I have a short story that I want to submit to a few magazines. The problem is that most of the publishers of the magazines tell you in there guidelines not to query about your story status for X amount of time, which is usually a VERY long time ( Sometimes months ) . My question is why can I not just send my story to several different magazines at once and submit to the first taker? And if I did, what kind of recourse might there be to me as the writer? And how would they even know? Sorry, I’m not trying to put the screws to anybody, I am just new to all of this and need some advice is all.