HeavyGlow

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After spending the better part of the day arranging our active submissions and pasting them into the editorial area where we discuss the work and make our decisions, I saw that about half of the submissions are not in compliance with our guidelines. We have reasons for wanting things to be a certain way, and that will ultimately benefit you as well as us.

So, here are some friendly reminders about our guidelines. Please be aware that most of these reference both emailed submissions and form submissions.

1. Please, please, please single space your work but double space between paragraphs, I beg you. Sometimes, things get all jumbly-wumbly for reasons that no one knows, and then we can't tell where a paragraph ends and where a new one begins. If you want your work published "just right" you have to be clear and distinct.

2. Brief biographies, please. We will no longer publish any bios that exceed 100 words. We know you're proud, just as you should be, and we're proud of you, too. But when the bios begin to exceed the stories in word count then that's just a little bit of overkill.

3. I spoke about brief bios, now let me add please do include some kind of a bio. We've had a few submissions that have not had a bio. If we've published you before that's wonderful, but we don't hold onto the older stuff. So, just paste one in for us real quick.

4. When using the submission form we humbly request that you adhere to the form guidelines. The website states that we don't want your name or title or anything extra in the story box. Just put the story in there and only the story. The reason for that is that when you put the title in the box, too, then we think you're some kind of really cool artistic writer who has started his or her story by repeating the title right off the bat. Trust me, it's really hard to tell because many times it "fits" that way and we don't know any better. So, make sure you want the title to be the first sentence because that's what we're going to assume if that's the way we receive the piece. And, we already have your name and email address so if you repeat all that in the story box then that's just additional stuff that we have to delete and it might make us a teeny bit cranky.

5. And finally, try to remember to put this little guy at the end of your piece >>>>[end]<<<<, just like it looks here except with no arrows. We won't have a cow or anything like that if you forget this one, but it does help us to know that we received the whole piece. It would also help us to recognize the difference when people actually end their story with, "The End", and even though we're not sure why someone would end a piece that way, who are we to judge?

Okay, that's all, I guess. Thanks ever so much for listening and for helping us to help you become a published writer.

We love yas, and please keep those submissions coming; we're getting some awesome stuff.