Submission Guidelines

Newly Updated — How to submit your work to Promptly Written

Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash

Greetings travelers and welcome to Promptly Written. This is a one-stop-shop for all things Promptilicious! Pull up a stool to the bar and check out the menu. I offer daily, weekly and monthly specials to tantalize your muse.

Did You Say Prompts? Yes!

Want a prompt? Need a prompt? Each day I will feature poetry and/or fiction prompts. Each week prompts for essays, creative non-fiction, opinion pieces, rants, and articles will be featured. And monthly, I will offer themed prompts. You decide which ones you want to use and you can post them here on Promptly Written or anywhere else you desire.

Each month I will mix things up a bit by offering more poetry or more fiction prompts. There will always be a Monthly Theme and a Weekly Special. Sometimes I may toss in a Weekend Challenge. I want to keep things fresh around here. No one likes stagnation and certainly, we writers detest it!

If you have any issues or questions about anything dealing with Promptly Written, feel free to contact me — Email: ravynehawke@gmail.com

THE NITTY GRITTY

1. FOLLOW PROMPTLY WRITTEN — this should be obvious. Why join a publication if you are not following it?
2. FOLLOW THE EDITORS — this will make it easier for you to stay in contact with the editorial team at PW.
3. SUBSCRIBE TO MY POSTS — this will ensure that you receive every prompt, newsletter, and anything else I publish on PW in an email. You will notice a ‘letter button’ beside the ‘follow button’ by my name on all my posts. To subscribe to me by email, simply click that ‘letter button’.
4. SIGN UP FOR THE NEWSLETTER — Beginning in January, all interactions between the editorial team and writers will come via a newsletter. I will no longer be doing a mass tagging of all writers at the end of newsletters (apparently Medium frowns upon this). If you do not sign up for the newsletter, don’t complain if you are left out of the loop.
5. CONNECT TO OR CREATE A TWITTER ACCOUNT (and then connect it to your Medium account) — No this is not a requirement. However, I distribute your work on Twitter and if you have not connected your Twitter to your Medium account, you probably don’t know who may be interacting with your work there. Also, beginning in January, PW will be engaging with our writers via Twitter chats.

SUBMISSION GUIDELINES

New-To-Medium and PW Writers

1. You must adhere to Medium’s Terms of Service and Medium Rules. Read them. Memorize them. Do not violate them.
2. I’ve put up a better explanation on how to submit stories to a publication. You can view it here — Submitting Drafts and Citing Images
3. I am adopting the guidelines that Dr Mehmet Yildiz uses on his own publications for Photos and Copyright issues. Please read them carefully and act appropriately.
4. Please review the articles at Medium Help for the following:

• Writing and publishing your first story
• Create, edit, or delete a story
• Using the story editor
• Using images
• Using embeds
• Using tags
• Custom titles & subtitles
• Editor keyboard shortcuts
• How to Mention someone in your story (called tagging)
• How can I make a single-spaced line break? To make a single-spaced line break (as in poetry) go to the end of your line and press Shift + Enter at the same time. This is available only on desktop.
• Emoji Cheat Sheet

5. ❗❗Please polish your stories.❗❗ Check for spelling, grammar, and punctuation. [If you can use Chrome as your browser, the free version of Grammarly works as an extension and will underline in red any suggested changes.] ❗❗Make sure your images are properly captioned; this includes videos.❗❗ Make sure you are using the appropriate tags (I reserve the right to change one of your tags if you have not used an appropriate one — this is to keep the website in an orderly fashion):

• poetry for poetry
• fiction for fiction
• articles for articles and opinions/rants
• essay for personal essays, shortform, or creative non-fiction

6. To All Bi/Multilingual Writers — Yes you can write in your native language if you also translate it into English within the same story.

7. 💥💥Please only submit DRAFTS to PW💥💥 Do not publish on your page and then submit to PW. Submit to PW and I will publish the piece on my end. I’ve let this slide up til now, but beginning January 1st, I will only publish your work if it is in DRAFT form. See #2 above if you are unsure how.

More Guidelines

1. I will not tolerate hate speech in this publication. This includes political, religious, racial, and cultural discrimination. I will reject any pieces of writing that violate this and will remove anyone who violates this in comments. Play nice and be kind.
2. Promptly Written does not publish any nonfiction (essays or articles) on Conspiracy Theories. Any nonfiction stories that are submitted with conspiracy theories in them will automatically be rejected. (Added 1/26/2022)
3. Erotica is acceptable here. I will reserve the right to reject any Erotica that is too graphic or denigrating. Erotica does not equate Hard-Core Porn.
4. Please submit no more than (2) two pieces of writing per day.
5. I operate in the United States in Central Time Zone. Submissions will be published by me during the hours of 12:00 am-8:00 am. (This is subject to change if I have doctor appointments). Please use this converter to figure out what hours these are in your own time zone. If there is to be a delay in publishing and I am able, I will leave you a private note to let you know when your work is scheduled to be published. One of the other editors may publish your story when I am unavailable. Your work will ALWAYS be read by me regardless of who publishes it. I WILL read, clap, comment, and distribute your work on Twitter as soon as I can.
6. All submissions will be published as soon as possible. However, there will be times when you may have to wait up to 24–72 hours. Please be patient with us. None of us are paid editors. This is a labor of love. I am the only full-time editor. My other editors are only part-time or as needed.
7. You can find all of the current prompts under PROMPT. Feel free to browse the prompts past and present. You do not have to just use a prompt from the current day. Browse them all and find the ones that interest you. There is no timeline on when to use a prompt and the prompts never expire.
8. When tagging your stories, please do NOT use the #PWprompt tag. That is for me to use for the daily, weekly, and monthly prompts. You may use #prompt or #writingprompts
9. If you are publishing your piece anywhere besides PW, please remember to Mention (tag) me (@ + Ravyne Hawke) in the BODY of your story so I can find your work. Do not tag me under the tag section for a publication. I will likely NOT find you that way. You only need to Mention ME if you are publishing on any other publication or your own page. Not if you are publishing on PW.
10. If you are writing from one of the prompts, please leave a link to the prompt in the BODY of your story. Preferably at the end. Check out other writers’ formatting if you aren’t sure.

And finally, while Promptly Written is all about prompts, you do not have to use one of our prompts to get published here. You may use prompts from other publications, or just write on your own. We will still publish your work here. And every now and again, break some rules if it helps the creative juices to flow.

If you agree to all the guidelines above and would like to become a writer for PW, please leave a comment below and you will be added ASAP.

That’s all the guidelines I have at this moment. I reserve the right to make changes to said guidelines in the future as needed. I look forward to tempting your muses with delicious prompts.

Ravyne Hawke, EIC

The latest update to Submission Guidelines — March 17, 2022