Submissions

Submissions Are Now Open

Submission Will Close on May 4, 1998

Date: April 11, 1998

"NOEDIT" SUBMISSIONS ARE

NOW BEING ACCEPTED,

SEE BELOW

New Policies In Effect

Review Only submissions are no longer accepted. The number of Review Only pieces has been too small when compared to those anxious to get their work online. Since we don't have enough time to wade through all the submissions which are hoping to go online, it is impossible to consider Review Only submissions.
Standard Submissions will be accepted only when the submissions windows is open. However, we reserve the right to close that window at any time, especially if the amount of work exceeds our ability to process it in a three month period.
Standard submissions must be accompanied with answers to the questions found in our terms for submission. (i.e. write "1." followed by your answer. We know the question so do not write the question too).
Standard submissions must be accompanied with a biographical paragraph. This should contain your real name, the city you wrote the story in or normally write in, the state or region, country, and approximate date the piece was written. We would also like to know your age, however, a range may be given if you do not want to be exact. what we are looking for is an indication that you are not a minor. We would like your age for our biographical purposes, but that is only a request.
Standard submissions are to be sent in text format. That is, use the cut and paste feature (actually "copy" and paste") of your email software. Do not "attach" your submission. Before sending your work to us, use a simple editor like notebook to make sure your text is ready for "copy and paste". For instance, copy and paste into a notebook ".txt" file (windows users). Look carefully for "artifacts" of your text editor or word processor. Some typical problems are "=" (equal signs) at the end of each line, and perhaps a number like 20 or 9A or some such. These require enormous time in editing, time which takes away from our ability to place works online. Next send it to yourself and then save the file and again look at it using a text editor.
If your story is long, or is novel length, you will probably have to send it in chunks. Send yourself the text first, and see where you need to break the text up so that your email package will be able to send the biggest file possible. Try to keep the text under 100,000 bytes long. Many of the email forwarding systems between you and us will balk at files larger than that and we will not receive your email.
Submissions which have HTML symbols already added will naturally float to the top of our input queue, since we can post these submissions online more quickly. If you don't understand HTML, there are excellent references at your local computer store, and many editing or word processing applications which can help you write your piece without ever learning HTML. Simply use the cut and paste function (we recommend opening the HTML file with a simple text editor like notebook (Microsoft) and then use the "Copy" function, click on the email package, and use "Paste" into the body of your message).

We invite you to read the TERMS sheet we have posted online at:

http://www.writersg.com/std.htm

Reasons for Rejection

Unreadable text - 40% of all rejections are due to text we cannot review. Follow the instructions carefully above. If you attach a file instead of using the "cut and paste" method, we will automatically reject it, because we do not have the time to decode even though we may have the tools to do so.
Submission Incomplete - 30% of all submissions in the past have not had a biographical paragraph and the answers to our questions regarding the author answered. We used to allow an interchange of messages, we ask you for the material, you reply after one or two prompts with that info. However we discovered this is one of the major factors in our inability to get the work we want posted online. Therefore, we no longer will accept submissions that do not have the work itself, the biography, and the answered questions. Minors may simply state as much in lieu of the questions, but the bio MUST be sent.
Difficult to Review - 10% of all rejections are due to funny characters embedded in the text, see the note on "=" (equal signs) above. Also, in some cases the word processor on your end will strip certain punctuation such as hyphens, apostrophes ("'") or asterisks ("*").
Really Bad Grammer or Terrible Spelling - While we relax our standards somewhat for young authors, we expect our adult writers to write in the English language with at least a modicum of skill. You don't have to be an English major, however, if we can't understand we won't bother to finish our initial review, which means you won't see your work online. Spelling is not as important, but if you intend to be a writer, you must at least invest in a spelling package for your computer. Twenty years ago we would understand that the excitement and pursuit of transferring a story from your mind to "paper" means you may make a few mistakes. However, a spell checker should satisfy most of the requirements for submission to us. Also make sure you avoid the common spelling mistakes; their instead of there, your instead of you're, their instead of they're, etc.
The Writing Didn't Appeal - If the writing didn't appeal to us, for whatever reason, we just won't place it online. This is a subjective call, and we reserve the right to make it. It may be based on subject matter, but only rarely. This decision is usually based upon our judgement that we couldn't "get into" the writing. A good storyteller may not have literary skills, but weaves a story by building a situation or characters that engage us. A particular scene may be struck in our mind. Even if the rest of the story does nothing for us, the fact the scene is struck means you have gotten through to us and we will want it online. However, if none of these things happen, then we don't publish. Sometimes, after reading a long piece, we just stop. Maybe the gem of your writing occurs later in the story. Too bad, because you have lost us.
Bugged us to Death - We are volunteers. We aren't paid to do this. You will not be paid, at least not by us, and we wish to dissuade you from believing you will be simply by being published online. If you keep writing us email and bugging us about the work you submitted, when we finally do get around to looking at it, your name will stick in our mind, and we will delete the submission as a matter of course. We simply do not have the time to deal with several thousand emails per month. In fact our last submission window openning got us in trouble with email disk storage, not from the stories alone, but through a combination of pieces submitted and the email concerning it which took up twice as much storage. If you want an agent go find one. If you want your hand held, talk to your mother. We do not wish to seem unkind, but really, we only have so much time.
Failure to Respond - Once we have accepted work submitted, we find over half is never placed online because the person writing to us cannot be reached within a week of our sending a reply. We try to reach you either to let you know we want to put the work online, or to ask questions during our editing. If we cannot reach you, we delete the submission. It may seem harsh, but again, we have plenty of work to review, edit and place online. So if you are not frequently online, i.e. you must check you mail weekly, then you may find a note in your email asking a question which when finally answered by you, will result in our brief message indicating we gave up. Don't let this happen to you.

If you feel our policy is too restrictive then see the "NO EDIT" submission standards below:

"NO EDIT" SUBMISSIONS ARE NOW BEING ACCEPTED

No edit Submissions - An Experiment valid for a limited period of time. We now accept HTML encoded files for publishing, which will be scanned for acceptance under federal law and our basic censorship rules. These works will not be edited or reviewed by The Writer's Gallery. This DOES NOT MEAN you should submit work YOU HAVEN'T EDITED! These submissions must have your name, your email address (we will check it), and a short bio embedded in the text.

The text submitted should be embedded in the body of the text message, DO NOT use attachments or other encapsulated methods for sending a separate file. These usually encode or compress the text and we cannot and will not take the time to manually decode submitted files. The best way to ensure the submittal is acceptable is to use the cut and paste feature of your mail package to place the text in the body of your mail message.

Graphics may be referenced only if they exist somewhere else on the web, we will not store graphics in the unedited area. The work submitted to noedit that passes this criteria will be placed in an unedited area.

Categories for this area can be found by using the URL:

http://www.writersg.com/unedited

You will see folders for each of the various categories. To submit work under our no edit policy, send the work as email to:

noedit@writersg.com.

The work will either be rejected due to our basic policy stated above or placed in the category you request. "No Edit" work sent without a category, bio, or name, will be removed from our mail queue.

We make no committments on how often mail to unedit will be moved from the mail queue to the online unedited area, and make no committments on how long this work will be available. It is subject to disk space and we reserve the right to remove any piece at any time in order to recover space.

Terms and Conditions

Our Editors will make their best attempts at reviewing all work not rejected, and posting it as time permits. We will also, via return E-Mail, make available to the author any editorial comments. It is up to the author to make most editorial changes, however, the editors, in order to post material quickly, may choose to:

Eliminate sections of the work that have been censored.
Remove and/or replace sections (say as an alternative chapter) that have been censored.
Post the work as is, with essentially positive comments posted in the comment file for the work.
Make minor changes such as spelling or simple grammatical repairs and then post the work online.

If the work is deemed good enough to be used online, The Writer's Gallery will "post" that work online. We will not notify you in any way. Therefore it is your responsiblity to look and see if your work is posted. DO NOT WRITE TO ASK US WHEN your work will be posted. After several such attempts we will mark your work for deletion at our earliest convience. We are not being arbitrary, there are millions of writers on the Internet, and at times we feel like they are all writing us asking about their submission.

If you tell us to remove the work, we will do so by "disabling" (change the permissions so that no one can view it). Work left disabled for greater than 30 days without edits, will be archived and removed from the Writer's Gallery Web space.

Please Note: We reserve the right to accept for display any piece of work. Our criteria is, however, quite loose. But due to the current body of law regarding the electronic publishing industry, the Editors we may find it necessary to edit certain levels of profanity or subject matter. The editors are not prudes, however, and will interpret current U.S. laws in this area loosely.

All decisions by the Editors are final.

PARENTS SHOULD KEEP IN MIND THAT CURRENT U.S. LAWS PERMITS THE ELECTRONIC DISPLAY OF TOPICS AND LANGUAGE YOU MAY FIND UN-ACCEPTABLE FOR YOUR CHILDREN.

It is not our intent to publish pornography in this web space, however, many of the pieces displayed here may contain adult themes. If you are not comfortable with writing which may contain "rough" adult language, or descriptions of explicit sexual activity, we suggest you carefully review the ratings we post on the "Chapter" pages for each piece of work. A more puriant reader should probably be prepared to read words or about situations they may find themselves uncomfortable for reading. This is not a site where you will find religous writing in any great quantity.

In terms of your children's use of this area, and indeed use of any electronic communications mechanism, the Writer's Gallery strongly recommends you apply parental guidance and monitoring of your childrens activities. Our young writer's area is rated by several rating authorities, and use of rating tools on the Internet is highly recommended for those concerned with their children's reading or viewing material.

The editors may choose to remove scenes in the fictional flow which are too explicit. On the other hand the editors may choose to leave the "scene" virtually intact due to its portrayal of the emotional state of a character.

Editorial content is at the descretion of the writer's gallery and the laws that pertain to the written word. Decisions of the Editors are final. The web pages herein are subject to current regulations REQUIRING some level of censorship.

We will attempt, where necessary, to indicate in a work's description, if topics are discussed that may not be suitable for two age groups, much like that you might find in a movie theatre. For instance PG13 may contain topics not suitable to children and should be reviewed by the parent. This parental guidance also applies to R rated materal as well...and remember, some adults may find R rated material unacceptable.

All work submitted is construed as sharing the copyright for the work with the Author and the Writer's Gallery. Thus, all works Copyright 1995, 1996, the Writer's Gallery and the submitting author, all rights reserved by the copyright holders. Once work is removed from The Writer's Gallery, we relinguish all rights to that work. The copyright sharing is only to enable us to prosecute, if we choose, anyone we detect has copied your work. If you don't wish to share your copyright during the time your work is online with us, then don't submit.

Address questions or comments on the submission policy to: subpolicy@writersg.com

Writer's Gallery, April 11, 1998