Guest Blogger Nancy Julien Kopp encourages patience and perseverance when submitting writing:
Some years ago, I had written a personal essay about how my father, who had a problem acknowledging handicapped people, learned to accept his first grandchild born with spina bifida and hydrocephalus.
Those two handicaps proved a big burden for our sweet baby girl but also the catalyst for helping her grandfather change his attitude.
I posted the essay on a website for writers where anyone could post whatever they’d written. I received an email from an editor who had read the piece. She invited me to submit my essay to an anthology that would be published by Guideposts. They accepted my personal essay.
In mid-summer of 2019, I happened to notice a listing for a magazine called Kaleidoscope published by the United Disability Services. Their guidelines stated that they liked stories written by people who had a disability but would accept stories from other writers, too. I pondered a while and then decided to submit “The Perfect Grandchild” since they accepted reprints.
Months later, there was no response, so I placed a big NO next to the listing I had made in my Submissions Chart and moved on. After more than a year, an editor from Kaleidoscope contacted me with the news that they ‘might’ want to publish “The Perfect Grandchild.” If interested, I was to fill out a form with information about me. Again, they restated that publication was only a possibility.
What was there to lose? Nothing. I filled out the forms and returned them, and then waited several more weeks. Hearing nothing, I figured it was a no-go deal. Not long after I had crossed the possibility off my list, I heard from the editor saying he would like to publish my work in their next issue. Again, came the statement inferring it might be pulled at the last minute.
I felt a little like that donkey and the carrot dangling in front of its nose only to be unreachable. Another lesson in frustration.
A year and a half after I had originally submitted to Kaleidoscope, I received a link to the new issue of the magazine including my story, and a check arrived shortly after.
Even though it took some time and a lot of wondering on my part, “The Perfect Grandchild” found a home once again.
We know very little happens in a quick 1-2-3 fashion in our writing journey.
My two keywords as I have traversed my writing path are “patience and perseverance.” I had to use a measure of both when submitting to Kaleidoscope. Would I do it again? Absolutely.
In another instance, I had an email acceptance from Chicken Soup for the Soul for a story I had submitted a couple years earlier. I had long since considered it a NO. Yet, here was the letter saying “The Four-Legged Nanny” would be in the book titled My Heroic, Hilarious, Human Dog to be published a couple months later with a $200 check to follow.
I learned two lessons through these experiences: Reprints work. Never count a submission out even when more than a year has passed since submitting.
Nancy Julien Kopp posts book reviews, tips, and encouragement for writers on her blog, Writer Granny’s World by Nancy Julien Kopp
“Never Count A Submission Out” was originally published on her blog.
Nancy writes creative nonfiction, personal essays, a bit of poetry, kid lit and occasionally fiction. She enjoys playing bridge, watching football, and reading.
Nancy was named Prose Writer of the Year in 2013 by the Kansas Authors Club. A former teacher, she continues to teach through the written word.
She has been published in 24 Chicken Soup for the Soul books!
Note from Marlene: Nancy has been my inspiration and motivator to submit my writing to Chicken Soup for the Soul. After ten years and four submissions (revised each time), “You Deserve an Award” is in Chicken Soup for the Soul: That Christmas Feeling. (2026). A dream come true.
As Nancy says, “patience and perseverance.”