How I Edit and Publish Your Beautiful Stories Every Tuesday
What Happens When You Press ‘Submit to Publication’
I’m one of the editors of the New Writers Welcome publication. It belongs to Robert Ralph. It’s been a month in this role. My shift is on Tuesday. The rest days are shared by Robert Ralph and our beautiful ladies. They are Dazzling Shene, Francesca Dallaglio, Marilyn Glover and Sally Prag. We are a 3-continents A-Team of Robert.
How does it look?
The first thing I do on Medium in the morning? I open the ‘Drafts and Submissions’ page of our New Writers Welcome publication. There are 23 articles here this morning. The number was 35 last week and 19 two weeks before.
The first thing I do? Rejections:
- I look for ‘Published’ ones. I’m sorry people, we only accept drafts into our publication. Guess what, there are none this morning. What do I do when I see them? I send a private message with the rejection reason and remove the article from the list.
We always give you the rejection reason by sending a note.
- I check for topics we don’t support here. Violence, graphic sex, porn, erotica, divisive politics. Again, there are none. Whew!
The second thing I do? Start reading.
I start from the oldest ones. These were already checked by our editors on the earlier shift. I find one.
Notice the asterisk I circled? Another editor, Marilyn Glover, left a note to the author. She asked for the subtitle and the photo credit. There is no response yet. I will leave it as it is. We expect authors to respond in 48 hours. After that, we have to reject the article to keep our queue clean.
Watch out for asterisks in your draft.
Next article. Again, the editor asked for the subtitle. The author added it. Good to publish if the rest is ok.
The third thing I do? Checklist.
- Plagiarism check. It takes time but it’s essential. If it shows the article was published by someone else, it’s a rejection.
We want stories written by you. It’s easy to find out.
Have you published your article outside of Medium before? Please give credit with the link and date at the end. That saves us time to check and find out ourselves.
- Check the grammar. I have a Grammarly extension so it’s easy. I correct spelling mistakes in reasonable numbers, say 5–10 per post. If I see a lot of red light, I’ll ask the author to do a spell-check.
Please use Grammarly extension, it’s a game changer.
- Statements or numbers that need sources. Examples of statements or facts?
Research proves…
2 out of 10 Americans…
67% of people in Asia…
This is how it looks on the screen:
You can give a personal opinion or speak from experience. For example, I can say that 2 out of 3 clients who come for my personal training want to lose extra weight. No source is needed here.
- Photo source. Every photo has an owner and a source. Please write if it belongs to you.
- ‘New Writers Welcome’ tag. Most authors choose 5 tags. If our tag is absent, I delete your tag #5 and insert ours. Saves time and effort.
- And the winner is… Subtitle! You need to do it right once. Check here if you need guidance.
End of the day
What looks like a good end of the day and my shift? Most of your drafts are published or rejected. All drafts that stay in the queue have a private note (asterisk!*) of what to fix. They have 48 hours to wait for your reaction.
We are here to help you, new writers. Please listen to us.
Check out Part 2 of this article:
