When you write a lot of different short stories, you really get to explore all aspects of your creative mind. You never know what will fall out of your head, so you find yourself writing in a wide variety of genres, things you never thought you would find interesting.

But they consume you, and you can’t stop writing.

So now you have this wonderful backlog of short and novella-length stories to enter in contests and submit to various publications–but now you find that this contest wants general fiction, and this one is fantasy. And this one is sci-fi only!

Dude–how do I know what tale to send to who?

If your work is nonfiction, it’s no problem because your work is targeted to a magazine with a specific readership, so the sub-genre will be clear and where you should submit it was likely evident the day you decided to write it.