I'm on the periphery of the writer's world, but from what I've seen, getting some short pieces in curated spaces (like a journal or collection) is much more likely to get you notice than blind submissions. For example, the late Larry Brown, a self-taught novelist from Oxford, Mississippi, spent years getting rejections letters on his manuscripts. He finally attracted the attention of a small regional publisher when one of his short stories was published in a small southern literary journal..
