Submission Guidelines for Innards

If you want to write about the weird things your body does, read on

Illustration by Matthias Van Durme.

Welcome to Innards, fellow sacks of meat and bones!

Everyone wants to be healthy, but let’s face it, it’s impossible to keep that up all the time. Sooner or later, our bodies betray us. Being alive comes with an array of shitty medical conditions. And when they happen, Innards is here to turn that shit into gold.

Why I started Innards:

Being less-than-healthy doesn’t mean our lives are over. I should know: I was diagnosed with incurable lung cancer last year, at age 31, and I’m here, having a blast writing this. Writing has helped me process my diagnosis, so now I want to encourage you to do the same. And the best thing about writing is that everyone can do it — you don’t even need to get out of your (hospital) bed.

What we look for at Innards:

This publication is a place to talk openly about health conditions and everything around them.

These are the kind of pieces we are looking for:

• The piece should refer in some way to a health condition or medical procedure. You can interpret “health condition” broadly as anything unusual going on with your body.
• We love vulnerability and rawness. Humor is also highly encouraged. Above all, make us feel something!
• We prefer firsthand accounts, as we aim to empower those who are often seen as victims to tell their stories.
• We accept mainly creative nonfiction (personal essays), poetry, and satire. We may take other formats if we feel they fit the publication. Please tag your piece with the most fitting literary genre (Personal Essay / Poetry / Satire), so it automatically appears in the right section.
• No nonfiction advice pieces about how to prevent or cure any health condition. We leave that to medical and scientific publications.
• Ideally, your story should be 3–8 minutes of reading time for higher engagement. But we will consider other lengths.
• Your piece should have a point and not simply be a diary entry.
• Do not send us your first draft. Your piece should be well structured, spellchecked, and proofread. We suggest using Grammarly.
• We might make some minor edits to the submitted piece before publishing or provide you with notes for you to make additional changes.
• No plagiarism. If you use any image or text from other sources, please make that clear and name the author.
• Follow the general content guidelines for Medium articles.

Formatting Guidelines:

• We are currently looking for unpublished drafts only.
• Please include a title (and preferably a subtitle) to draw the reader in and show what your piece is about.
• Please include an image under the title and subtitle. Make sure you have the right to use the image and credit the author in the caption. You can use Unsplash, Pexels, Pixabay, etc., to find pictures released under Creative Commons CC0.
• Follow the general formatting guidelines for Medium articles.

How to submit:

• If you have not been added as a writer yet: please fill out this quick form. You’ll need to share a link to your unpublished Medium draft. If our team accepts you, then you will be added to Innards as a writer. Then, you’ll be able to submit your piece following these instructions.
• If you have been added as a writer already: please submit your piece following these instructions.
• Expect to hear back from us within a week. We will review your piece, and if we think it fits our publication, we will either accept it or ask for adjustments.

Thank you for checking us out! And remember: if you can’t change it, write about it.

As inspiration, I will leave you with a fitting quote from the hilarious Samantha Irby, who talks about her Crohn’s disease in her book Meaty:

And I know a lot of things suck, and so many people are going through so many terrible things, but to me, in this goddamned moment, nothing is worse than this gross-ass shit disease. Yes, there are worse things, but since those things are not currently happening to me, this bullshit is the worst thing that has ever happened to anyone in the history of ever. It took seven months and a battery of tests for the doctors and nurses and radiologists to come up with a diagnosis, and as soon as they delivered it I was like, “Wouldn’t euthanizing my ass be so much easier?”

Note: Thank you to Maria Garcia for the help in crafting these guidelines.