Think of rules and guidelines as your map to getting published.
Writers of all kinds—creative, technical, copy, business, etc—can find themselves having to write to a specific set of rules. When there is a rule, follow it. Not following rules can result in your carefully crafted piece of writing being summarily tossed out. For most of my professional life, I have written to the rules as a technical writer, proposal writer, and journalist. I have discovered this background is a valuable asset to me as I venture into the world of fiction. Fiction does have rules: they are called “submission guidelines.” These rules are as necessary to this type of writing as procurement specifications are to government proposals. Rules help reviewers, whether editors or bureaucrats, weed out the unacceptable from the acceptable. Bleak House Publishing is blunt on its web site. It tells writers “To guarantee a response, please follow our submission guidelines. Deviations may result in materials being thrown away before they're even read. You don't want that. Neither do we.” (See http://www.bleakhousebooks.com/submissions.htm )
You may think writing to the rules only applies to book submissions but not to less formal situations. For example, you want to submit a short story to a contest. The rules/submission guidelines state the story must be no more than 30 pages, double-spaced, with a maximum of 3,000 words. Your brilliant story is 30 pages single-spaced and is over 6,000 words. You try to edit it, but each word is too perfect to be cut. “Oh well,” you shrug. “They will still love it.” You submit it anyway, trusting that your marvelous writing and exciting plot will carry you through.
Wrong.
Probably, no one will even read it. The person in the mailroom who opens it may compare it to the rule/submission guideline check list. The first item on it is “Is the entry double-spaced?” Yes. No. The person checks No, and your entry is automatically returned (or thrown out, if you had also disregarded the rule about including an SASE). This is not unreasonable. There may be hundreds of people submitting stories for this contest and eliminating those who don't think rules apply to them is one way to make the task of judging the entries more manageable. Take the time to follow the rules when you have to write to them. Don’t risk having your work go unread.
You may think writing to the rules only applies to book submissions but not to less formal situations. For example, you want to submit a short story to a contest. The rules/submission guidelines state the story must be no more than 30 pages, double-spaced, with a maximum of 3,000 words. Your brilliant story is 30 pages single-spaced and is over 6,000 words. You try to edit it, but each word is too perfect to be cut. “Oh well,” you shrug. “They will still love it.” You submit it anyway, trusting that your marvelous writing and exciting plot will carry you through.
Wrong.
Probably, no one will even read it. The person in the mailroom who opens it may compare it to the rule/submission guideline check list. The first item on it is “Is the entry double-spaced?” Yes. No. The person checks No, and your entry is automatically returned (or thrown out, if you had also disregarded the rule about including an SASE). This is not unreasonable. There may be hundreds of people submitting stories for this contest and eliminating those who don't think rules apply to them is one way to make the task of judging the entries more manageable. Take the time to follow the rules when you have to write to them. Don’t risk having your work go unread.
No comments:
Post a Comment