Sub Club Weekly Digest #2 (ish)
10/05/24 - Submitter's Club Slots, Story Doctors Columns, Fuck it Submit Parties, the works!
Welcome to Sub Club’s first non-announcement digest post. You ate our content, now let’s digest it together…
…OK, we’ll come up with a better tagline. Sorry.
Before we get into what we published this week, I have a few exciting announcements I think everyone will like. So first, we have a new feature on Chill Subs (our parent website). We have stats there from our tracker so we’ve created several automated lists like “most competitive,” “most popular,” and “most submitted to.”
For example:
These are free and auto-updating so the more folks track and bookmark on Chill Subs, the more they’ll change over time.1
Also! We have also opened up for 20 more slots in our Submitter’s Club! It’s our membership where you send us your work, we read it, and send you 10 recommended magazines to submit it to. If you don’t know it, here is how it works:
Every month, you get a credit to submit a new piece.
Fill out our form with all of your details and preferences.
Upload your writing (up to 5000 words of prose, 3 flash, or 5 poems).
Within 3 weeks, get your list of 10 handpicked recommendations as a doc and spreadsheet download.
Unused credits roll over into the next month, so no rush!
Past lists get saved in your panel to revisit whenever you need them.
The membership comes with full access to Chill Subs, Sub Club, and The Forever Workshop as well. It is out only “bundle” membership (for now!). We only open this membership once new slots become available.
You can learn all about it and sign up here » VISIT SUBMITTER’S CLUB
Now, let’s talk about a (maybe) new column. It’s called…
Story Doctors with Autumn & Steve
Here’s the pitch:
Got a knotty story or essay that’s giving you grief? Each column, we’ll answer your craft questions about an unpublished prose piece—yes, nonfiction people, you matter too I guess—with a deep dive into how editors read: what we look for, common problems we encounter and how to fix them, and how these adjustments and ways of thinking can make ANY piece stronger.
The writing comes from you. Yep, anybody. You fill out this form and if your work is selected, it will provide the baseline for each craft lesson.
» SUBMIT TO THE STORY DOCTORS «
Who is doing this?
Autumn Watts was a long-time fiction editor for Guernica Magazine before it burned down around her ears. Editing is her heartwork, but her writing has also found homes in The Craft of Editing, Words Without Borders, and Guernica, among others. She wants you to know you’ve got this.
Steve Chang is a sicko for craft and problem-solving who edits fiction at Okay Donkey. His own writing appears in Epiphany, Guernica, North American Review, The Southampton Review, etc. He's a MacDowell Fellow but doesn't brag about it (much). He'd rather talk about your work.
This is a test column! We’re gauging everyone’s reaction to see if we’ll keep it going. So, if you’re into it, submit your work, comment, like, respond, share. You know the drill.
Also, we are still shaky on the title. Any ideas? Editor Brain Time? Craft Time with Autumn & Steve? In my opinion,
already claimed the best title for any editorial workshop with her ‘unfuck your writing’ class.Again, here is the link to the form if you’d like to participate: SUBMIT TO THE STORY DOCTORS
This week, we published:
Yes, we’ve tweaked our titles a bit.
You’ll notice our where to submit, query, and pitch titles are more specific now. That’s just to attract more folks with tasty sounding titles. The content is the same and we’ve just moved the column titles and dates to the sub headers. Why? Cause it makes people click more. I wish it didn’t, but it does. Also, now you know what’s inside! Fuck surprises!
What else is new?
Well, our Fuck it, Submit Parties have been a hit! Yay! Thank you everyone who has joined. We are going to make this a weekly standard (unless we’re sick or something.)
So, our next two are on the 8th & 16th. You can register for them here:
AND Sorry! I accidentally messed up the time of that first one in the scheduling, so it said 11PM. And, like my mother always says, “I love you, but not that much.”
The correct time is 11AM.
How are we doing? Looking for something we haven’t been providing, let us know! (No! We won’t do feet! Stop asking).
Those automated ones are totally free. But there are also a load of custom lists we’ve created that are for Chill Subs Premium folks. That is a different membership from Sub Club but a lot of those lists are from our archive here. So only upgrade there if you want to support us and use the other tools available there.
Possible name for new column: Itching to Edit