As much as I'd love to say it's not a numbers game, I admit it is largely that. A poor fisherman will catch more fish that an excellent fisherman who never goes near the water. If you never ask the pretty girl to the dance, she won't know you wanted to go. Wayne Gretzky once said, when criticized about the number of off-target shots he had taken over a span of play, and I paraphrase, "We miss 100% of the shots we do not take."

The same is true with submitting stories. If you don't submit, you can't get published. Simple as that. The more you submit the more chances you have to get rejected, true, but you also increase your chances of getting a piece accepted.

If you've ever heard the saying "There's someone for everyone" then you understand that eventually, even poor work gets accepted by someone. If this is true for the crappiest writers among us, then shouldn't the best among us have a far easier time?

Yes and no. It's better, but not simple. Some poor work eventually gets accepted, but some excellent work gets rejected too. In fact, a ton of it does. I won't steal the figures I've read about some of history's greatest authors beginning their careers with thousands of rejections, but it's true and dreadful and inspiring at once.

So what do we do with this knowledge? Mope? Celebrate? No. You submit. Then you submit again...and again. I say this bravely now, but I'm guilty of not submitting often. I have not enjoyed the process so far but I have turned a corner, have kicked myself in the pants and have been submitting at least once a day.

I used to play D & D and other role-playing games before computers could keep track of all the stats for you. That meant a shit-load of dice rolls. 4-sided, six-sided, eight-, ten-, twelve and twenty-sided dice. Over and over for every imaginable reason. I've seen every roll. Once I faced an overwhelming single character, a hero, who could have easily wiped out every one of my 2000-man army and proceeded to kill me, their docile king. For giggles, I asked the Dungeon Master (just as nerdy-sounding now as then) if I could attempt to kill the hero with a single catapult shot. The Dungeon Master -- we'll call him Tracy -- scratched his chin and murmured, "Nothing is impossible. You'd have to roll a 100." For those of you who are unfamiliar with what that means, "rolling a 100" meant rolling a 0 on each of two 20-sided dice: a 1% chance of hitting the hero. I rolled two zeros. I hit the hero. I did a backflip, so great was my joy. Then I had to roll for damage. Another zero would mean the hero was killed outright. I rolled a zero. I ran around the room Roger Rabbit-style for a minute while my sobbing opponent curse me, the dungeon master and the gods in general.

You see? I had the gall to ask. That alone allowed for the ridiculous luck to occur. Let's apply that to a submission.

You have a story about dog who has died and battles evil in the afterlife. It's well-written but, you fear an unsellably oblique idea for a story. What you don't/didn't know is publication/agent A has just lost a dog to an unfortunate popsicle accident. You ponder your options. You can bury the story in a stack or you can take the leap and submit it. Now you've unleashed yourself in two parallel universes. You #1 has a crazy story in a stack and no one gets hurt. You #2 however, has enjoyed a summertime popsicle so when you lick the envelope (supposing you're not submitting electronically) you leave a tint of blue sugar on the seal. A day or two later, the depressed recipient nears the end of his/her work day but sees a blue streak on the back of the top envelope that, somehow, has landed upside down. He/she opens the envelope to read about the heroic dead dog. It's a perfect healing fit. Voila, you're published. You #2 receives a publishing credit and a $10 check which he uses to buy a pair of 20-sided dice like he used to kill a hero a long time ago.

Bottom line: submit. The more you do the easier the roll.

Another added benefit of submitting your work is that doing so forces an author to face reality. Once I finish a story, I generally feel a flush of pride. Another story complete. I could place it on a stack and think of it forever after as a special accomplishment. Or I could plan to show it at critique. That shines a light on the work and forces the author to take a closer look. After all, real people are going to read it and judge me to some degree for its weaknesses and strengths. The next level is submission. This is the world looking at your story. You're not simply getting the work ready for colleagues; this is the world. Knowing the story is going in front of a stranger who will be being scrutinizing your work for its fitness to be shown to potentially thousands of viewers forces an author to make the story as perfect as possible. Knowing this is the end goal for the story only helps the author's craft.

So by submitting, you improve your craft and increase your chances for adding items to your resume. In my mind, that qualifies as a win-win.