Submission Guidelines
By: Martin Rushton
Tags: Sharethelove, Submission, Writing, Submission Guidelines, Médium

Submission Guidelines

Last updated 13 August 2020

Photo by Johannes Plenio on Unsplash

Created on 14 June 2020

Last Edit 13 August 2020

So you want to be a writer and submit to ‘Share The Love’? That’s cool, we would love to have you on board. Before you do though, read through these guidelines to make sure that we are suited to each other.

What we accept

Our aim is to share the love of poetry and fiction. All kinds of poetry are accepted as long as they meet the guidelines and we also accept flash fiction, micro fiction, and short stories.

We do not accept non-fiction stories. If you have written a piece about something in the news, a political view or dare I say it a How-To article, I’m very sorry that isn’t for us. Unless of course, it’s in a poem form.

How to submit

As you are reading this you may have a poem that you want to submit to us. Here are some basic rules that will help you get your story accepted.

Please be aware, our editors are all volunteers and have families and full-time jobs. It can take up to three days for your piece to be checked however, we will try our best to check as soon as possible.

Ensure that the story falls into the categories listed above in ‘What we accept’. If it’s a non-fiction story we won’t accept it. Tags: Please make sure that your story is tagged correctly. The first tag works with our navigation strip, so if it’s going in poetry then your first tag is ‘Poetry’. If you are responding to one of our prompts, then your first tag will be ‘STLPrompt’. This ensures your prompt poem doesn’t get lost on our main page. Formatting: We all love to see readable pieces. If your formatting is all over the place this won’t help us appreciate it. Use soft returns in between lines (Shift_Return) and hard returns (Return) in between stanzas, verses, or paragraphs. All pieces must have a title, subtitle and image in that order. Images: All stories must contain a suitable image. These must be correctly marked up with a link or copyright information. Images can be suggestive, but cannot be pornographic. Please use free image sources such as Unsplash, Pixabay or Pexels. Images that are not public domain may be removed. Your own images may be used but credit them as ‘Author photo’ or ‘Photo taken by [insert credit here]’ Grammar and Spelling: This is really important to us and our readers, so please make sure you proofread your work before submitting it. Our editors will read your pieces and if they find anything, they will send you a private note to help you correct it, but will not correct/edit for you. Abusive: We reserve the right to refuse any piece which is sexist, racist, targets individuals, targets organisations or businesses, refers to paedophilia, sexual abuse, or pieces that are deemed by our editors to be offensive. We do not accept stories that have been previously published on Medium. Please make sure that you only submit a draft. This ensures that your poem starts its life at the top of our list. If it has been published, then it will slip in between those of the same date.

Want to be a writer?

We love writers who want to share their work on our publication. STL will only publish 1 piece per author per day. If you submit more than 1 piece these will be carried over to the following day.

To become a new writer please respond to this post or email submissionsstl@gmail.com with a link to your medium profile. Our editors will have a look at what you have produced and be in touch.

Fiction

Our fiction sections are Micro-Fiction (300 words or less), Flash-Fiction (1000 words or less), and Short-Stories (1000 to 1500 words). Note we cap our word count at 1500 words. Please make sure if you submit to these you use the standard Medium tags.