Expand Your Horizons

The internet makes it so much easier to find information. Since we recommend writing about what you know, expanding your world is very important. In this case, the term "world” is used very loosely. We could mean the geographic world, the literary world, the poetry world, or simply our personal worlds. We could, of course, mean all of these worlds rolled up into one.

The best way to find out who and what make up these worlds is to read about them. Get your hands dirty and do some searches. I’ve recently done some searches to find submission guidelines for poetry. These guidelines exist for most types of writing. This is a good way to find out what new markets are available and what they expect. By reading some of the past issues of previously published works, you begin to learn what works and who knows how to make it work.

If you find the same names appearing in several magazines, maybe those authors deserve more study. What is it about their style, voice, or subject matter that makes them appealing to several magazines at once? How do we compare to these authors? We might then do searches for those authors we need to look at more closely. Do they have web sites or blogs that might help us in our own endeavors?

The internet puts your worlds at your fingertips. Get to know your worlds. Expand what you know. In doing so, we often find out there’s much we don’t know. The race is on to bridge the gap. It is only when we no longer care that we fail in our tasks.