#0087 Guidelines Are Suggestions, Right? Part One

Please don’t get creative when it comes to basic rules & regs

One of the fastest ways to receive a rejection is to ignore submission guidelines. So, if you’re one of those hyper-competitive people who must get to 100 Rejections before everyone else in the Club, feel free to forget this post (and the next one) all about submission guidelines.

Awww! Look at the baby sloth snuggled atop the mama sloth. Some characterize sloths as lazy because they don’t follow submission guidelines. My take? Sloths don’t get the reasoning behind guidelines. (Photo by Zorawar Bhangoo on Unsplash.)

 To Name or Not to Name

Many places now require submissions to be anonymized. That’s a fancy term for removing your name from the sub, including in the file name and on the artwork. At Inlandia Institute’s online journal, we don’t want screeners to be unduly swayed by a submitter’s name to vote to accept. In our guidelines, we require all submissions be anonymous (what used to be called blind submissions). This small step helps new and emerging creatives to be judged on their work not on their platform or past recognition. 

Some places simply reject submissions with names (perhaps a culling maneuver?). I’m a little kinder, reaching out to submitters to ask them to resubmit without identifying information. 

More Is Not Always Better

When a literary journal states maximum word counts? It’s not a suggestion. 

Some places have length limits to ensure submissions fit their purpose, so don’t submit a 10,000-word novella to a flash fiction journal. Print publications cannot fit 300 lines of poetry on a single 6x9-inch page. Math and physics and such don’t permit it. 

You might wonder why an online place even has limits on length. There’s endless space on the interwebs! Umm, okay. But have you thought about the people who evaluate your submission? Plus all the other submissions? And how they, I don’t know, might need to sleep and eat and try to have some work/life balance? Especially if they are volunteers??

Another aspect of limits not often stated but implied? There’s less of a temptation to submit a just-written something if it’s too long. Word count constraints encourage revision. Cut out the unnecessarily fussy and florid language, the end-all-be-all clichés, the repetitive repeating words. By revising to meet the length requirement, the literary journal receives better subs.

Creative Formatting Caution

With so many font choices available, it’s tempting to use a different one for each character. Canva templates inspire lots of ways to show off art and writing. Switching up line spacing and margins might make a sub shine? 

No. Just… no. 

Go crazy with different fonts to track each character in your draft. Use your Canva account to promote your creative work. Futz about with margins and spacing if it helps your (procrastinating) process. But be aware:

Every single time you fiddle with the formatting of your would-be sub, you embed code. It’s often invisible. But all those layers of Comic Sans and 3-inch left margins and overly formatted text? Still gunking up your file.   

The embedded junk means people like me need to spend time and energy to remove the messiness before formatting an accepted sub for publication. Otherwise I discover glitches down the line needing quick fixes before launch day.

Keep your sub simple and straightforward. Plain Vanilla means the creativity of your work is front and center.

Please don’t center your text!

(Unless it’s integral to the essence of your poem. But still? Think twice before you center once.)

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Next time: Guidelines Are Suggestions, Right? Part Two (aka beyond basics)

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