If there's one thing that many aspiring writers have few clues about, it's the submission process. There are good reasons for that; authors aren't exactly encouraged to talk in detail about our own submission experiences, and - just like agent hunting - everyone's story is different. I managed to cobble together a few non-specific questions that some debut authors have agreed to answer (bless them). And so I bring you the submission interview series - Submission Hell - It's True. Yes, it's the SHIT.

Today’s guest for the SHIT is Heather Frese author of The Baddest Girl on The Planet, Heather Frese's fiction, essays, and poetry have appeared in Michigan Quarterly Review, The Los Angeles Review, Front Porch, The Barely South Review, Switchback, and elsewhere, earning notable mention in the Pushcart Prize Anthology and Best American Essays. She received her master's degree from Ohio University and her M.F.A. from West Virginia University

How much did you know about the submission process before you were out on subs yourself?

I thought I’d done a lot of research and really understood how the submission process worked. I went to panels at AWP about getting an agent for a novel and figured it would be fairly straightforward. I did get an agent, revised with him, and he sent the book to the big publishing houses. I got several close calls, but nothing stuck. As the initial manuscript submission process happened, I was going through a ton of life changes, getting married and moving and getting pregnant caring for a newborn, and I lost a lot of steam getting another novel ready for him to send out. I asked him if I could keep submitting The Baddest Girl on the Planet myself to small presses and contests and he said that was fine, so I switched to focusing on that, which is how the book eventually found a home.

Did anything about the process surprise you?

I was surprised by how much I didn’t know was going on when the book was going to big presses, and I was surprised by how long everything took.

Did you research the editors you knew had your ms? Do you recommend doing that?

When I had an agent sending it out, I didn’t research the editors. But when I was sending it myself to small presses and contests, I researched a lot and really targeted presses I thought would be a good fit. I’d definitely recommend researching contests to see if your book seems like it would be a good fit.

What was the average amount of time it took to hear back from editors?

Gosh, when it was out with the big houses, I think it was several weeks? A month? I can’t really remember. Contests took up to a year to hear back.

What do you think is the best way for an author out on submission to deal with the anxiety?

I dealt with it by moving about once a year and getting pregnant three times, which I do not recommend as a strategy, but it sure did keep my mind off of book things. I hear the best thing to do is work on a new project. I guess my new projects were babies, so maybe I adhered to that advice in a skewed way.

If you had any rejections, how did you deal with that emotionally? How did this kind of rejection compare to query rejections?

I went into it expecting the rejections, so the standard “no, thank you” sort of rolled off my back. What was harder to process were the close calls, the editors that really liked the book, just not quite enough to publish it for whatever reason. I had one time I was a semi-finalist in a contest and then didn’t advance to the finals, and that was hard. I’m not sure how I dealt with it. Just sort of processed through feeling like crap and then sending out again.

If you got feedback on a rejection, how did you process it? How do you compare processing an editor’s feedback as compared to a beta reader’s?

I did take it a bit more to heart when I got an editor’s feedback, particularly one who said they lost sympathy for the character at one point in the novel. I got enough close-but-no-cigar feedback to balance it out, though, and I also figured going in that the structure of my book was unusual and might not work editors looking for mass appeal, so in that way I sort of dealt with it as I would from a beta reader, taking what was useful from the feedback and leaving the rest.

When you got your YES! how did that feel? How did you find out – email, telephone, smoke signal?

The YES was completely surreal. So surreal. I was in Dallas visiting my husband’s family over Christmas break when I got a voicemail from an editor. I didn’t quite catch the name of the press in the voicemail. At that point I was on baby number three and hadn’t submitted in more than a year, so I was wracking my brain to remember where the book was out, which press or contest. My husband had dropped off me and the kids at a McDonald’s and gone to the store, and I decided I couldn’t wait any longer to return the editor’s call. With the baby strapped to my chest and the older two encased in the play area, I phoned Robin Muira and realized the press was Blair. We chatted for a bit and she asked if the manuscript was still available, and said I was a finalist for the Lee Smith Novel Prize.

It was at that point that the older two starting shouting from the play area that I needed to watch them go down the slide, and could they have some chicken nuggets? We’re hungry! Mommy! You’re not watching me go down the slide! Robin asked if I had experience working with editors and would I be open to revisions and possibly rewriting a chapter, which I was completely fine with, and Mommy, watch me, Mommy, I’m hungry! I managed to take a page of notes about the contest prize details and Robin asked if I had any questions. I asked when the winner would be announced. She did a little sotto voce consult with her officemates and then said, “We’ll just tell you now. You won.” It was this intense euphoria realizing that a lifelong dream was going to come true, mingled with the everyday banality of childcare and chicken nuggets.  

Did you have to wait a period of time before sharing your big news, because of details being ironed out? Was that difficult?

I did! I was able to tell my inner-est inner circle right away as long as I swore them to secrecy, so that helped, but there were a couple weeks between finding out and being allowed to share with everyone. It felt similar to finding out about having a baby but waiting until the first trimester passed before sharing the news—like knowing you’re about to experience this huge, life-changing event, but sheltering the news in your hands for a bit before offering it up to the world.