In this day and age, submitting a story isn’t that hard. Many markets accept electronic submissions, and for those that don’t, the most time-consuming part of the process is printing the manuscript.

Yet more often than not, I find myself procrastinating about actually pulling up a list of markets (say, from ralan.com or duotrope.com) and putting stories out there.

It’s not fear anymore. It used to be, but after your 87th rejection letter, you find your terror of editorial rebuke quite faded.

No, it’s pure inertia. Authors at rest tend to stay at rest. Nobody ever told me that as a neo-pro, I might fall into this trap and have to slog out of it (by way of fun self-challenges like the one that led to six stories in the mail as of this afternoon).

Fortunately, I can report that authors in motion tend to stay in motion. There’s something invigorating about finally getting moving that’s self-perpetuating.

On that note, tonight’s goal: Edit an almost-ready story and make it tomorrow’s first submission.