paying the idiot tax: a ledger

Portrait of Feodor Dostoyevsky—Vasily Perov (1872)

Let me tell you about a horrible, terrible, no-good blunder, involving yours truly and a story called Creation Myth.

I spent months on this thing. Months. Felt like I had the whole world on the page. I thought I was saying something super interesting and profound about the body, about childhood, about artificial intelligence.

My friends and my partner read it and gave me solid reviews. After more self-editing and redrafting that made me want to pull my hair out, I sent it to a few people I don’t know that well so I could get more… objective feedback than what I got from the people who have to see me every day.

When I was finally—FINALLY—satisfied, I did what good writers are supposed to do. I researched magazines and tried to get a handle on where a sci-fi/speculative/horror take would fit.

Here’s where the problem starts: I have a system when I submit to literary magazines. That system is this: I get excited. I stop reading. I submit instantly.

Okay, yeah. This system’s cost me money AND has gotten me rejected more times than I can count. At some point, I’ll have a come-to-Jesus with myself about the financial and emotional consequences of racking up useless submissions. The lost time and dollar bills add up to a trend line I call the idiot tax.

The idiot tax is not optional. It is not something I’m proud of. It probably has more to do with my ADHD than I like to think it does. And today—of all the times I’ve been taxed—I’d like to file for a refund. ‘Cause I’m over here licking my wounds.

As I looked for Creation Myth’s perfect fit, I found a place that looked serious: clean site, active across platforms, a real masthead, and payment for physical publication.

Nice.

I got excited. I stopped reading. And then, I submitted. Two or so weeks later, the acceptance rolled in.

Every writer knows that an email that starts with “congratulations” instead of “unfortunately” is cause for celebration. There were no payments or contract terms yet, but that would come later, right? Then, I saw the link.

Link?

Okay. A link. It looked like they published me on their website that exact day—online instead of in print. My stomach started to hurt.

Something you have to understand before I move on is that most publications want to be the first (and sometimes the only) place a piece of work gets published. It can get pretty strict, which is why I’ve had to hold poems I’ve posted on social media back from the submission process. Their guidelines will say something like “no resubmissions for previously published material” and the editors stay 100% serious about it. I’ve heard the consequences can range from a brusque rejection to a shiny new spot on a pub’s blacklist and I’m not willing to find out what either of those things feel like.

So, I went back to the site and double checked their submission guidelines—the day could still be saved, because maybe-possibly-hopefully there was something I missed, a line about how they published on their site before printing.

To my horror, it read, in plain text, “we only pay authors who are published in physical issues since we accept all online submissions”.

All online submissions are accepted?

That meant I wasn’t selected from the slush or chosen for an accolade. The magazine posts anything they receive online. No one’s turned away. I was merely a 5000-word blip that got shuffled in with a wave of other stories.

Now, Creation Myth is essentially blocked from being submitted anywhere else and I aso wasn’t paid for what I thought I’d be paid for. Besides, what new writer expects monetary compensation for their creative labor?

But the part that really gets my goose is this: it won’t even draw readers, since it’s buried under piles of other, insta-accepted submissions. Jesus.

Let me take a moment to tally up this particular idiot tax:

What I Can Never Get Back

A really, really good idea (priceless, when you think about it)
A handful of months spent planning, drafting, re-drafting, and re-planning
The paper I printed the aforementioned multiple drafts on ($5.18 per ream, which translates to… some fraction of a cent per page)
The time and effort my friends, partner, and acquaintances spent helping me make my work better
The bagels I stress-ate between the submission and the acceptance/inclusion ($9.37)
Two whole hours of misplaced joy before I rechecked the site
A preemptive celebratory coffee (a whopping $7.50)
My pride (now worth three payments of $6.66 (a steal!))
The first publication of a story I’m really proud of that went to an audience already saturated with every submission the magazine gets

Before I get too caught up, I want to be clear that this is not a complaint about the magazine. The terms were, in fact, posted in the location where terms are conventionally posted, in language no more obscure than terms usually are. The masthead itself is probably made up of pretty decent people, since running an indie mag is a labor of love and it’s not their fault I didn’t read all their guidelines.

I’ll take my licks from this specific lesson. There will be other stories and other submissions.

The taxman will always come again, though, because of my underlying personality flaw—a mix of skip-to-the-good-part and honest-to-god laziness. That one’s definitely load-bearing in my brain. It’s the same drive that gets a first draft written in a weekend, though, so I guess it could be worse.

The idiot tax is my lifelong consequence-companion. I don’t get to keep the version of myself that finishes things fast without also keeping the version that doesn’t read the fine print.

You can help me get a tax break by reading Creation Myth. It’s on my site now, because I have reclaimed it.

Thanks again for your support.

You can find me on my website or on my Instagram/Threads (at)poet.m.anne.avera