Modern Women Submission Guidelines — New & Revisied for 2024

How to write for Modern Women

It’s a new year and for many of you that means a new start filled with motivation and an urge to get your pen to paper so let’s dig a little deeper into how to get your work published here at Modern Women, and what we are looking for.

There is no one way to be a woman in modern times, but the aim of this publication is to show that there are shared threads that bind us together across cultures, religions, geographic locations and all the unique experiences that go into the mixing bowl of life to make us who we are.

Everything we go through and experience is done through the lens of being a woman in the current culture. It is a culture that is changing rapidly, and societies expectations are reforming around us. That is why we are interested in hearing the feminine perspective on every aspect of your life.

Whether it be the workplace, your romantic lives, or your thoughts on race, politics, family life, religion, sports and culture. The feminine doesn’t have one homogenized reality; we at Modern Women want to see the unique truth of who you are and the hard won wisdom and insights you have to offer.

✨Whatever aspects of life you are juggling, we’d like to hear about them, because it’s in sharing our stories that we empower ourselves and support others.✨

The Bones of our Publication

• By Women for Women — anyone who identifies as a woman is welcome to write their perspective
• Ageless — women of all ages and demographics are welcome
• Diverse — we cover all backgrounds and life stories

We’re looking for writing that seeks to be; heartfelt, down-to-earth, real, open and honest.

We are looking for articles that are memorable, that once you’ve read them you feel like you are in some way better for it. Whether that be because you see yourself reflected in the words, because you’ve learnt something new or seen something in a new way.

Types of Stories

Modern Women is a publication intended to elevate, inspire and empower women by holding a safe and inclusive space for women’s voices.

You are welcome to submit poetry, fiction, personal essays and articles in all styles.

We have no limitations on the topics you are invited to explore, though for both religion and politics, we welcome discussion but not the pushing of one idea or belief as correct over any other.

We want to read about what matters to you.

We organize our stories into five specific categories:

1. Self: Stories about you, life lessons, struggles, how-to’s, advice, memoirs, desires or anything that speaks to our relationship with ourselves. Tag: Self
2. Relationships: Stories about relationships and partnerships of all kinds, be they platonic or romantic. We want to hear about dating, marriage, divorce, your friendships and family relationships; if you’ve got relationship insights, we want to share them. Tag: Relationships
3. Motherhood: Stories about anything and everything to do with motherhood and parenting from conception/adoption to empty nesting. We often say it takes a village, well, in sharing our experiences we can built that tribe ourselves. Tag: Motherhood
4. Careers: Stories about your career, life in the workplace, creating a business or making a living in whichever way you choose to do. Tag: Careers
5. Society: Stories about the world arouns us and the issues that matter to you, whether they be feminism, race, politics, culture, beliefs, norms etc. Tag: Society

Every month I also offer a writing theme/prompt which you can find at the top of our home page. I view this as an ongoing conversation you are invited to particpate in, and remember you can respond in any form that calls to you, or if you get inspired by a piece you read, respond to that. Just remember to acknowledge the article you received your spark from.

Importantly, there is no time limit. You can respond to the current prompt for the month or have a look through any we’ve published and see where the muse strikes.

Tags

I cannot stress how important your 5 tags are to your writing here on Medium. In most social media spaces you are encouraged to be as specific as possible, but in the Mediumverse you need to think about the topics readers will be searching for.

The below link shows you all the main topic headers Medium uses. I find this really useful in my role as a nominator for the boost program when I’m digging around to find self-published women writers.

As you saw in our categories above, for your first tag please choose which category your writing is aimed at.

Self Relationships Motherhood Careers Society

So if you’ve writing a piece about your experience of sexism in the workplace, your first tag would be ‘careers’.

Last year we also added a ‘Books To Elevate’ section in which I invited you to share the books written by women or for women that impacted you. This is also the place to write about your experience writing and publishing your own books. So, instead of direct self-promotion think more of the writing process, why you wrote what you did, the impact of publishing, what you would do differently in hindsight, etc. For all writing in this section please tag ‘books’.

Your tags are essential so always use all 5. This is how you shape and influence you finds your work. It deserves to be seen and your voice deserves to be heard.

These two short pieces go into more detail and may be helpful.

Titles and Subtitles

You’d be shocked if I told you how many messages we send each day asking people to add a subtitle or put the title in the correct format.

The two musts we require of you are to write the title in ‘title case’, and to put it in the right font. I always recommend using a free tool like the one below if you are unsure of which words should be capitalized. And once that is done, for formatting you simply highlight the text and click the big T in the pop up box and volia job done.

Doing this leaves you free to focus on an attention grabbing but not clickbaity title. How do you know the difference? Well, a title is there to draw the reader’s eye, but it delivers on what it offers whereas clickbait tends not to, and has you clicking away as quickly as you clicked in.

Keep in mind, you want to allude to the content of your article in a way that makes someone want to hear your unique perspective.

This really is one of the main things the editorial team ends up having to send writers pm’s about which delays your work from being published so please take the time to do this before you submit.

Images

This is the second most common hold up to your work getting published… you must add a full image credit.

Unsplash is my go-to for free images but there are many sites to choose from and a lot of you are getting better and better at creating your own images with the aid of AI.

If you choose the AI option, please still provide a link to the platform you used. If you’ve used an image created by someone else add a link for the image and one for the platform as I’ve done in the main article image above.

When picking an image, horizontal or landscape is best. Our aim is to keep everything pleasing for the eye, but it is not a strict rule. You can change the size of your image by clicking on it and playing with the 3 options for size that appear in the small box. Please do use the smallest option for images in the body of your work.

Your image should be interesting, relatable and engaging. Where the eye goes the attention follows, and nowhere is that more clear than in online publishing.

Poetry Spacing

If you hold Shift while hitting Enter, you can get single spacing for poetry which makes for a much better reading experience.

Listicles

We have made the choice to not publish articles that use a listicle style. That means no numbered points. The reason for this is a list of short soundbites might sound good, but they could be written by any AI available and won’t foster any connection with your reader or be memorable once they have stopped reading.

Where are you in your article?

What is the benefit of your unique insight and experience? Expanding on those points, fleshing them out like bones in a skeleton and filling in the spaces with your own thoughts and opinions or real-world examples, enables your reader to connect and be moved by your work.

We ask for flowing paragraphs but spacing is important. Our attention spans aren’t what they were, and for those reading on smaller devices even short paragraphs can look like dense text, which for some can be off-putting and for others will mean if they look away for a second, it can be hard to relocate their spot.

Think about reading text messages on your phone, shorter ones are faster and easier to read. And a fast-reading pace holds the attention and keeps your reader with you and lost in the flow of your words. Win, win for both of you.

How Do You Get Started?

We are always accepting new writers. To be added to the publication as a writer, just drop a response in the comments below with the words “Please add me as a writer I’d like to contribute” or something similar, and leave your Medium @username. You should be added within 72 hours.

It is essential that you provide your Medium username, you can find this on the url of your profile page.

Please also follow Modern Women if you haven’t already, along with the editorial team to support us and help build this community.

Submit A Story

Once you’re added as a writer, you can submit your stories. When editing your story, click the … in the top right corner to add to the Modern Women publication. At this time we’re accepting both unpublished drafts and published work so long as it hasn’t been posted in another Medium publication.

You may republish to your personal blog or other non-Medium publication after a month but will need to state that the piece was first published on Modern Women.

Only one article per day/per contributor is accepted.

We recommend that all submissions are ‘metered’ or locked content. By placing your piece behind Medium’s paywall you create the potential to earn money for your hard work through Medium’s Partner Program.

The Role of Your Editor

The editors of Modern Women do not want to focus on the minor details of spelling and punctuation, and we cover the big do’s and dont’s here in the guidelines so that we, like your readers can be focused on the message your story is trying to get across.

As volunteers who are eager to do our own writing, we have limited time to devote to publishing your work and we’d like your help in using that time to help you structure and deliver your work in a way that connects to as many people as possible.

We want your work to have impact so please take care of the incidentals so that we don’t have to!

We aim to be a responsive publication and we have an amazing team of editors, all working in different time zones so that we can work with you quickly and efficiently to get your work out to our audience.

We aim to respond to you within 48 hours with either a private note with feedback or by publishing your story. Please make sure your private notes are on so that we can communicate with you about any formatting changes that need to be made or any other suggestions our editors might have. To do this just go into Settings, Account and click ON to allow private notes on your articles.

There will be times when the editorial team are busy in their own lives, when this coincides with a busy queue of submissions it might take a day longer than normal, please be patient, we like to give each piece the attention it deserves and will either contact you via pm to discuss any changes that need to be made, publish your work or return it to you if we feel it is not suitable for us at the moment.

Questions?

If you have any difficulties, questions or are unsure about anything to do with Modern Women, feel free to contact me directly via email at [email protected]

A Word of Warning

The editors of Modern Women will not publish hate speech of any kind, that includes political, religious, racial, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, marital status and cultural discrimination.

We may ask you to add a trigger warning to your subtitle if we feel that is necessary to give our readers time to make the decision for themselves about what they feel they are open to read at any particular time.

Most Important!

Get lost in the process and be passionate about what you have to say.

Remember your tags.

Make it personal by using your own opinions and experience.

Let your story sit overnight and when you come back to it, READ IT OUT LOUD! Taking an extra ten minutes to touch up an article can make the world of different.

Don’t use AI-generated content without disclosure.

Be mindful about using unverified claims. Do your research and add links to sources that back your points.

Only use one CTA at the bottom of your post. Your writing will speak for itself and 1 well chosen piece will have more chance of being clicked on than 3.

Medium has published it’s own quality guidelines for publishing on this platform and specifically for the boost program which we are very happy to be a part of. I strongly recommend you have a read through.

My own tips for what I am looking for in the work I nominate for boosting can be found on the Modern Women homepage.