The Courage to Publish

I'm about to get braver. During an interesting conversation Thursday night, after our Writers' Guild meeting, I discovered that a talented young writer got her first short story published by sending it out simultaneously to 20 different publishers. Not cool in the publishing world? That's what I've been told, too, but she says otherwise. Four journals accepted her story - yes, she had to scramble to withdraw from three of them. But it worked, and she made a good point: if you submit one piece to one place at a time, you might have some real publishing success by the time you're.......85. Hmm. I think I'm changing my approach, today. Oh, by the way, one of the publishers that she turned down accepted a different story from her. I remember being told that doesn't happen, too.