Practice In Public is Open For Submissions

Please read these guidelines carefully

At Practice in Public, our goal is simple — we want to create a space for writers to practice their craft in front of an audience.

My name is Ayodeji Awosika and I’m the founder of this publication. I have eight years of experience as a writer. When I say experience, I mean that I’ve put my work in public for an audience to see. Until your work is exposed to an audience, your practice doesn’t count.

This publication is designed to give you a place to practice your work in front of an audience, but it’ll be different because I plan to hold you all to a high standard when it comes to publishing your work.

Here’s how things are going to work…

Anyone can become a writer for Practice in Public, but this isn’t going to be the sort of publication where every piece of writing you submit will automatically get published.

In fact, you will get revision requests and, yes, rejections from time to time.

If you’d like to be added to Practice in Public, send a pitch to [email protected] + the link to your profile on Medium.

You will have to periodically check your publications tab in your dashboard to see if you’ve been added. At most, it will take a few days to get you on board.

After that, you are free to submit your work to the pub!

Now, let’s talk about what it takes to actually get your work published.

How to Get Your Work Published in Practice in Public

I believe in the process of inversion.

That means, instead of trying to figure out what does work, figure out what definitely won’t work and simply avoid those actions.

Some red flags that will likely cause your post to get rejected are:

• Cryptic headlines: A good headline communicates what the reader might potentially expect from your article. A bad headline gives the reader little to no idea of what to expect.
• Grammatical errors: I suggest using an app like Grammarly to check your work prior to submitting your posts. If there’s a bunch of bad grammar in your piece it will get rejected immediately.
• Journal entry style posts: If you’ve followed my writing for a while, you know one of my main mantras: your blog is not your personal journal. Random self-serving stories about your life won’t be accepted into the publication.
• Poor topic selection: You want to find the best intersection between things you love to write about and things people want to read. If you miss the mark by publishing about a very obscure topic or one that seems to serve only you, but not the readers, your piece will get rejected.
• One topic caveat: We will not accept submissions that we believe are geared toward political outrage or excessive negativity. While we believe Medium shouldn’t censor topics, we are choosing not to publish material we feel meets that definition.
• Lack of substance and depth: There is no word count requirement for pieces. Nor are there rules for content other than the Medium Partner Guidelines (which you should read through here). Still, we won’t publish posts that lack substance, e.g., listicles with a handful of words underneath each point. There is no hard and fast rule here. Just be smart.
• Poorly formatted posts: Poor formatting includes things like posts without a header image, use of vertical images (use horizontal images only), excessively long walls of text, and lack of the use of headings, sub-headings, and dividers. Make your posts look pretty.
• Artificial Intelligence: Do not submit anything written solely using a generative AI tool. When using a generative AI tool to create any portion of your submission, you must cite it like any other source.

At the very end of this post, you’ll see a resources section that’ll help you get a much better idea of how to write posts that will get accepted.

What You Can Expect as a Writer

For those of you who want to write for the publication, let’s talk about what you can expect from me.

As it stands, I plan to have a 72-hour window to either publish your piece, provide revision suggestions, or decide your piece isn’t a good fit for the pub.

If I decide to publish your piece, I’ll just publish it without notifying you. In the other two cases, you will receive a private note letting you know about my decision.

Note: If I tell you that your piece wasn’t a good fit for the pub, it doesn’t mean that your next piece won’t be a winner. In fact, I’m going to push you to get better by passing on some pieces and the ones who return with improved work will stand out and increase their chances of getting published again.

I want this publication to be a real workshop for writers where I help you all improve your craft. A big part of that involves you being coachable and open to suggestions. Let me use my experience to guide you in the right direction.

What You Can Expect as a Reader

This publication is going to be a place to engage with writing from writers of many different topics and experience levels.

The goal isn’t to have the most pretty and polished prose to ever exist, because practice can be messy.

But I will do my best to steer writers in the right direction and improve the quality of the work on this platform.

Just know that this won’t be one of those publications that churn out any content from any writer for any reason.

We want to combine the best of both worlds — room for writers to grow and a high quality experience for readers.

This will take time to get right, but I’m doubling down on Medium and this publication aims to help the entire platform move forward by giving writers the resources they need to succeed.

Practice in Public will also feature a newsletter called How to Not Suck at Writing, which will provide weekly tips to improve your craft.

For both readers and writers, we will continue to create educational material to help you level up in all areas of life.

Resources to Help You Become a Better Writer and Get Your Posts Accepted to Practice in Public

At this point, I’m not going to make a detailed style guide because I want to reward proactive and ambitious writers.

If you want to be one of the writers who catches my eye and builds a relationship with this publication, take it upon yourself to be a student of writing and implement solid writing advice.

These posts will give you a great idea of what a winning blog post looks like as well as how to succeed on Medium.

Read through these and implement what they say prior to submitting and your chances of acceptance will skyrocket:

Also, take the time to read through these resources Medium created to help you succeed and thrive on the platform: