Calling For Personal Essays — About Me Stories Submission Guidelines

You are the story.

Photo by Vince Fleming on Unsplash

Who are you?

The voice in your head is not you. The person observing that voice is you.

No one knows you better than yourself. But your self-perception and how you think about yourself can be deceiving, even wrong sometimes.

I want you to humor me for a few seconds and close your eyes. Without overthinking, start reflecting on yourself. Think about who you are. Think about where you come from. Think about why you are the way you are.

Open your eyes. What did you think about? Did you conjure a physical image of yourself? Did you like what you saw or thought about? Did you practice self-love, expressing appreciation and gratitude for who you are? Or were you hard on yourself, casting judgments, labels, and feeling despair about “not being enough”?

Processing how your voice described yourself is what it means to be the observer. The observer is you. And it ain’t easy sometimes to be the observer of your own psyche.

Now, imagine putting those observations into words and writing. “About Me Stories” is expanding and will be further exploring the most important part about Medium — the writers themselves!

Self-awareness is incredibly important for one’s growth. As writers, we may be writing for an audience, but there will always be an audience of one in every story you ever write. That audience is you. The rest of us are just along for the ride.

Let’s embark on this journey together as a community. This path will require us to push ourselves to the limit. It can be uncomfortable when we explore ourselves, look back at our experiences, reflect inward, and observe the voice in our heads.

New About Me!

When About Me Stories was started in 2020, the only type of story allowed on this publication was introduction stories about the authors. These aren’t going away, but we have now expanded our submission guidelines to include other kinds of essays. But before we dive into the new stories, I want to announce a few additional housekeeping changes to the publication for its birthday!

1. The publication has new branding guidelines, including new colors and logos, and an improved publication layout.
2. We have a few new editors joining the team to review the expanded stories — the talented Jehan Senai Worthy and Jessica A and Rosario Licoda! Please give them a warm welcome and say hello!
3. We are changing the way we are accepting new writers. There will be one requirement to be eligible to publish stories — publishing an ‘About Me’ introduction story. If you haven’t submitted one yet, please start here.
4. Since the beginning, the publication’s biggest strength is the sense of community. We ask that you follow the publication, read as many About Me’s as possible, engage with the writers you resonate with and attempt to respond to every comment on your stories.

Submitting your personal stories

The main topic of the stories will be about the most important person in the articles — you. Here are the types of personal stories we are accepting:

The stories:

• Introductions. The traditional “About Me” story is still here! Readers love learning about the writers behind the stories. About Me’s headlines are required to be in the following format: “About Me — Your Name”. In order to write for “About Me Stories”, you must submit your own ‘About Me’ story. See the submission guidelines here. Tag: About Me
• Memoirs. Stories from the authors that reflect on their lives as well as personal accounts, experiences, and observations. Think of memoirs as an expanded introduction story about you. Tag: Self
• Relationships. Relationships are built between many people, but at the center of each of your personal relationships is you. We’re looking for personal stories that look deep into your relationships with others, whether it be your family, your partner, and how they impact you. Tag: Relationship
• Life Lessons. What is so amazing about each individual on this planet is that no life journey will ever be the same. That’s what makes us individually unique. We want stories that talk about specific moments in your lives and what lessons you learned from them. Tag: Life Lessons
• Self-love. Self-love is defined as a “state of appreciation for oneself.” Practicing self-love doesn’t come naturally: it comes when we accept everything about ourselves. This includes flaws, shortcomings, weaknesses, but also strengths, accomplishments, and our purpose. Submit stories that highlight how you personally practiced self-love. Tag: Self love
• Mental Health. It can be hard to talk to yourself objectively. Personally, I treat myself differently than how I treat my friends and family. We’re looking for prompts where you are writing a letter to yourself. Some ideas include writing a letter or story to yourself to help guide you on a bad day. Or write a letter to yourself, forgiving yourself for a past experience that brought you a lot of guilt or shame. Another idea is to write a letter to yourself as if you are a friend, offering comfort and words of advice. Tag: Mental Health

Per Medium, each story is allowed to have 5 tags. Please pay attention to which tags you need to use for the appropriate story you’re submitting. The other four tags are up to you.

Do not use the tag ‘About Me’ for anything other than introductions.

General Guidelines

“About Me Stories” is an inclusive publication and invites writers of all experience levels to contribute. If you would like to be a writer for About Me Stories but haven’t submitted your “About Me” yet, please start here.

There is no minimum skill level to publish stories here, but we do require all personal stories to be of high quality and insightful to ensure a quick editorial and submission process.

We want to make sure all your voices are heard! Because of the heavy volume of submissions, the editor team asks you do the following to ensure your stories are published successfully.

Here’s what we are humbly asking:

• DO submit quality, thoughtful, insightful articles that are about you.
• DO submit stories that are as free of grammatical errors as possible. Grammarly is a great tool and I highly recommend it for writers. You can download Grammarly here as a Chrome extension.
• DO submit eye-catching, interesting, non-clickbait headlines. Use the APA capitalization style. Use this website to have your headlines capitalized properly for you! The only story type that requires a specific format is the introduction ‘About Me’ stories. If you have not submitted your ‘About Me’ yet, please start here.
• DO tag your stories appropriately. See the above section as a reminder on how and what to tag your stories.
• DO include your ‘About Me’ story at the bottom of every story submitted to this publication. It is common for writers to leave a signature or CTA (call-to-action) at the end of their articles. Include your introduction ‘About Me’ story linked in your CTA. Whether it’s a standalone link or embedded in a word of a paragraph, the format is up to you. If you haven’t written an ‘About Me’ story yet, please start here.
• DO submit unpublished drafts. While we won’t decline previously published stories, we do prefer drafts.
• DO include a personal takeaway from your story. What did you learn from that experience? What did you discover about yourself that you didn’t know before? What impact did it have on you and how does it continue to influence you today?
• DO be gentle and try not to cast judgments on yourself. As you’re writing your personal essays, refrain from judging yourself (ex: I’m a bad writer) and think about the story you’re telling. Observe the facts, label the thoughts, and acknowledge them as you write.

Common reasons your story was rejected

The editorial team is small and will be unable to heavily edit stories. While we may do some slight edits, the editors of the publication are more like gatekeepers. If your story is rejected, the following reasons could explain why.

• You didn’t read any of our guidelines and it shows.
• Your story isn’t about you.
• You didn’t include a personal takeaway.
• You didn’t tag your stories correctly. Please refer to the section above to make sure you are using the right ones for the right stories.
• Poor grammar/spelling.
• The story was too short. The ideal length is more than 4 minutes of reading time or at least 1,000 words.
• Lack of citations and sources where applicable.

Time Frame

We’re committed to reviewing submissions as quickly as possible, but we are only human and there are only three of us! Here is what will happen.

• We will be reviewing submissions from Monday to Friday.
• We will aim to publish stories within 10 days. If your story isn’t published after 10 days, assume that we passed on it. We recommend submitting to another publication or self-publish.
• New writers are typically added within 3 days but all are required to submit an unpublished “About Me” before being eligible to submit other types of personal stories. Please start here if you are not yet a writer for About Me Stories.

Thank you again for your interest in submitting stories to About Me Stories! Without the most important part about Medium (you), this publication wouldn’t exist.