Call for collaborators
Out of Site, Out of Minds
An off-Medium collaboration, brought to Medium
Collaborations can take place in a variety of ways — social media, email, a shared document. They may start as a series of tweets or an extended chat in the comments section or emailed responses from writers living half a world apart or even a discussion over coffee.
In this ongoing project, we want to celebrate these collaborations that take place outside of Medium. The collaborations can be poetry, fiction or creative non-fiction and must be conducted outside of Medium. The completed collaborations will be published each weekend.
How does it work?
This section explains a couple of options for how to conduct your collaboration, and some guidelines for how to submit your final piece to us.
Option 1: Choose your own collaboration
If you’re thinking about running a social media collaboration, chances are you’ve got a network of writers on that platform who would be interested in working with you. Maybe you’ve even finished a collaboration already. In either case, we are happy to let you do your own thing until your creative project is finalised.
When you’re ready to submit your final piece, please follow our submission guidelines below. We’ll accept submissions throughout the week. Submissions will be published on weekends on a pre-set schedule. If we receive multiple submissions, Chalkboard will publish them in a staggered fashion over a few weeks.
Option 2: Sign up to meet new collaborators
If you don’t have a pre-existing network of collaborators, sign up here to meet like-minded writers. We’ll invite two or more writers to participate, based on your preferences for projects and platforms, and share your project type and communication details in an unlisted Medium post. If any members of your team aren’t on Medium, we’ll send you all a BCC email to make sure you get the message.
Please note that this option will require sharing your provided social media username or ID to your collaborators.
At least one writer must be a Medium member; this person will added as a writer for Chalkboard, and will be responsible for
- leading the collaboration on whatever platform you choose
- preparing a draft Medium story for your project
- submitting the draft to Chalkboard within one week
- notifying Chalkboard of any problems with your project.
If your project is unusually large, let us know and we can discuss whether it’s appropriate to extend your deadline.
Example Collaboration
Here’s a link to Tamyka and Dewi’s collaboration conducted wholly on Twitter. Dewi starts it off with a haiku and Tamyka replies with a senryu and they go back and forth to create a poem battle. Rap battle aficionados, look out! You’ve got competition!
Submission guidelines
- Submit a draft only; no published pieces.
- Include all authors in the subtitle of your story. If they are Medium members, tag them. If they are not Medium members, and you collaborated on a social media platform, link their names to their public profiles. (You can also include other information here.)
- Include the mode of collaboration, either in the subtitle or in an explanation at the bottom of your story.
- Feel free to add any information about the process at the bottom of your piece, along with screen captures of your communications.
- Tag the title with the words [TK: Out of Site]. We will remove the tag before publishing.
- Tag your submission with “Out of Site” All other tags are yours to use.
- Please use an image in your piece, because it makes our homepage look great. Ensure they are properly attributed. If you are not the image creator, include a link that shows licensing information.
