Guidelines for Submissions

To submit to Still Here, email me at schizophrenicgb@gmail.com and I will reply to your email as soon as I can. As Still Here is a free resource with almost no costs involved, I cannot pay contributors for their work. However, I can post links to your website or blog if you wish, so that if someone is interested in seeing more of your work, they can.

Acceptable submissions include factual articles, factual stories, fictional stories and poetry that you have created yourself or own all the copyrights to. Submitting your work to Still Here means that you are allowing me to publish it on the blog and that you are the creator or the copyright holder.

If I feel that a 'trigger warning' is necessary on your piece, there will be a warning sentence at the beginning. A trigger warning is used when talking of self-harm, suicide or any other topics that could cause harmful distress to a person. I am aware that some people find trigger warnings to be patronising, but as someone who has been triggered by images and descriptions in the past, I choose to use them.

If you would like more information about yourself to be used at the end of your submission, please provide it in your original email. Things like Twitter accounts, Facebook accounts, blog addresses and websites are suitable, but I would prefer not to publish your email address, phone number or home address. If you would like to provide a wider address for yourself, such as Swansea, Northern Scotland or New York, this is fine. However, few people have done this and it is not necessary for a submission.

If you don't wish to use your real name, you can write under a fake name. You can either provide a fake name, or I can come up with one for you. I will confirm the fake name with you before the magazine is published to make sure you are happy with it.

Factual Writing

For factual articles, I ask that it is a minimum of 400 words or thereabouts. I don't like imposing a maximum word count, but for the sake of guidelines, I'd say that an article should not be much longer than 2,000 words. I will not publish bad language at all, but if bad language is part of a book excerpt or absolutely essential to a piece, asterisks will be used instead.

Fictional Writing

Anyone wishing to submit fictional writing should follow the guidelines of factual writing.

Poetry

For poetry, I have no verse or word count. Two or even three shorter poems could be submitted if you would like. As with factual articles and fictional writing, bad language will not be published and asterisks used instead. It is probably best for poetry that bad language is not used at all.

If Your Submission is Used

I will email you as soon as I can to let you know that you are being featured, along with the publication date of your work. I can make minor changes to your piece after it has been published, or even have it removed if you wish, but be aware that people will have already read read it, and maybe have saved or printed a copy off. Bear this in mind when submitting your piece.

If you have any other queries about submissions that haven't been answered here, please email me to ask. All submissions and queries should be sent to schizophrenicgb@gmail.com