How to Get Stronger Submissions

If you are a magazine adviser, you are probably pondering what strategies you need to use for snagging the best writing and best art for your publication.

Chances are the people on your staff or in your class — if you are so lucky — are people who like to write. They may not be the best writers, but they are committed to trying. Unless you want a magazine that represents the work of these few people, you need to find ways to reach out to the whole school. You also need to inspire your staff to do the same thing.

A few suggestions:

1. Talk over with your staff how limited the magazine's circulation will be if it is just their masterpieces. They may submit, of course, but they can flex their writing muscles also by critiquing the work of others. Write a policy to that effect.

2. Buddy up with the English and art teachers and plan a campaign to have staff members visit their classrooms with a poster for each room. The poster will contain submission information — deadlines, variety of genres accepted, length requirements, location.

3. Create an interesting submission form for writing so that the writer's name is on this form only and not on the entry, for anonymous critiquing. The submission form will be assigned the same number as the piece, will be removed and filed separately, and your submissions manager will log in the pieces on a carefully guarded spread sheet.

4. Paint a few copy paper boxes in school colors if you have some lying around, cut a slit on top, decorate them somehow, fasten a large mailing envelope to one end to hold submission forms, and place them strategically around the school.

5. Publicize, publicize, publicize. If you have a TV news show, make video clips for it. Make lots of fliers using magazine cut out pictures urging people to submit (you can be pretty clever with this idea), where and by when. One school has T-shirts for the staff with "Submit" on the front and "to [magazine name] " on the back.

6. Some schools run competitions to jump-start the process. One school holds a 55-word short story contest and guarantees the winners will be published. Another school sponsors a thematic-based contest for art, prose and poetry. These are judged by professionals outside of the school.

7. Ask senior teachers about good college submission essays. Kids spend more time polishing those than anything. Use only the ones that don't sound like college essays.

8. Critique works as soon as you get them and give feedback to the authors. If they know you're really looking at their submissions, they may send more, improve the first ones, and/or tell their friends

This list doesn't begin to address the challenge of art submissions. The main thing we have found is that we must guarantee that we won't keep the original art for long. Slide submissions are very helpful.

Good luck with your submission hunting. Just remember the need for variety and a magazine that truly reflects the creative side of your school.

— Lois Page
Loismpage@aol.com

Adviser to Carousel magazine at Robinson Secondary School in Fairfax. The magazine staff is both a creative writing/literary magazine class and an after-school club. Page has led sessions on magazines at conferences for the Virginia High School League, National Scholastic Press and Columbia Scholastic Press Association. In 2000 she received the Douglas Freeman Award from VAJTA.