Write for The Incognito Revolution!

Read our submission guidelines for prospective and current writers.

I’m so excited to bring The Incognito Revolution to life finally! Looking forward to having more folks embrace their selves and leaving their egos behind. It is truly liberating.

But first, I wanted to share a little bit of how the idea for this beautiful community came to life.

Updated: October 25, 2021

The Seed

I was just a regular person, a professional, educated woman that had been using social media for a long time. My relationship with it was bittersweet at best. I later realized I was not too fond of it.

There had already been attempts to cut off social media for good, but there was something that always made me come back. I wanted to connect with people I know. I thought that having thousands of friends on Facebook meant that I cared about everyone I’ve been in contact with, from my best friend in Kindergarten to the guy I hung out with once when I was 20. When I would see their posts on my news feed, I felt connected to them in my mind. Little did I know that was the ego, not my true self, my essence.

When a close friend would start spurting off drama in their posts, fighting with trolls, it would be sad to watch. I didn’t understand why they would put themselves in that situation. My approach to social media was quite reserved. I ended up using it as a sort-of focus group for my weird thoughts. People would fight in my posts with their polarizing views. I just let them be and ate the popcorn.

The Catalyst

However, something happened, something I didn’t expect. My abuser was tracking me on my social media profiles. Though I tried to be very private, he wasn’t dumb, so he put two and two together. When he reached out to me again, I started talking about what happened when we were together and realized he had abused me in the past.

I still didn’t want to part ways with at least one of those profiles because I had created a group to help other victims like me, and it was starting to get some traction. However, when a family member told me that my life was more important than that, I knew I had to let it all go. And so I did.

The Liberation

This time around, I didn’t want to conform to the victim identity I could rightfully adopt. I knew that wasn’t going to help me move forward. One of my spiritual advisors recommended that I get empowered with my circumstances and take this focused time to do the work I had been putting off for a while.

I intended to wait longer to start publishing, but the Medium Writers Challenge prompted me to push my timeline forward. I knew I couldn’t submit anything under my name, so I created a pseudonym. After I published the first story, I couldn’t stop writing.

I would have been skeptical if anyone had told me that I had to endure what I did to start writing again. My life already had a lot of good material, but something in me didn’t feel comfortable putting it out to the world.

Creating the pseudonym made me think about our digital footprint and our online personas, the concept of personal brands, and marketing ourselves.

Did revealing so much of ourselves add to our lives, or did it take from them? Did the concept of a personal brand and an online persona make sense for everybody or just some people? I’m an introvert. I never felt at ease showing my life online. I know others thrive on it, but I never did.

The Proposal

Share your essence—your rawness. Don’t feel constrained. Of course, there’ll be some standard guardrails implemented (to protect ourselves and others), but the intention isn’t to limit your thought process.

First things first

• Stories that I’ll potentially accept: I want to read high-quality, compelling work. I also want to read refreshing and original ideas. If your text sounds like something you can find anywhere else, this might not be the best publication for you.
• Stories that won’t be allowed: This is not the place to spur hate against anything or anyone. Yes, you can disagree with something and write about it. If it’s respectful, insightful, and backed up with research, it might be published. Polarization is not the focus of this publication. On the contrary, this aims to be a safe space to grow with the stories we write and read.
• How to send in your work: Please submit an unpublished draft on Medium. If you’re a writer at The Incognito Revolution, follow these instructions. If you’re not a writer yet, please add a comment in this story with your Medium handle and a short description of why you think you’d be a good fit for The Incognito Revolution.
• Next steps: This is still a one-person part-time effort, so I might not be able to respond to your submission right away, but I will read every single entry. If you don’t hear back after 3 or 4 days, consider that a pass. Please, don’t hesitate to try again with another story.

In the weeds

• Cite every source and add captions to every image.
• Review your work for grammatical errors. Grammarly is a great tool.
• We recommend writing titles in Title case, but I understand that’s an American English standpoint, so it’s okay if Sentence case fits better with your article. You can check them here to make sure they’re well written. Subtitles are recommended but not required.
• No clickbait.

By submitting your story to our publication, it means you agree to us making any edits to your photos or copy without further notice.