Guidelines

PW Submission Guidelines

How to submit your work to Promptly Written

NOTE: We are no longer accepting new writers.

Greetings travelers and welcome to Promptly Written. This is a one-stop-shop for all things Promptilicious! Pull up a stool to the bar and check out the menu. We offer daily, weekly and monthly specials to tantalize your muse.

Did You Say Prompts? Yes!

Want a prompt? Need a prompt? Each month, we offer a Monthly Theme with Writing Sparks to get those juices flowing. Christine Graves offers A Word A Day prompt each month. Each week she offers weekly prompts. On Tuesdays, Rose Malana offers a nature-based prompt. On Wednesdays, I, Ravyne Hawke, offer a Midweek Micro food-based prompt. And on Sundays, Marcus aka Gregory Maidman offers a Spiritual-based prompt. So as you can see, when we say PW is all about prompts, we mean it!

While we prefer you submit work based on our prompts, we also accept work from prompts of other publications, as well as unprompted work, within limits (those will be discussed below).

THE NITTY GRITTY

1. FOLLOW PROMPTLY WRITTEN — this should be obvious. Why join a publication if you are not following it?
2. FOLLOW THE EDITORS — this will make it easier for you to stay in contact with the editorial team at PW.
3. SUBSCRIBE TO MY POSTS — this will ensure that you receive every prompt, newsletter, and anything else I publish on PW in an email. You will notice a ‘letter button’ beside the ‘follow button’ by my name on all my posts. To subscribe to me by email, simply click that ‘letter button’.
4. SIGN UP FOR THE NEWSLETTER —All interactions between the editorial team and writers will come via a newsletter. This includes weekly updates and news in the form of a newsletter, as well as any important information regarding PW or Medium. If you do not sign up for the newsletter, don’t complain if you are left out of the loop.
5. TURN ON YOUR PRIVATE NOTES. To do this, go into Settings, Account, and click ON to allow Private Notes. This is how editors communicate with you. You can also leave us PNs when you submit drafts if you need assistance. We acknowledge that PNs are not a part of the Mobile APP yet, however, you can read our PNs to you. If you need to communicate directly concerning a PN left on your work, you can always email me at the address below.
6. If you have any issues or questions about anything dealing with Promptly Written, feel free to contact me — Email: [email protected]

SUBMISSION GUIDELINES

New-To-Medium and PW Writers

1. You must adhere to Medium’s Terms of Service and Medium Rules. Read them. Memorize them. Do not violate them.
2. I’ve put up a better explanation on how to submit stories to a publication. You can view it here — Submitting Drafts and Citing Images
3. We have adopted the guidelines that Dr Mehmet Yildiz uses on his own publications for Photos and Copyright issues. Please read them carefully and act appropriately.
4. Please review the articles at Medium Help for the following:

• Writing and publishing your first story
• Create, edit, or delete a story
• Using the story editor
• Using images
• Using embeds
• Using tags
• Custom titles & subtitles
• Editor keyboard shortcuts
• How to Mention someone in your story (called tagging)
• How can I make a single-spaced line break? To make a single-spaced line break (as in poetry) go to the end of your line and press Shift + Enter at the same time. This is available only on desktop.
• Emoji Cheat Sheet

5. To All Bi/Multilingual Writers — Yes you can write in your native language if you also translate it into English within the same story.

6. 💥💥Please only submit DRAFTS to PW💥💥 Do not publish on your page and then submit to PW. Submit to PW and we will publish the piece on our end. As of January 1st 2022, we only publish your work if it is in DRAFT form. See #2 above if you are unsure how.

IMPORTANT FYI

1. ❗❗Polish your stories.❗❗ Check for spelling, grammar, and punctuation. [If you can use Chrome as your browser, the free version of Grammarly works as an extension and will underline in red any suggested changes.] If you need assistance with your stories, please contact me via the email address above and I will get you in touch with our line editor, Rose Malana.
2. ❗❗Make sure your images are properly captioned; this includes videos.
3. ❗❗ Make sure you are using the appropriate tags (We reserve the right to change one of your tags if you have not used an appropriate one — this is to keep the website in an orderly fashion). If you get in the habit of making one of those four tags your first tag, this will become second nature to you and we won’t have to beg you to remember. Yes, that is how important this is. Our Reader Interest tags are:

• Poetry for poetry
• Fiction for fiction
• Articles for articles and opinions/rants
• Essay for personal essays, short form, or creative non-fiction

More Guidelines

1. We will not tolerate hate speech in this publication. This includes political, religious, racial, and cultural discrimination. We will reject any pieces of writing that violate this and will remove anyone who violates this in comments — this includes being rude to the Editors. Play nice and be kind.
2. Promptly Written does not publish any nonfiction (essays or articles) on Conspiracy Theories. Any nonfiction stories that are submitted with conspiracy theories in them will automatically be rejected. (Added 1/26/2022). However, you may work a conspiracy theory into a piece of fiction, but it must clearly be fiction.
3. Erotica is acceptable here. We reserve the right to reject any Erotica that is too graphic or denigrating. Erotica does not equate Hard-Core Porn.
4. Please submit no more than (2) two pieces of writing per day.
5. I operate in the United States in the Central Time Zone. Submissions will be published by me during the hours of 12:00 am-8:00 am, Mon — Thurs. Please use this converter to figure out what hours these are in your own time zone. If there is to be a delay in publishing and I am able, I will leave you a private note to let you know when your work is scheduled to be published. One of the other editors may publish your story when I am unavailable. Marcus aka Gregory Maidman is the weekend editor.
6. All submissions will be published as soon as possible. However, there will be times when you may have to wait 24–72 hours. Please be patient with us. None of us are paid editors. This is a labor of love. None of us are full-time editors. We all have our own lives to live outside of Medium. If you cannot wait to have your work published here, feel free to publish it elsewhere.
7. You can find all of the current prompts under PROMPTILICIOUSNESS. Feel free to browse the prompts past and present. You do not have to just use a prompt from the current day. Browse them all and find the ones that interest you. There is no timeline on when to use a prompt and the prompts never expire.
8. When tagging your stories, Do NOT use the PWprompt tag. That is for our prompt writers to use for the daily, weekly, and monthly prompts. You may use prompt or writingprompts
9. If you are publishing your piece in PW, please remember to Mention (tag) me (@RavyneHawke) and ONLY the prompt writer if it is someone other than me in the BODY of your story (at the end)
10. If you are publishing your piece anywhere besides PW, always remember to Mention (tag) me (@RavyneHawke) and ONLY the prompt writer in the BODY of your story (at the end) so we can find your work. Do not tag us under the Reader Interest tag section for a publication. We will likely NOT find you that way. You only need to Mention ME and the Prompt Writer if you are publishing on any other publication or your own page. DO NOT include any other editors in your mentions — Only Me and the Prompt Writer. Did I state that enough? Our other editors do not need to be flooded with more emails. So once again… Only ME and the Prompt Writer. Got it? Awesome!
11. If you are writing from one of the prompts on PW or any other publication, please leave a link to the prompt in the BODY of your story. Preferably at the end. Check out other writers’ formatting if you aren’t sure.

HOW TO BECOME A WRITER FOR PROMPTLY WRITTEN

1. Leave a comment below stating that you understand and agree to our guidelines.
2. Ask to be added as a writer.
3. Provide your Medium ID

That’s all the guidelines I have at this moment. I reserve the right to make changes to said guidelines in the future as needed. We look forward to tempting your muses with delicious prompts and publishing your stories.

Ravyne Hawke, EIC

The latest update to Submission Guidelines — June 11, 2022