HUMOR | MENTAL HEALTH
Write for emoshitstorm — Submission Guidelines
A new Medium pub where humor and mental health meet
Who says humor and mental health can’t go hand in hand?
Oh, no one? Ahem.
When these fronts collide in whatever genre and stylistic form you can imagine, you have an emoshitstorm.
I started “emoshitstorm” the month I joined Medium, in August 2023. I thought hey maybe I’ll self-publish there sometimes and people that like my writing will follow it!
Thank you to our three inaugural followers: Andrew Knott, StartledEgg, and yours truly! It appears the follow-for-follow peeps who never read my work don’t follow random publications with no set topic or initiative. How ODD!
I dropped emoshitstorm for a while as I sussed out other publications to publish my articles and learn about Medium. I told myself if a void came along, I’d fill it with emoshitstorm.
No stranger to the void, I found one: A publication for personal essays, satire, short stories, and poems combining mental health and humor.
Why emoshitstorm, you might ask?
I used to joke circa 2009 that if I ever had an emo band, I would name it emoshitstorm. I thought it was hilarious, if I do say so myself.
“emoshitstorm” was a result of roasting myself and my chronic depression, anxiety and neurodivergence I’ve poked fun at my whole life, before this 90s kid had the vocabulary or professional help to understand myself.
Humor is a self-defense mechanism many with mental health issues — I mean future humorists — end up doing to survive.
Humor can be utilized to keep others at a distance, but I don’t think you have to ditch humor to heal, inform, and make connections with others.
Blah, how boring would that be?
If you agree, why not write for emoshitstorm?
How to become a writer for emoshitstorm:
- Follow emoshitstorm.
- Comment some version of “I want to write for emoshitstorm”
- I will reply in the affirmative when you are added.
I have ADHD so typing all this out is brutal for me.
Edited 4/28/2024:
Why should you write for a new publication like emoshitstorm?
- You like the concept.
- When you tag topics for your articles, you tag “humor,” “mental health,” or some synonym for those topics.
- You pity me.
- You own all rights to your work, you can republish it whenever / wherever outside of Medium without letting me know.
- You want to get better as a writer, and do not expect to be instantly published. There are plenty of pubs that will publish you within 12–24 hours. Many of these “editors” won’t even read your piece. I can’t promise to be that fast, but I will help make your writing better, if your story has potential. Often I am that fast, but it could be up to a week between when you send me a draft, and when it’s published.
- Please don’t accept edits from me, then remove the submission and publish elsewhere. If you do this more than once, I’ll remove you as a writer.
What does emoshitstorm NOT want?
- Humor that punches down.
- AI unless you can somehow trick me with it and write something funny and nuanced with a robot. I will run the text through an AI detector.
- Anything that violates Medium’s rules. Look them up. I’m not your mom. Okay, fine, here you go.
- Humor that isn’t satire that mocks therapy, mental health, and the people who struggle.
- Anything dirty. I know, I know, there’s a swear in the title! *IF YOU SEND ME EROTICA, I WILL REJECT IT, REMOVE YOU AS A WRITER, AND BLOCK YOU.*
- Pieces over six minutes reading length long. Goes along with the ADHD thing. Quality over quantity please. Of course there are exceptions.
- Previously published submissions. Please send drafts.
- Drafts littered with grammatical errors. If I see more errors that don’t contribute to the diction than I have fingers on my right hand, it’s an automatic rejection. Pssst I have all my fingers.
- If you are new to Medium, please review Medium’s resources before submitting. You are responsible for properly formatting your work. I did it, and you can too! https://help.medium.com/hc/en-us/articles/225168768-Write-post
Who the EFF am I to be an editor at any publication, let alone start my own?
You’ll just have to trust me. Depending on your attachment style, that can be tough.
I don’t even trust me! Wait forget I said that.
Write for me. Make me laugh.
N.B. It can be difficult and painful to write about mental health. Please remember that feedback is meant to be constructive and isn’t a criticism of you. Regardless of whether the piece fits the pub, I recognize and appreciate your vulnerability in sharing your work.
