Submission Guidelines

(Updated 15 December 2021)

Who we are:

Your Scrittura editorial team is composed of J.D. Harms (owner) and associate editor Melissa Coffey. Together, we’re thrilled to bring you quality poetry, prose, and articles on the writing craft. We are passionate about writing, and we love to read.

What we’re looking for:

First and foremost, we want your honesty. Our readers are a very intelligent grouping; they’ll be able to smell a sham, and won’t put up with it! There’s no point in wondering why a subpar piece gets no claps/responses/curation. But, at Scrittura, we want to assist you in avoiding putting poor quality writing on Medium.

Second, but obviously connected to the first, we want quality pieces. We’re not a dumping ground for pieces that you couldn’t find a home for, your cast-offs, or sloppy drafts. Alongside this, we will only be accepting unpublished pieces. Because of Medium’s rules around duplicate content, which comes with a possible freezing of your account, we want to avoid this.

Third, don’t violate Medium’s rules regarding content. There’s a lot of stuff that is perfectly acceptable to write about but DO NOT, for instance, send us anything glorifying sexual or child abuse; this won’t be well received. If you haven’t read them already, check them out, here (https://policy.medium.com/medium-rules-30e5502c4eb4). If you’ve got to get something off your chest, or you want to articulate your pain, that’s an entirely different ballgame. We will reject insensitive pieces out of hand.

Fourth, Scrittura is not a place to drive visitors to your website, find people to follow your newsletters, get Medium member referrals, etc. You can leave signatures or links that point us towards other projects you might be engaged in, but the objective Scrittura has is to put up considered and well-written, developed pieces.

Fifth, please do not attach excessive tags or links to your other work. Scrittura’s preferences are for a maximum of one link card per post. For prompt responses we prefer that you include the prompt as a link card, but you may include a link to your own work instead. If you do this, please ensure you include the prompt link as a hyperlink in the text.

We do not allow tagging multiple writers in an attempt to get them to participate and read your work. We all appreciate the writer’s need for exposure, but we are also, especially on Medium, first and foremost a community supporting each other. For that reason, we are allowing multiple link cards if they are the work of another Scrittura writer. Don’t be afraid to spread the word about our amazing community!

Sixth, don’t take your pieces off the Scrittura page without consulting one of us. We understand people want to go somewhere else (because the same piece cannot be shown in two different places on Medium, or it will be removed). If you pull it off without asking, though, you won’t be welcome back.

Seven, our apologies but we are not looking for looking for haiku, tanka, acrostic forms, erratic rhyme schemes, or micropoetry forms. We appreciate the endeavour, but there are plenty of other publications on Medium that accept this content. Scrittura readers come for stories that are generally over 150 words, below which Medium considers shortform (read Melissa on curation practices here). We like to see that you’ve very fully fleshed out the idea, but also that you’re keeping your work available for curation, and that extra distribution that can help.

Eight, so far as content or subject matter is concerned (to beat a well-worn phrase actually to death), the world is your oyster. However, proselytizing pieces, anything overtly religious, or demeaning to someone’s culture, working over-much in the way of the stereotypical, or the overly cliché, will likewise not be well-received. Let your words come from your experience as much as possible, and be conscious of stereotypes and unintentional Othering in your writing. While it’s one thing to write as if you were a different gender in a story, giving advice, being prescriptive, and/or speaking on behalf of women, LGBTQ2S+ or BIPOC communities can take away their space in the conversation and have a re-traumatizing effect. We aren’t into censorship but we are into cultural competence and a display of sensitivity. Ask yourself whether you’re the best person to tell the story.

Ninth, and finally, we only publish one piece per author per day. We receive an awful lot of submissions and getting flooded by one writer means delaying publication for others who are waiting.

Be honest. Be creative. Again. Look at what we’ve published so far if you need ideas of where to go. That said, we’re not an especially great forum for the personal essay, or too much non-fiction.

We do publish sensitive erotica, pieces that explore the feelings and sensations of sex and sexuality, but we’re not interested in the blow-by-blow, as it were, of mere descriptions of an act/image.

There are so many publications on Medium, it’s not even funny. But we’re the discerning types, and we’re not just going throw something up because you sent it in. If you must send us non-fiction, make it about writing. But don’t get upset if we find it’s been done too, too often. There’s more value in your original ideas and process than in rehashing ideas without freshening the message.

What we will do:

Every writer wants, needs exposure, needs to develop an audience in order to succeed. We want to help you with that.

So. We’re going to make an effort to assist you in bringing your best qualities forward. That means editing. No, we’re not the court of last appeal. No, we don’t think we’re the be-all and end-all. But, frankly, editors exist for a reason, but that plays in your favour. The three of us think that getting another pair of eyes on a piece is critical to putting up your best work. Heck. We edit each other’s pieces before they go up.

We are going to clap for you, and pat you on the back, but that’s after it’s gone through our process. Again. There’s other (many?) places you can go to give yourself that ego boost. If we tell you it isn’t good enough, we’re not trying to bring you down: we’re trying to show you how much we care about what gets published here.

The Scrittura editors will promote the best work via Twitter. Please check out as well as our Flipboard, Poiesis. Please feel free to share among your own social media sites as well. The more exposure the better. It’s a good thing. However, if you feel that you don’t want us to do that, let us know in a private note.

N.B. Please take special note of this: our process, now, is to reject pieces that don’t meet our quality standards. PLEASE DO NOT TAKE THIS PERSONALLY. The reason we do this is to maintain proper control of our queue; it becomes very confusing to have a piece sitting, awaiting your return to alter parts of it/all of it, for days on end. It’s absolutely fine to take your time with your edits! We will happily respond to you, give you suggestions, but we also want to be fair to all those who contribute.

Expect your work to be published within 1–4 days, depending on how busy we are and how much time revisions take. We’re doing our best to get to them quickly, but, hey — there’s real life stuff too.

Want to write with us?

If you’d like to write with us, please send an email with your profile link and a draft to [email protected]. We’ll get back to you as soon as we can!

Are the editors working with you doing great work? Please ensure you’re following them, and checking out our work; we write here too, and love it when you stop by!

Below, I’ve attached some links that are extremely important to the functioning and continued success of Scrittura.

This article is required reading for all new writers: clap/highlight/comment so we can see you’ve read it.

For an excellent reference and demonstrative article, check out Melissa Coffey’s workshopping suggestions!!

Yes, I’m working on it…but e a look at this one; quality guides so much of what we’re trying to do here, so it is important for you to be aware of what quality means to us.

Also, Melissa has provided us with a clear layout for how tagging works: an excellent read!

What to do once you are a writer Once we have added you as a writer to our publication, please follow us. Read other stories published in Scrittura: clap, highlight, and comment: be active on Scrittura. After all, this is a community and you are a part of it!

Thanks for joining us at Scrittura!

Sincerely, The Scrittura Team

J.D. Harms 2021