You can download the guidelines and submission details for the Hong Kong Writers' Circle's next anthology:-
What we’re doing: An anthology of Hong Kong writing
that plays with traditional forms and genres to create a cohesive and
representative anthology of the HKWC in 2010. Half of the pieces will have
their unifying theme be different forms of writing. The other half of the
pieces are traditional short stories, based on themes of height, length and
measurements.
Why we’re doing it: Singular short story collections
exclude members who do not write short stories, who may not have the time to
commit to an entire story or who may want to submit a piece in another genre.
This theme allows for wider inclusion by a greater number of people and, in
theory, should reflect what members are writing.
So this means… Short or long, fiction or
non-fiction, prose or poetry, your work is welcome for submission into the
anthology.
How do I submit? We’ve come up with some different
submission guidelines, but the most important one is that all submissions must
be new and previously unpublished. Members
are allowed to submit more than one piece, but we would appreciate one
submission per genre. Here’s what we’re looking for…
· Postcard stories – max. 250 words,
literary fiction or non-fiction
· Flash fiction – max. 1000 words.
Watch your Inbox for our next contest!
· Literary non-fiction – this can be
memoirs, essays or literary journalism, between 2,000 – 5,000 words. You MUST
submit a proposal for approval before you begin writing
· Short Stories – in any genre,
between 2,000 – 5,000 words. You MUST submit your idea to us before you write
· Poetry, monologues or anything
else– please contact sccoverton@gmail.com
if you want to submit in these genres
What do I write about? We encourage all genres and forms
of writing. If you have something you want to do but it doesn’t fit in one of
our categories, please email and we’ll try to make it work. Our only request is
that you, at least, tangentially relate your piece to Hong Kong. In the case of
short stories, it would be great to write something that connects to “The Long
and the Short of It” (see submission guidelines).
Due dates: Soon! We’re looking at getting everything in the bag by July 31st
so we can have some workshops through August and September.
Who are the editors? Simon Overton and Melanie Ho. If
you’d like to help out, email sccoverton@gmail.com
and we’ll put you to work. If you have questions/complaints/compliments (yes we
take those too) please feel free to email sccoverton@gmail.com.
Here are some quick guidelines for
submitting work to the HKWC. The benefit to us is to cut down on a lot of
micro-editing, as will become clear below. Also, most of these suggestions are
industry standards, so it's good practice to have these under your belt when
you submit to agents and publishers.
1) Formatting – keep it simple!
* Bold, underline and italic are acceptable if there are essential to the story.
* Keep everything in one basic font (Times, Arial or Verdana), and all at one size.
* Changing the line spacing is OK, but unnecessary – if we can't read it we'll change it. Some word processors do odd things when you change line spacing that are tricky to remove.
Tip: Try writing your work in Window's Notepad program – it has no formatting whatsoever. See what you can do without!
2) Punctuation, etc...
* Single space after full-stops
* No spaces inside brackets or speech marks, for example:
" What, " she asked ( quietly, to herself )...
should be: "What," she asked (quietly, to herself)...
* Use a spell check before you submit. Make sure it's set to your native variety of English
Tip: On Word, go to Edit - Select All, then double click at the bottom where it (probably) says "English (USA)" and change it to "English (UK)" – if you're from the UK, that is!
* Don't insert loads of returns and avoid asterisks for line breaks. Use a double return when there has been a significant break in story time or in subject. Avoid page breaks.
* Avoid indents, whether they are with tabs, spaces or ruler idents.
3) File formats and other things
* Keep it simple - .doc is fine.
Tip: When you go to save as, and it says "Save as type:" click and scroll down and find something like "Microsoft Word 97/2000/XP .doc" – this is a compatability version and should be less of a headache to open for everyone.
* Avoid .docx and .odt
* Avoid applying Read Only – it's easily defeated, but just adds trouble for editors!
* Keep everything in black and white, and at A4 size
Now – get writing!