The Age of Chill Subs
I think it started last October when after 8 months of posting my poems on Instagram I decided to finally try and submit something to a magazine. After all, when I was 10 years old, in my primary school graduation video I informed everyone that I’d be a published poet! (lol, really, everyone was like “I’m gonna be a model”, “I’m gonna be an astronaut”, and here I was, “a famous poetess”!)
But because I’m a complete research freak, I couldn’t just open a random magazine, hit submit and go eat pizza. I needed to look at EACH magazine to make sure I haven’t missed anything. So I went to Poets & Writers complete list of literary magazines and read 3 latest issues of each magazine that I didn’t hate at first glance. Then, if I liked what I saw and read, I added it to my spreadsheet of places I’d love to submit to, specifying such parameters as “simultaneous submissions”, “accepting previously published”, “has free examples”, “available in print”, “response time“, “fee”, “payment”, “active on social media” and overall comments on the vibe and favorite pieces. Pretty much most of the filters that Chill Subs currently has! :)
I spent the whole of October doing that, then in November I submitted to some places, but still, something felt off. I couldn’t decide on where to submit most of my writing, I think mostly because it felt too mechanical for me, I don’t know. I didn’t feel the magazines fully, and I’m this weirdo who cannot just submit blindly just to get somewhere, I need to be 10000% sure I wanna be in this magazine. If not, I’d better post it on my Instagram where I already have some audience.
This leads me to the second issue! Instagram! I really really appreciate all the wonderful connections that the platform has given me. This opportunity to just post your writing there and instantly connect with people, it’s amazing! On the other hand, though, there’s too much of this instant gratification in it. While it helps you to have some audience and cool conversations right here right now (which lots of the 6 months responses from some cool magazine definitely can’t give you), it still feels like whatever you post there just gets lost in this sea of content after a day or two.
Like half of the people post poems every day there, and this fucking terrifies me! (I mean don’t get me wrong, good for them lol, I respect their ability to maintain the online presence, but damn that’s overwhelming! Where is space for actual life there?) It really lacks this timeless feel that being in a magazine gives you somehow. I know, I know, there’re so many magazines too, people don’t have time to read so much stuff, you probably will be just as lost, but well, it’s a MAGAZINE, I want some ego boost, ok?!?!?!
So, I just froze there for like a month or two. Couldn’t decide what to keep for Insta folks, what to submit, where to submit, when to submit. Madness! It really sucks that you can’t post a poem on your socials AND submit it to a magazine (most of the time). From what I’ve experienced, it’s really almost two different categories: people who read your stuff on socials, and those who actually know and read magazines. I understand all the reasoning, but I still think we can do better than just a hard “no” or a hard “yes” when it comes to accepting this kind of stuff.
Three weeks ago, I finally shared these thoughts on my Instagram and it resonated with lots of people. I also said that I could share my spreadsheet with the magazines research, and people were up for that, so I started working on polishing the spreadsheet up a little bit.
All of this happened right when my husband and I moved to Poland from Belarus, and after the spreadsheet was mostly done, we went to check out a cool bar in Gdansk that everyone recommends.
And so we were sitting there in that awesome interior, drinking Polish beer, and for some reason (actually no, you wanna know the reason? we’re both nerds and software developers) we decided to think about some absolutely random startup ideas. Something simple, that we could create real fast, not even necessarily for money, could be just some nice little tools that are useful for people. Among these ideas were: an app for drinking buddies (what else could you think about when you’re sitting in a bar), a search tool for finding a payment system for your application (believe it or not, it’s not only Stripe and PayPal) or a search tool for immigration programs. Hmm, I really love this search tool idea, it seems!
And then when we came home, I was like FUCK, I already have a data source for a website like that! Why not abandon that boring spreadsheet and make it into a piece of 100% pure awesomeness, ha?! How about that??
So I created the design in a day, was very pleased with myself (this is my top design work right here, I’m telling ya, just look at these magazine cards they are fucking perfect. perfect. thank you, I think so too!)
I wanted to make a very fun Vibe filter to make it easy to find shitty relaxed places that are pretty much the best, and I created it! I tried different phrasings, the goal was to make it funny, but still make it useful. Not like “hahaha very fun, and what do I do with it?”
And then I thought, oh wow, I can add examples there! I hate going back to my notes with titles of my favorite pieces from a magazine, searching for them on the internet again…ughhh hassle!! Give me the lazy option!
And I created one. I was hesitating whether it’s ok to include the examples from the point of like rights and all, so I contacted Veronica from BULLSHIT LIT (because that’s the best place to be), showed her some examples of what I have and asked for some advice on the examples thing. She was so supportive and totally validated this whole project for me! And we decided that having just an excerpt with all the proper links to the original should be good enough.
And then when it all was mostly done I thought I NEED CONTRIBUTORS. Of course, when the work is done, why not add MORE work to it, right? But hell, I wanted this thing, most of the magazines don’t even have it! Would be really useful. It’s so cool to just be able to search for magazines not only by their name but by people who were already published there! Find the magazines where your friends or favorite poets in the community are! Cool cool cool. MUST HAVE
You know what? It’s really not for everyone, maintaining the data source. My husband who’s a fan of automation and stuff was like “WHAT.THE.HELL.ARE.YOU.DOING” when I manually just copied and pasted contributors from everyone’s websites. But I really weirdly enjoy this! Knowing that I’m making something really special with all this manual work. That I can add some stupid jokes wherever I want. And not just have the same boring (but fast) template for everything.
That’s why the initial release has only 75 magazines instead of 300 like I wanted at first😀 But it will expand every week, and now that my inbox is crazy full, I definitely have lots of ideas!
Now as for the future plans, of course, I want it to become your go-to place for all things submissions-related! Would be cool to completely replace Submittable (evil laugh) and let people submit directly through the website, and combine it with some sort of a writer’s club thingy where everyone has accounts, adds journals they like to their favorites, gets journal suggestions based on some preferences and where their friends submit to! I want to have People there, not some basic algorithm. That’s the core.
I don’t have a lot of concrete ideas right now, but that’s the thing that should always remain there - this feeling of comfort. Someone coming in and having a laugh. Submitting to a place without sweating for like 3 hours. I also want to add info on contests at some point. Have some separate filter for them, and when a place is open for subs, it would indicate whether it’s open for a contest or general submissions.
Definitely want to add the genre filter, I think that’s for the nearest future, someone even suggested help with that already.
Want to add the editors' info, because sometimes you’re reading a poem and you think HOW COOL, and then later you find out that the author is the editor in some journal. Or vice versa! Would help to see it all in one place.
I was also thinking about a little built-in app that would format the submission to the magazine’s rules, you know the fonts, the spacing, words counts, page counts, and stuff. But definitely adding the rules themselves below to double-check! Maybe it’s useless, maybe not, I’ll think about it!
OR like something that would suggest a magazine based on the poem you’ve entered! How cool is that, ha? This will definitely require more work, but I know what needs to be done there and I just like to think about it! Would be dope!
I ACTUALLY ALWAYS WANTED TO CREATE A SPOTIFY FOR WRITERS. Imagine, you read a poem, you like it, and you are suggested similar poems and all that! It’s totally possible, but that’s waay in the future haha
Of course, I want to make a lot of money and just chill and read poems and write poems and play my guitar and don’t give a shit about jobs and stuff. But for now, I’m really happy with just how it is! A friend, not another boring self-absorbed service you should pay for.
And I’m sure this will grow into something very nice, and we’ll maybe think of a way to make some cash with this as a community:)
And right now, I think I’m good with being called a game-changer and receiving messages saying that I bring the joy back to sharing words! BRING THE JOY BACK, BITCHES. That’s the new slogan. I really got these messages as comments to donations, and this really really warms my heart. By the way, donations! I never really imagined that I'd receive more than like one (a test payment from me to me…), but there are so many of them! I’m so so happy, and you people are the best.