This is a column on the ins and outs of getting published, coming straight from the editor’s mouth.
Nearly everything published in Hypertext Review comes from the slush pile. When you submit to us, you are guaranteed at least one reader to your work, usually two. When I log in, I go straight to the work. I want to engage with the essay without knowing the author’s bio. The work should stand on its own.
It’s hard having to pay a submission fee to publications and then run the high risk of getting a rejection. I want to share some advice before submitting to us, based on what I’ve seen come in the submission queue in the three years I have been reading and editing.
At our journal have the following submission guidelines for Nonfiction:
We are interested in short memoir or personal essays with a narrative arc and an astute attention to language. We are open to braided essays and experimental writing as well.
The Genre
I state that we accept nonfiction because memoir, personal essays, and personal narratives all fall under the umbrella of nonfiction. In reading our submission guidelines, the intention is for you to understand that the work we consider is usually memoir or essays about you. Put the “personal” in personal essay. We love memoirs, but we also love essays where you take a concept and make a commentary about the greater world. Think Catapult’s amazing archive of personal essays on loads of topics. Will we consider personal essay hybrids with illustrations? Absolutely! We love work that pushes boundaries.
What we DON’T do: academic essays. I once received a draft of a Ph.D. dissertation. I know that this type of work goes under Nonfiction, but submitting something like this demonstrates the writer did not look at our submission guidelines, nor did they take a glance at our journal (all published work is available online for free).
Another essay form I see is the profile. This is an essay focusing on a specific person. The writer is barely—if at all—visible in these pieces. They are a keen observer, stating helpful information about the person.
Once in a while I will accept a piece that is more profile, but normally, profiles are welcomed in newspapers and commercial magazines.
When it comes to Nonfiction for Hypertext, we don’t usually take on profiles. If you do write a profile, make sure that you have answered the question: so what? Why is it important to give attention to this individual? What discovery is there?
Too short
I get a lot of pieces in my queue that are really interesting and then they stop after 4 pages. I sit there thinking what? That’s it?
I think one of the reasons this happens is because the writer will set up the story with certain promises and they don’t get delivered in the span of 1,000 words. It’s tough to write with such limitations.
I’ve attempted many flash pieces and when I sent them to friends, many times they responded saying that they wanted more. This made me realize that I might be placing unrealistic demands on a piece. If you are writing flash, consider having some trusted readers look at your work before sending it out.
Shock Factor
Reading and teaching in Nonfiction means that I come across a great many essays containing harrowing content. But here’s the thing about high-intensity events—think about why you are writing about them. Are they essential to your narrative? I have come across a lot of pieces where they talk about something intense or gory and it doesn’t feel like it has much meaning except for showing something gory.
So let’s take a look at a good high-intensity essay, Jo Ann Beard’s “The Fourth State of Matter.” (CW for violence). Where does the essay begin? At home in the middle of the night when the old collie wakes up the author because she keeps having accidents. Beard cannot bear to put this dog down. Instead, she cleans up after her and continues with her routine of her office job with physicists at the university. When the shocking event happens, it comes out of nowhere, both for Beard and for the reader. But this piece doesn’t showcase violence. Instead it works on the idea of grief, focusing on those few important people and this sweet dog.
So the shocking event is there, but it serves as a narrative element, part of the plot that moves us to the end, to the challenge of letting go.
We can consider a similar sentiment in “In the Cemetery where Al Jonson is Buried” by Amy Hempel, which, instead of focusing on the fact that her friend is dying of cancer, she makes this valiant effort to provide pointless information to her friend, to help keep her in the now of life. It’s a brilliant piece because in pointing us away from the emotional beat at hand, it actually becomes heavier.
Many essays are about heavy things, but I have read essays about planting a garden that have struck me just as deeply.
I’m going to leave this here for now. I hope this helps as you continue your writing.
Book Recommendation
Without You, There Is No Us by Suki Kim
High time I pass along a memoir in my recommendations list. Kim, a journalist, travels to North Korea posing as an English teacher at Pyongyang University of Science and Technology, where she teaches the sons of the elite. Living in the strict rules that guide the regime, Kim attempts to learn about North Korea and its society through the lives of the young men she teaches. Her experience is harrowing and thrilling, and in telling her story, she reveals the humanity of those living in a dictatorship and their dynamic inner lives.