While we always receive a lot of varied, high-quality work here at CR, we do, on occasion, notice trends in our submissions. Here are two of the latest.
Elaborate presentation: Recently we’ve received a number of spiral-bound submissions. We’ve received submissions on watermarked, stationery-grade stock, on parchment, and on glossy paper with accompanying photographs. We’ve also received quite a few in those see-through folders with that long-plastic-clip-binder thing. You know what we’re talking about. While these submissions did bring a smiles to our faces because they reminded us of that time we forgot to read A Separate Peace for English class and forced our parents to drive us to Office Depot the night before our reports were due to purchase the most expensive report cover so that maybe, just maybe, our teachers would see the clear effort that went in to our reports, as evidenced by their highly polished appearance, and know, without reading, that they were holding “A” papers; they also made us a bit sad since our English teachers were not sympathetic, had in fact not even taken the professional-looking folios into consideration AT ALL, even though each cost almost a DOLLAR (a dollar in the mid-80s no less!), and our parents had refused to pay that dollar even though the plastic folio WAS FOR A SCHOOL PROJECT! Anyway . . . what were we talking about . . . ?
“Priority” submissions: Some trends just make sense. For example, those shoes that are shaped like feet. 
Some, however, are completely nonsensical, like lead-free paint. Overnighting submissions falls into the latter category. We could understand if these submissions we’re coming in under the wire at the close of our reading period, but they aren’t. While we appreciate the urgency authors feel in getting us their work as fast as possible, we unfortunately can’t reciprocate by reading the submissions any faster, and then we just feel bad that somebody paid $20 to get us a story or set of poems the very next day when we won’t be able to read it for a few weeks. We don’t feel “I-just-stepped-on-my-friend’s-new-puppy-and-now-I’m-worried-there’s-something-wrong,-like-medically-wrong,-with-the-puppy bad,” but we do hate to see fellow writers waste their money.
Ultimately, however, we take every submission seriously, so if you feel the need to overnight us your poems, which have been handwritten using a quill on dried leaves, then laminated and spiral bound, we’d love to see them.
