Saturday, January 28, 2012

In Progress Submission Policy

Recently, we have seen In Progress articles on taxation, hurricanes, ontology, games, music, science, politics, religion and, frankly, a little bit of everything. We can do better than that.* The In Progress editorial staff is looking for new blood—strangers, such as yourselves, who come here…well, by bad search typing.

Guidelines for In Progress submissions
SUBMISSION:
We require submission. There is no hope of being punished published if there is no submission. If you follow the blog, you most likely can submit by simply posting. This will completely circumvent our editorial staff. If you do not follow, shame on you for two weeks. For your penance, go to the top left hand corner of the blog and click "Follow". Congratulations! You have just passed the technical, intelligence, and self-reliance part of the exam for new submitters. The remainder of the exam is completed with your first submission. We check if you correctly use the subjunctive conditional (or use punctuation at the end of sentences).

LENGTH
This is left to your discretion, but think of your readers, and that ADHD has recently been shortened to ADD. As a general rule we say, "no bigger than a bread box." Any submission containing exactly 1024 words including the word "defenestration" bypasses our editorial staff and is published immediately.

FORMATTING
Forematting is always welcome to stimulate interest, but will be lost when (and if) the article is brought to fruition on the site. Enjoy your cigarette. Avoid using Comic Sans. It is not funny.

AUTHOR BIOS
Unless you have won a Pulitzer or a Nobel, don't bother. However, if your name is S. Morganstern, knock yourself out.

PAYMENT
Submission is enough, but we accept any sort of gratuities. We will actually pay the author if your submission is original and later involved in copyright litigation.

ORIGINALITY
"Good artists borrow. Great artists steal." (No attribution)

TOPICS
Lorem Ipsum
Loren Greene
Loren Eiseley
Anything on the zombie apocalypse
The comparable brightness of cleaning
Other

FINAL THOUGHT
In Progress is competing with HuffingtonPost, TMZ, and PerezHilton as the most popular blog on the Web. Your post can put us over the top.

————
*I personally know 2 followers of this blog (or they should be) who are taking creative writing courses. It takes no time, only guts, to allow a work to be seen by someone other than your professor.

5 comments:

Big Myk said...

Speaking of blogging, it has been since December 14, 2011, that we've received an installment of Kidnapped. Your readership has been at wits end wanting to know how the story ends.

The only possible precedent to this state of anticipation is when Dickens fans stormed the piers of New York City, shouting to arriving sailors from the UK, who the crowd assumed had already read the last installment of The Old Curiosity Shop, "Is Little Nell alive?"

Big Myk said...

Also, I am aware that some non-contributing readers wish to know how to become an author of "In Progress." I have to confess to them that I can't remember and presently have no idea.

James R said...

Ha ha ha! Yes, the next episode has been weighing on my conscience. Eventually, it will come. I would like Renée to show me where the newspaper article is. I have looked in vain. It's not that it is all that accurate, as we all know who have lived through newspaper versions of something we experienced first hand, but it, hopefully, will jog my memory.

Just to keep up interest: we have yet to come to the high speed car chase.

I thought I made that clear: The easiest way to submit is to "Follow". Go towards the button in the top left hand corner. If I am wrong, Peter will clarify.

James R said...

I find it very disturbing that the second comment on the "In Progress Submission Policy" is: how does one submit new articles. Granted, there is attempted humor, but, still, the point of the article was to get new writers.

There are 2 explanations, as I see it, both disturbing.
1) we can't write
2) we can't read

In this case it may be a bit of both, but half the history of this blog is the misreading of articles. Again, I'm not sure who takes principle blame, the writer or the reader. Is this a current problem in society or just this blog?

James R said...

I guess a third explanation is that
3) we are (i.e. "I am") just woefully wrong

I'll let Peter address the 3rd possibility in regards to publishing on this particular blog.