Philosophy and Organization — Literary Impulse

A document of what Literary Impulse is doing, how it is doing, and why.

WHO ARE WE AND WHAT ARE WE LOOKING FOR?

Literary bubbles made of creative impulses.

This is our Tag-Line. Our working slogan. The gist of our principle. We are looking for creative bubbles made of creative impulses.

We are a bunch of creative people who believe in the power of words. We think literature is an important part of our life. We seek to produce and read strings of words that can dazzle us, which can make us believe in life again, which can carry us to new places, which can bring about a change if needed, and which can make life-long friends of us. We like to go deep. More than anything, we just love the way the words play with our minds and emotions.

The world needs art more than ever, and it will continue doing so until the robots take over. After that, it will need even more. Of literature.

We are after poetry, fiction, and creative non-fiction of philosophical nature which dazzles us with its language use. The use of language is of primary importance for us.

That is why we do not publish every day.

Poems which evoke an image, and often the quirky ones are preferred. We like word-play a lot. But if there is too much wordplay, do not make it a very long poem. Metaphors bring life to verse, in our opinion. If a poem is able to create a fabulous image in our mind, and if we are able to read it till the end, we will choose it. We don’t care about a poem’s form. It just should affect us in a way that others can’t.

Short tales can be of any genre but they should not be more than 1500 words long. We are looking for inspiration fables, ghostly fables, fairy fables, science-fiction, fan-fiction. Something which is out of the ordinary. We want to read something dreamy.

If you are able to explain a philosophical idea, well and good. But examples are important. The length can be anything between 500 to 2000 words. It need not be a very densely researched article, but it should speak something very concrete. We are not looking for something topical. Something which can be read by a person of any nationality is preferred. Personal reflections are the best.

The book/poem/short story/art review should not exceed 1500 words. A creative review is preferred. We are always looking to know more about books. Book reviews of classics are most welcome, as much as new books on the market. We are actually looking for commentaries. On great books, on great poems, or art pieces.

If we do not accept your piece, it’s just because we weren’t in that particular frame of mine, in which your piece could dazzle us. If it has grammatical errors, it won’t dazzle us at all. We don’t believe in editing others’ works unless there are avoidable spelling errors. So please, take your time before submitting something. We will also take our sweet time in reviewing it.

OUR GUIDING PRINCIPLES

1. When a story/article is submitted, we put it for internal assessment on a google spreadsheet.

2. Each one of the editors goes through the piece and provides her reflections in the form of a “first-impression” grade (out of 100)

3. We select the best 10, according to our requirement, and publish on a ‘set date’. We stop considering entries one week (7 days) before the ‘set date’. If you submit still, it will be considered for the next edition.

4. Since we accept all kinds of articles — even those that have been published before, we can have a few entries that are published already.

5. In our opinion it is okay. LI is meant to be an archive of “great literary pieces” in the long run. It should not be published with some other publication though. Only those entries published under the banner of LI will be considered.

6. Each edition is followed with a meticulous “Editorial” which describes why we liked the pieces were selected. On our page, only the EDITIONS will be shown, with links to the select stories.

7. Each story will be published on the website also. That is under construction (as on 2nd May 2020). So every time you submit an article, you agree that we can publish your article on our website too, all rights reserved to you, of course.

8. There would be a safe space in the organization. SLOWNESS — we will rather tarry than beat the deadlines, even though we will have them. Deadlines are important.

9. We will not publish if we do not get something “unique” that we all agree is unique.

10. We will not run after “number of views/likes” and “number of claps”. We will cater to a niche market. Literary words are our niche. Literary fiction / non-fiction.

11. Things take time. So we will wait. Though for what, we don’t know. Perhaps for the right articles, and the right time.

12. And yes, an editor’s creative piece will never be a part of LI’s edition. We are not here to play our own bassoon. We are going to depend on other’s Publications’ patronage to publish our words, which is more important.

13. Positions are for making things easier. We are all equal.

14. We will always try to remain calm. Being a critique is not an easy thing. You can never be good enough to judge others’ works. You can only say that — it didn’t click with me. Or. It clicked with me.

15. Since it is a community, we request the writers to go through the stories being published in an edition and put a comment or two to let us know if you liked it. We would love it if you could help spread the word. For words, we can do that.

16. We have a presence on Instagram as well. [https://www.instagram.com/literary_impulse/]