New Writers of SYNERGY, Technology Hits, Illumination, and Illumination’s Mirror
Never fear, I am here!
--
I’m sure when you received your onboarding information, it was reminiscent of your first day of school. You went to school with some sharpened pencils and an empty bookbag. Only to be sent home at the end of your first day with some much stuff, your bookbag was full and so were your arms. Oh, how I remember those days.
But never fear. You’re soon to be favorite editor (or not, to be explained later) is here!
We’ll begin with the basics.
Writing 101
Your Title Should Look Like This
Your subtitle should look like this
Titles have title case whereas subtitles use sentence case. Directly below your subtitle there should be an image. The image should reflect the content in your submission. Death and dying? Maybe a coffin, or a skull, or an angel. Easy, right? Now, here’s where people get tripped up. Citing their images.
Notice this image of a writer. I use Pixabay a lot, but not exclusively. There are many free websites for you to find images. I’ll leave some links below. Notice the citation under the image. “Image by Lukas Bieri from Pixabay”. Pixabay showed me citation after I downloaded the image. I literally highlighted it, copy, paste and BOOM. A legal image to use with my submission.
Without it, you will not get published. Period. All images are to be copyright free and cited as such. You can read the full image policy here.
Body of text and formatting
Paragraphs should be 4–5 sentences long, depending upon the length of the sentences, of course. A single sentence does not a paragraph make. Nor will we accept blocks of texts that look like this.
Paragraphs should be 4–5 sentences long, depending upon the length of the sentences of course. A single sentence does not a paragraph make. Nor will we accept blocks of texts that look like this.Paragraphs should be 4–5 sentences long, depending upon the length of the sentences of course. A single sentence does not a paragraph make. Nor will we accept blocks of texts that look like this.Paragraphs should be 4–5 sentences long, depending upon the length of the sentences of course. A single sentence does not a paragraph make. Nor will we accept blocks of texts that look like this.Paragraphs should be 4–5 sentences long, depending upon the length of the sentences of course. A single sentence does not a paragraph make. Nor will we accept blocks of texts that look like this.Paragraphs should be 4–5 sentences long, depending upon the length of the sentences of course. A single sentence does not a paragraph make. Nor will we accept blocks of texts that look like this.Paragraphs should be 4–5 sentences long, depending upon the length of the sentences of course. A single sentence does not a paragraph make. Nor will we accept blocks of texts that look like this.Paragraphs should be 4–5 sentences long, depending upon the length of the sentences of course. A single sentence does not a paragraph make. Nor will we accept blocks of texts that look like this.Paragraphs should be 4–5 sentences long, depending upon the length of the sentences of course. A single sentence does not a paragraph make. Nor will we accept blocks of texts that look like this.Paragraphs should be 4–5 sentences long, depending upon the length of the sentences of course. A single sentence does not a paragraph make. Nor will we accept blocks of texts that look like this.
Hot mess, right? Trying being on a mobile device or visually impaired and trying to read that. #hottermess
If you have several paragraphs that are of the appropriate length, they will still need some “white space” after every 3–4 paragraphs. You can either (a) add another appropriate image or simply add a section break. A section break looks like this.
Three little dots in the middle of the page. Easy peasy.
Now that you have your masterpiece written, it’s time to edit. Some edit as they go, others edit once they’re done. It’s simply a matter of personal preference.
There are 3 editing online sites that most people use. Grammarly, ProWritingAid, and Hemingway. All three have free versions to use. Links are provided here for you below.
Pro Tip: Make sure you have your settings set to American English.
Many people don’t think about this when they set one of them up and then are frustrated when their work gets rejected.
Also know that having a good grasp of English is always a plus. None of these editing softwares below will catch everything 100% of the time. Blow your screen up to 110 or 125% so the text is really big so that it stands out. Read your piece out loud. Have someone else read it. All are more ways of catching mistakes before you hit Submit.
✅Title on Point
✅Subtitle on point
✅Image inserted and properly cited
✅Paragraphs and sentences laid out as they should be
✅Editor software used and mistakes corrected
BOOM BABY
Now I hit can Submit!
Nope. ‘Fraid not.
Now we come to the legal stuff. This is where, as Carol Price put it once, I can be scary. Let’s chat about stealing other people’s work and trying to pass it off on your own. There’s a word for that. Shady is one, but the word I’m thinking of is plagiarism. Oxford Languages defines plagiarism as,
… the practice of taking someone else’s work or ideas and passing them off as one’s own.
Just like I said. Some people plagiarize and don’t even realize they’re doing it. If you quote someone and don’t give them credit for the quote (it’s called an attribution), then you’re stealing someone else’s work.
If you submit an essay and don’t cite your sources in canonical links throughout or leave a list of references at the bottom of your piece, you’re stealing. You can learn more about attributions, citations, and sources here. You can read the entire plagiarism policy here.
Now supporting close to 10K writers and 135K readers, we must have better governance to scale further and serve better to growing stakeholders.-Illumination Conduct Guidelines
See what number isn’t in there? The number of editors. There are less than 70 of us. We all have lives, loves, families, jobs, etc. We’re also in 16 different time zones around the world. Just because you just got a PN from us doesn’t mean that we’re still online. You could have been our last message for the day. So no tudes allowed when things don’t happen as fast as you think they should.
There are 10,000 of you and 67 of us spread across 6 publications.
Let that sink in a minute…
I happen to be an editor on 4 of them. Recently I’ve been down with pneumonia. Now I have fluid in my lungs. We all have stuff going on that doesn’t pertain to working for free on Medium. And yes, it’s work. And yes, we do it for free.
What else can keep you from getting published with us? Arguing with editors comes to mind. I’ve blocked about 30 people, all of whom wanted to argue with me. I’m the editor. You’re the writer. I know the policies. You may or may not. I have multiple obligations:
- To the readers
- To the publication
- To Medium
And not necessarily in that order. I know what Medium legally requires. I know what the publisher insists on. I know what will fly with the readers. If you’re so sure you’re right and an editor is wrong, you have more options that many of you care to believe.
- Self publish
- Publish elsewhere
Ticking off editors leaves everyone unhappy and life’s too short. Make the changes and publish with us. Don’t make the changes and publish elsewhere. It really isn’t that deep. I can’t tell you how much we resent having to go to toe to toe with writers. Again, there are 10K or you and -70 of us. We just don’t have the time.
Make no mistake. We share information with each other. And with editors of other publications as well as other publishers. Want to not ever get published on Medium again?
Piss an editor off.
Now that we’ve covered divas, let’s move on. How else to not get published? By not adhering to the limitations of submissions. What, pray tell, is that? In the simplest terms, regardless of which publication you send it to, Illumination, Illumination Mirror, Technology Hits, or SYNERGY, (there are 2 others but this is the 4 that I deal with) it’s all the same.
- ONE essay per person per publication per day OR
- THREE poems OR
- THREE short forms
Let’s break it down and do some math here. Can you,
Submit an essay to Illumination AND
Submit 3 poems to Mirror AND
Submit 1 essay to Technology Hits AND
Submit 1 essay to SYNERGY all on the same day?
Yes. In this scenario, you would have 6 pieces published on the same day. If you don’t write that much or you like to spread your submissions out, that’s cool. But there are a handful of prolific writers who crank out the submissions and then get frustrated they can’t send them all to Illumination or send half to Mirror and half to Tech.
Color in between the lines and you’ll be fine. I promise.
How do you know what to send where?
Technology Hits is self explanatory. SYNERGY is one that trips people up.
SYNERGY hosts articles about all aspects of writing, editing, blogging, and freelancing.
So don’t send up pieces about your vacation or your newest puppy or how you hate your cousin when they get drunk. Unless the piece is about writing, editing, blogging or freelancing, it will get rejected.
Illumination is for anything that doesn’t fit into Tech or SYNERGY. Illumination’s Mirror (IM) is exactly that. It is a mirror of Illumination. Medium restricts how many editors that can be on each publication. Illumination was getting so backed up there for a while and no more editors could be added on, so the workaround was to create IM.
Pro Tip: Send us drafts. Then you can send your 3 poems or 3 short forms all at once. We have the ability to use the Schedule function on your submissions, but they have to be drafts to make that work. It helps up clear the queues quicker and then you know that every few hours a new piece of yours will be coming out. I use this feature myself. It really streamlines the process for me as a writer and an editor.
Want to send us some of your previously self-published work? Here comes the next pro tip!
Pro Tip: Do a short form with links to the previous work you’d like to see us publish.
Why? If you self-published a piece Dec 2020 and send it to us, guess where it will show up? Illumination’s Dec 2020 articles. It will be buried and never see the light of day. If you’ve done several pieces on writing and blogging, collect those links, write a short form, drop the links there and then submit it to SYNERGY.
If you have several tech pieces, write a short form, drop the links, and then submit it to Technology Hits. Have some pieces that don’t fit those two but you’d like to see us publish? Same thing — write a short form, drop the links and submit it to either Illum or Illum’s Mirror. That way, the short form will have that day’s date on it and will be published towards the top.
Following me here?
Now what exactly is a short form? You’re looking at one here. This paragraph is technically a short form. A short form is 150 words or fewer. You bold the first sentence. That’s it. Now, don’t go overboard with the links! We don’t want to see 30–50 words and then 1000 links in each! Let’s use a little reasoning and logic here. No images. If you simply insist on having one, this is for your divas out there, then it goes at the bottom, not the top.
If you use the full 150 words or close to it, then 10 links to your older material is reasonable. Remember, with short forms, you can submit up to 3 per day. So don’t feel pressured to put those 1000 links to your vintage pieces all in one submission.
Also remember that Medium has stated that the “sweet” spot for readers if about 5–7 minutes of reading time, more or less.
(Those 3 paragraphs got me to 130 words, so see, it isn’t that hard to do!)
If you’re on Slack with Illumination, there is a #help channel for questions. The Writing Cooperative is an excellent source of information for writers of all levels. Their link is below. On Medium’s home page (medium.com) there is a search engine. Use it like you use Google. You’d be amazed at what you can find that way. The links to Medium’s Rules and Terms of Service are also below.
Until then, I’ll see you in the queues! ❤
Free Image Sites
Other resources:
