Again, I did not know what I should post but then I received quite the revelation in my email today. As a subscriber to Writer’s Digest, my mailbox is filled with updates on webinars, competitions, agents, publishers  and presses, and author posts, etc. I mostly discard some of the emails, however the ones that mention competitions and agents and publishers looking for writers, gets more of my focus. 

And then every once in a while an article catches my eye that I can not not continue reading. And today’s post, The Pros and Cons of Writing in Present Tense , was one of those posts. Brian Klems makes no distinction on which tense usage is right or wrong, but rather discusses the advantages and disadvantages of using present tense. As well as comparing and contrasting the benefits of using past tense over present tense.

Besides the points taken to illustrate the usage and benefits of either tense, the best part of the article was how it made me think about my writing. I mostly write in past tense but why is that? I’ve often been told that I sometimes switch between writing in past tense and present tense.  I’d have to pick and use one or the other, so why am I using both? It can be a variable of reasons but what comes to mind is that a great deal of what I want to write is more like a retelling of a past event in present time. And that is why I’m switching from
past to present but then what tense should I be using? Present perfect tense or simple past tense? Sigh; no wonder they say that English is the hardest language on Earth.

A second possibility might be because I'm writing how I live and that I'm living in the present (as its counterproductive to live in the past), influences the tense I write in. Or I'm just grabbing at straws trying to clarify it all.

 Or it may be due to the mass amount of books I’ve read which were pre-self publishing/E publishing boom, were mostly written in past tense. Ex. Aside from Harry Potter, I love and have reread such books as Huckleberry Finn and Bram Stoker’s Dracula an infinite amount of times since junior high school, when I’d first gotten my hands on them.

If  you are what you eat, then maybe you write what you’ve read. If so, then explain to me why do we write how we write? What tense do you prefer to write in? Is it that you have no preference but let the story dictate the tense form used? Does genre or subject matter influences the tense of the story? The point of view? Or all of the above?


  

Today I just submitted my poetry chapbook, Can You Catch My Flow? to the Finishing Line Press 2014 New Women’s Voices Poetry Competition. Yesterday I sent an individual poem featured in my chapbook titled Do I
Dare?to the Potomac Review.  And on Tuesday, March 3rd, I sent three poems to So to Speak, a feminist journal. 

Those were my submissions for March 2014. If I go back further, I also submitted Do I Dare?  to the Bethesda Urban Partnership 2014 Poetry Contest in February. In January, I previously submitted my chapbook to the First Annual L+S Mid-Atlantic Chapbook Series. And I’m still awaiting the results of the JMWW Chapbook Contest I participated in back in July 2013.

There are plenty of journal, contests/competitions and anthologies I’ve submitted to since last year but how
am I able to keep track of them all? 

One word, TGFS! Thank.God.For.Submittable! Without it I’d never be able to keep track of what I’ve sent and to whom. Most journals/magazine, whether paper or online, tend to have their own submission managers that you’d have to sign up for. And I’d just save the sites onto my favorite bar. But with Submittable.com, it’s like a one-time shop and stop, where every submission ever made is listed for your review. As I do simultaneous submissions and as more and more journals, magazines, etc are accepting simultaneous submissions,
Submittable.com is like heaven for me. 

From as far back as 2012, I can view my past submissions, withdraw current submitted works and check up on their status, all on one page. I shamelessly admit that when I first signed up (I believe it was more commonly called submishmash then), I had no idea how to navigate it. It wasn’t until much later that I got the hang of it and now my sufferings with SASE, how many stamps I need, etc. are mostly non-existent. Such is the beauty of submitting online.

Now if only there was an app for my HTC smart phone. Apparently the app are available to download for the ipad, iphone and kindle.

How are you keeping track of your submissions? Are you using Submittable.com or another form of tracking system?