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The process of sending your work 'cold' to magazines can become both overwhelming and discouraging, and it has been a difficult -- not to mention irritating -- problem for me for the last ten years or so. I've tried just about everything I could think of, and my abandoned approaches have ranged from the incredibly minimalist (submit little, complain much -- doesn't work too well) to the ridiculously elaborate ('anal' and 'systematic' don't even begin to describe it).

Or perhaps I should say it _was_ an irritating problem, past tense, because I think I've hit on something that strikes the right balance, and it seems to be a workable, sustainable approach.

Everything follows from one simple principle:

1. Try to keep a fixed number of submissions out at all times.

That's all. I started by making one submission, and soon developed the next principle:

2. Start with one, and work up from there to a number that you're able to sustain indefinitely.

And as a corollary:

3. When a piece is rejected (or even accepted!), replace it immediately -- either a different piece to the same magazine or the same piece to a different magazine.

In this way I've gotten up to five submissions continuously out in the past month, with a sixth one in preparation. My ambition is to have a dozen out by the end of next month, where I'll probably rest for a while. I've certainly got enough old pieces -- or old notes that could be short pieces -- kicking around my hard drive to sustain that much.

Since cover letters are always a problem for everybody, let me share something I've discovered about them: unless you're writing a pitch for a nonfiction article, it's better to say less. A lot less. If I work on it for hours and fill a whole page, it's probable that I've written something that makes me look completely stupid. It's best to avoid that, on the off-chance that the letter will be read carefully -- and more likely it won't be, so what's the point in lavishing a lot of time on it? This brings me to my two rules of thumb for cover letters:

4. With poetry and fiction, the letter only needs to state your business: in effect, "I like your magazine, here's a submission of a 500-word piece, and this is who I am (bio and contact info)."

5. Spend no more than half an hour writing each cover letter. Don't write them from scratch every time, either -- cut and paste from previous letters.

Following the above principles, it takes me about an hour to make a first submission of a given piece. Later submissions go more quickly since I have the cover written for the most part, and because I usually have discovered one or two appropriate targets 'for next time' while the first magazine was sitting on the piece. I type the names of these 'next' targets directly on my submissions log next to the piece's name.

Finally, I have one last principle that applies to the whole process:

6. RELAX ALREADY!!! This can even be fun.