Reflections on Writing & Editing

Reviewing Submissions

This year, we read almost 200 submissions from students of CSU Pueblo and PCC and accepted 82 of those submissions for the journal (We thank everyone for taking that jump of sharing their unique realities and personal journeys with us.). This was my greatest memory, to see how different people approached similar stories or themes and picked their brains apart in the process. It was a blast to see the prologue to no doubt great writers months or years down the line, even in the stories we unfortunately did not accept or couldn’t accept due to Tempered Steel submission requirements.

A fair number of submissions stalemated the editorial department, submissions we were simply unsure of or submissions that a few editors batted the hell out of for: some even prevailing! These trials always varied for me, as it’s never fun to be outvoted or feel drowned out on works you believe are worthy of Tempered Steel that others just don’t understand. But I recall these moments making the room become more alive and, in a way, forcing my peers to act human: to express how they think when reviewing work and why they approve certain pieces instead of me being in a room of checkmarks and X’s. I appreciated how these interactions made the editors honest and, by proxy, Tempered Steel honest.

End Product

Three months of hard work, deliberating on a couple hundred submissions from all genres with the hidden irrational fear of “Will we succeed in time? Will it be enough?” all became worth it after seeing a mock product of issue 34 of Tempered Steel and to feel that tangible success in your hands. It’s incredible to see it physically for all to consume knowing that you had a hand in its creation.

There’s a reason executioners wear masks. The need for anonymity in the carrying out of a terrible act is obvious. But this need applies to small-scale acts as well, a lesson that became quite clear to the editorial staff of Tempered Steel once we finished reading all of this year's submissions and began the process of sending out rejection letters. Suddenly, the weight of our responsibility was keenly felt, and no one wanted the consequences of our collective choices to fall solely on any one person’s head. Better to wear the mask of collective anonymity as we loaded the muskets of rejection:

While we appreciate the effort - pow!

Just not a good fit - boom!

Try again next year - blammo!

In our attempts to craft the perfect rejection letter, we quickly realized that even the lightest of slaps is still a slap, which is not the way we wanted people to feel after having the cojones or ovarios to submit in the first place. In this way, the delicate balance of language and thought that writing always consists of felt especially fraught. What words could we choose to soften the axe blow lopping off the head of people’s ambition?

The answer was, of course, that there are no magic words that will appeal to everyone, universally.  For us to worry so much about a problem that was inherently unsolvable was folly to begin with. No matter how delicate, how sensitive we tried to be, we realized that someone, somewhere, was going to feel crushed. No matter what. We came to this realization throughout the semester as we shared our own rejection stories, how we all had fallen victim to picking apart even the gentlest of rejections, searching for any crumb of insincerity to hang our disappointment and hurt on.

Though we obviously could relate, it doesn’t set aside that, in this case, we were the ones doing the rejecting this time around. I know we didn’t achieve the perfectly neutral and uplifting rejection letter we aimed for. I know this. But it’s my hope, a hope shared with all my fellow editors, that those who received our rejections take to heart the words we saw fit to include with absolute sincerity. Keep trying, submit again next year, do not give up. Because you never know when the next response you receive will start with, congratulations instead of, put on the blindfold.

I was drawn to Magazine Editing and Publishing because I was curious about what I could learn to prepare for the future. I wasn’t sure what to expect, but once I was in the thick of it, I learned about the complexities of publishing through organizing the 2025 edition of Tempered Steel, but the most important thing I learned is that teamwork makes the dream work.

The process of publishing a literary journal is a communal effort. My colleagues and I spent several months working hard to bring Tempered Steel into the hands of its readers. We divided and conquered to review all 199 submissions, which were then divided into a list of acceptances and rejections. It was then our duty to read through each accepted submission and find a home for it among the others. The accepted literary and art pieces were printed on paper, closely examined, and divided into folders based on format (flash fiction, art, poetry, fiction, non-fiction, etc.) The theme and message behind each piece were considered as we laid out the prints in the best order. We did this to ensure each piece was a perfect segue into the next. While the optics were sometimes chaotic, the organization team found joy in working alongside each other. Everyone left the experience with a newfound appreciation for community and teamwork!

While putting together a literary journal can be challenging, seeing the finished product serves as a reminder of why it’s worth it, along with the memories and friendships formed along the way!

Open your mouth. Go ahead, open it. You’re alone. Look over your shoulder if you need to reassure yourself. See, no one here.

Take your fingers off your keyboard or lay your pen down if you’re that type. Slide your hands into your lap. Trap them between your thighs. Hold them there. Resist those urges. Open your mouth.  

Are you nervous? That’s alright. Everyone is the first time they try it.

Open your mouth. Open your mouth and read your writing out loud. Start at the beginning. Take it slow. See if you can make the words stroll. See if you can make them strut. You have got to open your mouth and read your writing out loud.

Push that lyrical verse down the sidewalk in heels. Did it trip? Did it stumble? Did it get a stiletto caught in the storm drain? Grab that thesaurus. Finger carefully through the pages. Find another word. Something taller. Something slinkier. Something that rolls off the tongue, hips swinging on to somewhere new taking you along with it. You won’t know unless you open your mouth and read your writing out loud.

Does your descriptive metaphor hit below the belt? Light a cigarette with a match laid on the concrete? Pick a fight with a stranger? Or does it slump over exhausted against a stop sign, its backbone a limp line of cliche? Is it on its back, eyes blank, dead against a curb? You won’t know, useless you open your mouth and read your writing out loud.

You’re alone. Go ahead. Look over your shoulder if that makes you feel more at ease. No one is watching you. No one can see. But rest assured that your writing will tell on you if you don’t read your work out loud. If you don’t open your mouth… everyone will know.

There is a recent sentiment that “originality is dead” and that “everything has already been done before.” I believe we can lean into this, to the point that the end result is unique. If you’re ever stuck while creating something new, you can take pieces from your inspirations and Frankenstein them together, creating an amalgam that takes on a life and name of its own.

For example with my piece “Dullahan’s Ride,” published in the 2025 Edition of our Tempered Steel magazine, I took inspiration from the various myths of the Dullahan (Headless Horseman) in Irish mythology, Irish history for the setting, the classic trope of a character obsessed with avoiding death, and the trope of the higher class abusing their use of power for personal ends. Each of those things individually are not original, but when you combine each together, the results are  new and hopefully interesting.

Another aspect to focus on is adding a unique twist to something unoriginal. For example, author Brandon Sanderson made a high fantasy world with all the usual aspects, but instead of the typical “chosen-one-must-fight-the-dark lord-premise,” he asked, “What if the dark lord won, the chosen one had failed, and someone else needed to pick up the pieces?” Now readers are left with an interesting world or a premise seldom seen. Combine these with a unique hard magic system and strong characters and we get the best-seller Mistborn that stands above the rest.

So we should take advantage of the old stories and use them to breathe life into new work. The footsteps of giants cannot be filled, but we can add our own to their path. We should not lament when faced with the common struggle of the author to will something new into the world, for there is endless inspiration to draw from because of those giants of old.

Remember in middle school, maybe even elementary school, when we were taught about Freytag’s Pyramid with the man climbing the mountain and coming back down? Simple, easy, traditional, but universal? Nope, sorry to tell you but that English teacher lied to you (most likely not maliciously).

Let’s go into a few different story structures, shall we? Orson Scott Card, a science fiction writer, helps explain four structures that are prevalent in novels:

• The Milieu Story

  • Start when your character arrives and end when they leave (or stay, it’s your story)

  • Milieu: the physical or social setting in which something occurs or develops: environment ("Milieu")

  • Think of Gulliver’s Travels and Wizard of Oz

• The Idea Story

  • Begin as close as possible to the question and end once the question has been answered

  • The process of seeking and discovering new information

  • Mystery novels; speculative fiction

• The Character Story

  • It begins when the character becomes so unhappy, impatient, or angry in their present role they change it; it ends with either change or not

  • Focuses on the transformation of a character’s role in the communities that matter most to them, centers on the character’s character

  • To Kill a Mockingbird

• The Event Story

  • The story starts when the main character is involved with the struggle and ends when the new order is established, the old order restored, or chaos ensues

  • Something is wrong with the fabric of the universe; the world is out of order

  • The Lord of the Rings, Beowulf, and Dune

As you can see, there are a lot of different structures; a simple google image search will show you a multitude of different ones: Freytag’s Pyramid, Save the Cat, the Snowflake Method, Overcoming the Monster, and so on and so forth. Bottom line, there’s a lot. Looking at feminist literary critics, like poet Eloise Klein Healy, the traditional rising action to climax to falling action “sounds suspiciously like male sexual response. Which is not, she notes, the only way to satisfy a reader” (Carpenter).

You are the author, meaning you have the power to do whatever you would like. The important thing to note is that traditional structures work; they are tried and true, but they can also be boring. Be creative, try something different, or make something new. It may not work, or it might be sensational; nobody will know unless you write it.

Works Cited

Card, Orson Scott. “The 4 story structures that dominate novels.” Writer’s Digest, 24 Aug. 2010, www.Writersdigest.com/improve-my-writing/4-story-structures-that-dominate-novels. Accessed 12 Nov. 2024.

Carpenter, Courtney. “Questioning the traditional story structure.” Writer’s Digest, 4 Oct. 2012, www.Writersdigest.com/improve-my-writing/questioning-the-traditional-story-structure. Accessed 13 Nov. 2024.

Jauss, David. Words Overflown by Stars: Creative Writing Instruction and Insight from the Vermont College of Fine Arts M.F.A. Program. Writers Digest Books, 2009.

“Milieu.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/milieu. Accessed 23 Apr. 2025.

So, you want to submit your work for publication?

Well then, I’m proud of you.

Seriously, whether this is a passion of yours honed over the years or something new that you decided to dip your toe into, you’ve now joined the hallowed halls of critical thinking and flourishing imagination that is literature.

But before I wax too poetic, I would like to offer you this simple list of five tactics every new submitter needs to hone as they send pieces off for publication consideration.

Now, let us get straight to the point.

1. When submitting a pack of poetry (or anything with multiple pieces), don’t do what I did and name it “6 Poem Packet.” About twenty other people will have the same idea, and it makes processing submissions difficult. On top of that, your collection should have a strong name that draws in the editors. X amount of X thing as a name is kinda boring, dontcha think?

2. NEVER include your name on the actual document of the piece you submit, unless the submission guidelines ask you to. It is imperative that editors remain impartial and dropping names on documents can sometimes be an immediate disqualification.

3. If you wrote a longer piece, consider including the word count on the document toward the top. Some editors don’t have stamina to read long pieces after processing handfuls of other submissions for the day. There’s nothing worse than hitting that point, reading another long piece, then finding out it was over the word count. Also, though I personally consider this next point unethical, I’ve seen editors who use “feeling” to decide your piece is too long - adding the word count can combat that apathy.

4. Train yourself to realize repeated rejection often means your piece either needs work or a new audience. Like any other industry, writers and their writings are legion. That tower will inevitably need to be filtered into lenses – find the one where yours fits by submitting with regularity and diversity. (Just do me a favor and make sure you read the directions on a call for submissions – don’t be that person who sends a horror piece into a sunny lit magazine).

5. Most importantly – read your work out loud and check for mistakes at least twice before submitting (don’t groan either; you can do it). It’s a great technique for making sure your own voice is present. Tone and flow are always paramount in good writing and editors will read inconsistencies in them about a half a second before giving your piece a mercy killing. No one wants this. And I assure you, if you have established good tone in a piece, your message will eventually find the right audience.

Now go get to work and good luck.