from the beginning, was whether or not any poems that I posted for the public would be considered “previously published”, according to an editor at a literary rag. As you may or mayn’t know, basically every literary journal / press / agent / whatever out there will not consider your work if it has been previously published in any form. Using common sense (that cruel betrayer) I figured a measly blog couldn’t possibly count, and went on my merry poetic way, posting random verses on Dying Fire, my companion-blog, just to get an idea of how they would be received. I mean, it’s just a blog, right? It’s my work, right? Right. I started putting poems up, and it was nice to get some feedback, so I put up some more. I didn’t worry much over the whole “previously published” issue – until I started researching literary journals.

Let’s make a long story short, here:

DON’T POST ANYTHING ON THE INTERNET THAT YOU MIGHT LATER WANT TO PUBLISH.

Ever.

Online content, even just blogging, is considered by most editors (to my discernment) as “previously published”, and thus typically ineligible for submission to anywhere else. Once it’s online, it’s off the table. Why not simply delete the piece, you ask? Well, if you know the internet, you know that it’s an all-consuming data-whore, and nothing is ever truly erased, even when it is. Harsh realities, I know. Thus, when it came time for me to pick the poems that I wanted to send out to the presses, I had to forget about using anything that was on the blog. Fortunately, that was mostly older material, but there were a couple on there that I would have liked to refine and submit, had they not been permanently banished to the virtual realm by my zealous ignorance.

So today’s short post is a warning to others, a versified-head-on-a-digital-pike, of this potentially irritating technicality. I’ll still post poetry on my companion-blog, but only bits and pieces that I don’t intend to publish externally. Of course, the whole issue is certainly subjective – some editors probably couldn’t care less about what’s on your blog, others might be googling every entry they get. And there are loopholes, like posting “excerpts” for critiquing, while keeping the bulk of the piece unpublished. But for me, when it comes to the high-anxiety game of literary submissions, I think it’s better not to take chances. As “budding” writers (i.e., desperate, wriggling worms, begging for fifteen seconds of recognition in an industry of astronomically unlikely odds of success), we don’t need to build ourselves any extra hurdles.

Good writing, and good luck!