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Sapphic Voices
Submission Guidelines
"Freedom of press is limited to those who own one." The following topics regarding Submission Guidelines are discussed below:
Who May Submit A Story or Poem to Sapphic Voices The purpose of this site is to promote and strengthen the artistic talents of Lesbians. Of course, we have no way of knowing who you really are, but if you do not identify yourself as a member of this group, then please locate another place on the Internet to post your Work. Is this the first time that you have written something? Is writing your hobby? Are you a professional, published Writer? This is the place for all of you. If you are just starting out, you shall receive encouragement, feedback and constructive criticism. Want to experiment and write something different? Here is the place to see if it can attract an audience. The most important thing you have to do is try. Imagine how much you can learn, and how much fun that you shall have!
Transmit your submission to Sapphic Voices. Kindly include the word "SUBMIT" and the title of the Story or Poem in the subject line of the form or e-mail. This shall assist us to quickly locate new submissions in the Sapphic Voices inbox. Additional information about what to include in the body of that e-mail appears below.
Important Information to Include with Your Submission
You may use either your real name or a handle. Just be sure to tell us exactly how you want your name to appear on the Sapphic Voices website.
Please indicate a viable e-mail address that you wish to be posted with the submission. Many of you
maintain several e-mail addresses for different purposes and this has caused some confusion. We encourage you to
include an e-mail address to which your readers can freely transmit their comments. Direct interaction with your
audience is the main point of this exercise. We want you to get the full effect of the "high" your first
fan mail can have. If you are concerned about maintaining anonymity, there are several free e-mail services available
for you to use (try Hotmail or Yahoomail).
If none is provided, then we shall provide a copyright statement for the current month and year.
Please indicate which Sapphic Voices category you prefer for your Story. If you think that we have forgotten a category, let us know.
If none is provided, we shall not compose one for you. (A description is not required for Poetry submissions.)
It is interesting for the readers if you tell us a little bit about yourself. It can be as personal or anonymous as you like, but please consider including this information. (See the Sapphic Voices Authoresses section.)
How to Format Your Story or Poem
Word (.doc), Rich Text Format (.rtf), or text (.txt) attachments are all acceptable, although Rich Text Format (.rtf) is preferred for Stories of longer than a fairly short length. You may also transmit your submission (such as Poetry) in the body of the form or an e-mail (also preferred). If we have any problems receiving the attachment, we shall contact you and ask you to re-transmit it in a different format.
PLEASE keep the formatting of your document to a minimum. We will be converting your document to HTML (hypertext markup language) so that it may be interpreted by Internet browsers: lots of bolded, indented, or italicized text is difficult to code. Margins and fonts are not handled by browsers the same way they are handled by your word processing software, so please do not set up margins or special fonts in your document. We recommend that you do not indent paragraphs, but double space between them instead. We will make every attempt to present your Work in as readable and attractive a fashion as is possible, given the limits of the technology and our programming ability.
Editorial Policies of Sapphic Voices
We reserve the right to make corrections to gross and obvious errors that we notice, but we are not professional editors and may not catch everything. We strongly urge you, or someone else that you select, to review your submission for correct spelling, grammar and punctuation. Keep in mind the inappropriate use of homonyms (example: "there" instead of "their") and poorly punctuated dialogue. A submission will not be rejected for poor grammar or spelling, but if significant revisions are needed, you shall be asked to review it and resubmit.
Graphics have been kept to a minimum to make lots of room for your efforts: there is no current numerical restriction on how many bytes your Story can be. A thousand page "tome" is a little extreme, and should be posted somewhere else. However, we can set up a link to your epic in the Links section of SV.
We have tried to cover all the bases, but you are limited only by your imagination. If your tale does not fit into a particular category, it is surely an oversight on our part. Go ahead and send it in: we shall slap ourselves on the forehead and wonder how we could have forgotten it.
We reserve the right to reject some Works: be very careful how you handle pornography (not erotica), child abuse, and rape. It is difficult to give you concrete guidelines on this because they can be important themes in great Literature. For example, if this were a few years ago and Alice Walker were to submit The Color Purple, we would happily accept it. So just try to be honest and compassionate. Please consider adding a warning or disclaimer to the introduction of your Story so that readers who wish to avoid certain topics will be able to make an informed decision. Erotica must be clearly labeled as such. Sexual subjects disallowed include those involving certain lifestyles, males, minors, and/or animals. Kindly limit graphic depiction of sexual aid utilization.
Probably. Our purpose is to encourage amateur and experimental Writers at all skill levels by giving them an opportunity to reach an audience. Rejections so far have only occurred when: (1) attempts to correspond with the submittor resulted in questions about the actual Authoress-ship of the Work; (2) the submission was inappropriate to the website (it was not Fiction or Poetry) or (it depicted extensive or graphic sexual situations of a heterosexual nature or sexual situations involving minors). However, major re-writes have been requested if grammar was inadequate for public presentation.
We do not have a regular schedule for posting new Works. As of this writing (November 1998), there
have been significant delays caused by work conflicts, computer problems, and a drastic revision of the Sapphic
Voices design. Once a regular schedule is possible, we estimate that it will take one to two weeks to get your
Work posted. Please watch for notices in "What's New" or "Winged Words" about the current status
of the submission backlog.
Nobody is perfect, and sometimes information changes. Once your Story or Poem has been posted, and you discover something that needs to be fixed or revised, just e-mail us. This also applies to personal information such as a change of handle or e-mail address. It is your Story or your Poem, and you worked hard to write it. We want you to be happy with how it appears.
OK, enough of the dry stuff. Get to writing, and we'll be looking forward to hearing from you. Wakar and roc-it and EM |
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If you have any questions or special concerns regarding your submission, or if you discover an error proceeding your Story's or Poem's posting, then please contact Sapphic Voices.
If you have any queries, comments or complaints, then please contact the
Webmistress |