Is it wise to have an article on my site, let it get indexed by google, and then submit to ezine? Then once approved, submit it to other directories? Or is it not worth submitting to the other directories?
You likely won't get penalized, but it may be better to change that article up before you submit it to other sites. If the duplicate content issue is on other sites you definitely won't get penalized at all. The search engines understand that some duplicate content will naturally exist. They likely won't penalize a site unless the duplicate content usage is extreme.