Dear Readers and Writers,
First off, thanks for being here. You are appreciated!
We have a few things to communicate today:
- What’s up with the December writing prompt/contest?
- New Writer submissions are temporarily closed
- Some reminders and notes
What’s up with the December writing prompt/contest?
It’s still a thing.
Sometimes life has a way reminding you that your “control” over things is 99% illusion. Unforeseen circumstances, unavoidable delays, mass hysteria, fiery cataclysms, dogs and cats living together, etc… in short, the delay wasn’t planned and should not be taken as the “norm” for these things.
That said, we are, right at this very moment, wrapping up the selection process so we can get everything announced. We will do so in a special News Letter.
New Writer submissions are temporarily closed
As of March 10, 2020, New Writer requests have been put on hold.
This is to give us some time to catch up and possibly bring more editing help on board. It will be reopening at a time yet to be determined.
If your submission is already in the queue, you’re fine. They will be reviewed as soon as possible.
Some reminders and notes:
- Literally Literary is not intended to be any kind of elitist publication. We’re about community and promoting literary writing and reading. We do, however, have quality standards that need to be met in order to be published at LL. We all hate rejecting pieces and we all know how it feels to have our writing rejected. There are times we may have published something that really should have been sent back for more work because we hate rejecting. That said, with the sheer volume of writing coming into us daily, we do have to apply our standards a little more strictly, or it’s going to be a giant wave of good, great, and just so-so writing. You can always edit and resubmit. You haven’t been personally rejected!
- Please send us work that you’ve proofread. It’s a draft, sure, but that doesn’t mean rough draft. There’s only so much direct help we can give considering the volume of writing coming to us. If we’ve had to reject your piece, please take a good long look or have someone else have a look who will be honest with you. If we find things that just aren’t up to our quality standards, we will have to reject them.
- Literally Literary does not publish agenda-based writing. It’s not been a huge problem here, but with a lot of incoming new writers, I thought it worth the reminder.
- Please exercise some patience as we get to publishing your work. We don’t publish things we haven’t read through, so it can be quite time consuming. We will get to your submissions and either publish, send back with some notes, or let you now it’s not quite right for LL.
- We’ve published our Guidelines as prominently as possible on the main page and several times on the new Writer Submission Form which even has a check box assuring us that you did read it, agree with it, and want to be a part of LL. We cover, in some detail, all aspects of submitting your work to LL and a small list of things that are unacceptable, so if we get emails, direct messages, or Facebook messenger requests for help on something that was exhaustively covered by the Guidelines you assured us you’ve read, it’s not going to be a burning priority to get to, as our plates are pretty full. If you’ve read the Guidelines and don’t understand something we’ve written there, that’s different. We’ll do our best to address those help requests.
- Literally Literary has nothing to do with the Medium’s curation process. There are publications that do seem to have some sort of input into this, but no Literary publications, that I am aware of.
- If you submit your work and expect to get a lot of claps I’ve got some advice for you: If you support another writer, they will often take a look at your writing and a significant portion of their readers will likely check out your writing, as well. I’m not saying clap for no reason, but to ignore the other writers here is to hamper your own chances at reaching a wider audience.
Here’s a challenge: If you are a writer trying to grow your audience, spend the next 30 days checking out the people who clap and comment on your stories and writers for publications like Literally Literary (there are several good literary publications out there), and give some attention to those you think deserve it. I’m not talking about mass clapping for anything, just pieces that you enjoyed or feel strongly about. Don’t just read. If you like it, clap, and, even better, leave a comment!
As always,
thank you!
