Submission Guidelines
New Medium Writers Welcome!
Welcome to The Memoirist!
Thank you so much for your interest in writing for our publication.
The Memoirist publishes memoirs, personal humor/life lesson essays, fictional memoir, and creative non-fiction collections that are written from the heart. Our goals are:
- To provide relatable, riveting content for our readers — sometimes with tears, oftentimes with laughter
- To provide a supportive community to writers interested in creative non-fiction
- To create the best forum for the memoir and essay genre on the Medium platform
WHAT to submit:
- Please don’t submit pieces that are out for review with another publication.
- We are looking for: memoir, personal essays, and fictional memoir. We will consider collections and series for featured publication. Examples of style include David Sedaris and Erma Bombeck.
- These should be PERSONAL pieces. We are not looking for SEO articles. (Please, no “The 5 Things I I Learned…And You Should Too!)
- We love humor. We love when there is a lesson learned. We love the heart-felt.
- We don’t love hate and all that jazz.
- We aren’t going to do anything Medium related, tech related, data related, etc., etc. here.
- You can submit more than once a day, but I will only publish one article a day per writer.
- I can’t guarantee you that I will publish every story you submit. This could be for a variety of reasons that have nothing to do with your writing or how well the piece is written.
Become a writer for The Memoirist:
- Comment “Please add me as a writer” and add your @name. It may take a few days for you to hear back from me.
- PLEASE follow the publication and our newsletter. I respectfully ask all those asking to contribute to please follow us on Medium as well as on our social media platforms.
- In addition to our newsletter, we also currently have a Twitter page and a Facebook Group. I will be cross promoting published pieces and would like to utilize our Facebook Group as an internal community for networking, calls for content, contests, and more.
I’m a writer here, so NOW what?:
- Submit your drafts and wait with great anticipation. :-P
- We try to turnaround pieces as quickly as possible, but due to the number of submissions, please give us up to 24ish hours to review your draft.
- I don’t plan on doing any hard editing, so please proofread your work and ensure you’re following the rules of the Medium Gods. I may fix any glaring spelling errors or grammatical errors I see. I may get back to you with suggested edits or feedback prior to publishing or if your particular piece isn’t right at this time.
- Please make sure all photos are credited, even your own!
- If we do not accept your submission, please do not take it personally! Rejected submissions have been vetted through our editing team for a majority decision; In most cases, the piece is simply not a good fit for the publication at this time or may be in need of more refinement.
- Engage! It’s important to me to build this into a supportive community. My hope is that all Memoirist writers will actively participate in the growth of our publication — we can do that by doing all the goofy things we need to do to show our appreciation for the good work of others…clapping, commenting, reading, supporting!
Tagging
- It’s not a requirement, but we recommend keeping one tag slot open on your stories to use The Memoirist.
- The other four tags are up to you, but here are some suggestions: essay, memoir, fictional non-fiction, humor*, life*, life lessons*, relationships*, This Happened to Me*. (*These tags are recognized “Top Writer” categories by the Medium platform.)
So, if you’re here reading this— and you’re interested in writing for The Memoirist—please drop me a comment and say, “I’d like to be added as a writer!” We’ll get the ball rolling from there.
[NOTE: TO REQUEST TO BE ADDED AS A WRITER, PLEASE SEE OUR 2022 SUBMISSION GUIDELINES]
Thanks!
