I graduated from ASU in 2010 with a degree in English Literature (truth: on my resume, I leave off the “Literature” part). A little less than one year later, I got a job at an environmental consulting company where I have grown to be the sole editor of the small, 60-employee firm.
I originally applied to be a “Word Processor” via their Craigslist post. A lot of people are shocked to find out I found my steady, full-time, full-benefits employment through a website known for its scams. When job searching, I still check out Craigslist as well as LinkedIn, Monster, and other sites. You come to recognize the scams on Craigslist, and have to be okay with many of your applications likely going nowhere.
Here is what I’ve learned in my years since graduation.
If you want to work with words, regardless of how boring your job is, the money seems to be in the Technical Writing field. My only regret from my education is not taking a course or two in technical writing. I, for one, am totally okay with having a boring job. (Note the difference, I am not unhappy with my job, it’s just not the most exciting work in the world). I made that distinction when I graduated; separate the enjoyment I find editing (work), from my investment in writing and poetry as an art form (passion). Boring as my desk job may be, I still find great satisfaction in knowing that, because of my work, some small fraction of the words going out into the world read well and look nice. Give me the boring for eight hours a day so I can pay my bills and have the free time to develop my passions.
Technical editing, what I do for Transcon Environmental, is also in some demand. What I’ve found, though, is that you need to have another skill-set or area of expertise to fall back on. I happen to be incredibly organized—almost to a fault—so when my editing is light, I function also as the Administrative/Executive assistant for the company. You will market yourself better if your writing/English degree is the backbone for your other talents and skills. And don’t discount your liberal arts education (I highly recommend David Foster Wallace’s commencement speech about the value of a liberal arts education); these four years at university have turned you into a well-rounded, disciplined, learned individual. Everything you’ve learned in school, every way you’ve grown and the traits and habits you’ve developed should be included in your resume/cover letter/application process.
There are places to put your English degree to use outside of academia. I have been introduced to the environmental consulting and urban planning industry. In order for utility companies to build and alter their infrastructure, they need consultants like us to ensure they are complying with federal and state laws (among other things). We produce reports based on our research and field surveys, these reports get circulated through federal agencies, tribal nations, land management companies, etc. I never knew such an industry even existed, let alone that they produce numerous reports that, through rounds of revisions, get signed-off on by the government so that construction companies have to follow the mitigation we outline in the report. It’s important that these documents are thoroughly proofread, wordsmithed, and clean of technical errors. Just because you like to work with words doesn’t mean you’re stuck in the academia or publishing worlds.
The job search process is frustrating, disappointing, and sometimes heart-wrenching. Be prepared for this. Build a thick skin now, in preparation. I lost count of how many jobs I’ve applied to over the years. I recently relocated and, before being offered to transfer and stay with Transcon, I was applying back home on the east coast to around 10–15 jobs per week. I applied for things I was over-qualified for, under-qualified––anything––I just wanted a lead. Resumes, once formed, are easy and don’t change much. Cover letters, on the other hand, is where your time and effort should be invested during your job search. Try to make yours stand out from the rest. Show your potential employer you are serious about the job; show them you’ve done your research by doing things like including their physical address on the cover letter, or alluding to details on their website. Explain how you, as a person with your own individual personality traits, would benefit their company. Don’t rush through customizing your cover letter. The job search takes time and commitment, just like class assignments; try to respect it with the same level you’d respect an assignment. Your resume should highlight your work experience, your cover letter should highlight your personality traits, and NEITHER should be intended to get you a job. Your resume and cover letter get you an interview; your performance in the interview gets you the job (no pressure).
Try not to get frustrated during your job search, don’t discredit or doubt your English or liberal arts education, be persistent as you apply for jobs (I called my current employer every week for months until my position with the company was firm). Sell yourself and what you have to offer. Write your cover letter, walk into an interview with the attitude that it is the THEIR loss if they don’t hire you.
I’m going to be honest with you: I hate blog posts that tell people how to get published faster, how best to submit or write cover letters. More accurately: I hate the number of them. I understand that the process of submitting to journals can seem daunting to a newcomer, but I see more social media sharing of posts that offer submission tips (and submission “strategy”) than those that offer writing tips, which seems backwards to me, and beside the point of what would hopefully be an artistic endeavor.
Furthering my frustration is that many of these articles make cover letters, and the submission process as a whole, seem like an intricate, mysterious process. Truthfully, it’s not. And I fear that all the attention and worry about the logistics of submitting, namely the cover letters which seem to give those new to the process the most trouble, is distracting. As an editor, let me tell you: I believe a lot of people are over-thinking this.
Because the reality is: we’re spending a lot of time talking about what hardly matters today.
As an editor, I’m only looking to determine two things in a cover letter:
That you take the publication seriously
That you take your own writing seriously
That, essentially, is it. Sure, all editors have pet peeves, but those are minor, and for any editor who gives a crap (which, since most editorships are purely a labor of love and not paying gigs—even then, paying very little—is essentially all of them) it will always come down to the quality of the writing itself. Those annoyances (more on those later), while worth being wary of, in the end don’t matter. Only a lack of one of the two things listed above would actually impact the way I read a submitter’s work.
Of course, if there are any specific instructions with regards to cover letters in the guidelines, like specifically asking for you to include or omit a bio (generally you would include one if not specified), make sure you follow them. But usually there are not, and the presence of a cover letter of some kind is simply implied, which I think is where a lot of the confusion can come from. So having a sense of what a typical cover letter should do might not be second nature to newcomers, but it’s hardly complicated once you’ve been on the editorial side and read a few directed at you.
Cover letters, remember, came from a time when submissions (and job résumés, for that matter) had to be mailed in physically. A writer would have to type out a cordial hello to editors on a typewriter, insert the letter and the submission into an appropriately-sized envelope, affix postage, then, I assume, ride their donkey to the nearest township and hand over the parcel to the Post for the next time a train came through town (again, this is based on my assumption—kind of before my time, submission-wise. My foray into publishing didn’t start until the late 00’s). The cover letter was necessary because for an editor, receiving an envelope that is a product of a fair amount of effort already and opening it to find nothing but the work to be considered—the effort stopping short of the formal hello and thank you—would come off as impolite and impersonal.
Today, however, nearly all submissions are handled online. While this has made the process far less cumbersome, it also means a few things have changed about the act of submitting and considering work for publication, for both writers and editors. For one, it makes the ability to submit one’s work faster, easier, all around more accessible for people to start sending out their work. Therefore, submissions are far more numerous. Editors are inundated with submissions, plenty of it high-enough quality to put together stellar issues of course, but still many to read and consider. That means more cover letters to read, which many writers hate writing anyway—so for both sides a shorter letter becomes preferred.
Also, the proliferation of online submissions more or less makes cover letters…well, not terribly useful. What can one put in a cover letter about oneself that an editor can’t already tell? Most submissions are coming through Submittable or another submission manager that already provides name and contact information. If an editor wants to know more about you or your past work, a Google search takes all of a couple seconds. You quite possibly have a website for that very purpose. What I’m saying is that there isn’t a need for cover letters in the sense that there used to be. I do think they are polite to include, and show some personability (always a nice thing to see from makers of art, no?), but editors combing through their “slush piles” really have all they require already—they want to read your work. (For that matter, cover letters for employment purposes have largely become irrelevant as the hiring manager wants to get down to the meat of the résumé.)
Which is not say that you shouldn’t pay attention to this part of the social contract between writer and editor, but rather that it’s not something worth troubling yourself over past the few moments it takes to do it right.
So, even though I railed against this exact thing up front, allow me to explain why those two points above (taking the publication and your own work seriously), are all that matters to me in regards to cover letters.
For me, it’s nice to see that someone submitting to my publication is either a fan—nothing pleases an editor more than to hear some kind words about a poem or story the submitter enjoyed in a past issue of the journal—or, at the least, cared enough to look at our Masthead and write mine and/or my co-poetry editor’s name. If I get the sense that you don’t even know who we are as a journal and are just submission-bombing every place with an open listing on Duotrope, it doesn’t reflect well on how seriously you take us while simultaneously asking us to take your work under serious consideration. The number of submissions that start “Dear Editor” or otherwise reflect that the submitter views a journal as the same as all the others out there—just another poetry/fiction publication, undifferentiated—is unfortunate. It also strikes me as likely that those writing “Dear Editor” are sometimes the same people who bristle, publicly on social media, about receiving a rejection that opens “Dear Writer.”
When in doubt, it’s best to keep a cover letter short and cordial. If it’s your style, you can be witty, enthusiastic, and more in your cover letter—I like seeing the writer’s personality outside of the work!—but please, don’t do so at the expense of your own writing. I received one submission whose author told me the poems within were written in a period of severe dietary distress—not exactly the association you want to build as I move on to your poems. Some cover letters preface the work with something along the lines of “These probably aren’t very good.” This, to me, is baffling; if you, the person who spent time and effort to build these works of art, don’t think they’re of any quality, why should anyone else? And if you truly think sending them out is a waste of time, why would you then knowingly waste the time of an editor? Some of this language may come from an attempt at appearing modest, but direct communication with an editor is not the place for that. Neither is arrogance, mind you—that’s actually far worse—but all that matters is that you believe in your work, and think it’s worth an editor’s time and consideration.
In that sense, the way I look at a cover letter is like checking a box. Did the writer demonstrate that they take the journal and its editors as well as their own work seriously? Yes? Okay, then let’s see the poems. Everything else is a distant second. I’ll always appreciate a bit of warmth or sociability from other members of a community that I’m happy to be a part of, but writing past that makes it far more likely that you’ve added something unnecessary or questionable. Editors do have pet peeves, as mentioned above, and while none of them will disqualify you from fair consideration, pretty much any of the following things won’t help your chances:
“Cute” bios. I don’t care about your pets’ names. Yes, I’ll enjoy all the pet photos and videos shared with me on social media, as everyone enjoys them, and I’m sure your animals are lovable and adorable, but unless your poems were written while under a hypnotic spell put on you by your Jack Russell Terrier, Juno, leave the pets out of the bio. I’ve seen some humor tucked into the final line of some bios, and sometimes they are amusing while still fitting into the main two points of criteria above, but more often than not they come off as unprofessional or at least distracting. Also worth remembering is that these bios will often be pared down by editors if your work is accepted anyway.
Don’t explain your work in your cover letter. To wit, I’m not further explaining this bullet point.
Read. The. Guidelines. Some editors will not consider a submission from someone who clearly couldn’t be bothered to take 60 seconds to read the guidelines for submitting (yet again, not showing respect for the journal that one is asking to spend well more than that amount of time reviewing one’s work)—as is their right. Personally, I’m not in that camp because I want to find the best possible poetry I can, no matter what, but clear disregard for the very reasonable guidelines given (as they always are, no matter the journal) will not be setting one up for success. Your work will have to shine bright to make an editor forget the fact that you couldn’t be bothered to follow their instruction. It certainly does happen, but if you want to help your chances, take the time to be considerate.
Bios that state number of publications. “FirstName LastName has been published in over 200 journals.” Hm. I don’t doubt that claims like this are true (though like hell am I going to count to verify), but it says something about a writer’s priorities, implying that one cares more about publication than creating good work; quantity over quality. List a handful of relatively recent publications you’re proud of, and leave it at that. If you have a book or multiple out, you probably don’t need to list more than those. Notably, I get the sense that someone who’s published in 200, 300 (I even saw one submission that claimed over 1000) journals is just sending the same batch or two of poems indiscriminately to as many journals as they can.
Are you sure you followed the guidelines? Never hurts to double check.
Address the submission to the proper editor(s). For example, if you’re sending fiction, address it to the fiction editor(s) by name. If there are no dedicated fiction editors for whatever reason, addressing it to the editor, managing editor, or editor-in-chief is your best bet. In rare occasions a journal might have more than a couple editors for a given genre, in which case “Fiction Editors” or “Poetry Editors” is an acceptable substitute to listing six or seven names out. Worth keeping in mind is that unless submissions are read blind, these are the very first words read in your submission and to get them wrong (like saying “Dear Editor” when there are multiple editors in your genre, or getting the gender of the editor wrong—I’ve seen it) is not a good first impression.
Editors want to read your work, and if it fits what they’re looking for, they’ll want to publish it. Submissions are the lifeblood of many journals, and certainly the one I work with. Cover letters are usually necessary, but there is rarely a need to make them more than a friendly, professional hello. Don’t trouble yourself more than you need to with this. Check the box and move on to the work—it’s what both writers and editors care about most.
