Dear Friend of the Heart and Writer Extraordinaire!
Every single one of our thousands of readers has a story or stories to tell, stories with realisations, experiences so rich, of sickness and health, of healing, of adventures and miracles — all largely untold. Since we have taken the Journal online and created this new website we have an opportunity never available to us before. To open up our pages to your stories and lives of our family of readers and take us beyond the professional authors and writers to now explore the lives of ordinary people like you and I.
It was Bill William's article that appears 'On Angel's Wings' in the September 2009 Journal — 'Evolution' that really opened up this concept to me. What an amazing story — none of us would have any idea of the life this man leads in US State Prison or the depth of beauty that is revealed through his story that is like a beacon for all of us.
As publisher of a highly regarded spiritual publication after 14 years of selecting, articles I have discovered what works and what doesn't. To remove the objections of "I can't do this, I don't know enough about writing or, I have nothing to share that anybody would want to know", and to encourage you to be bold I have put together 'Guidelines for Writers' to help you feel into the easiness and to maximise your effort. So many of you have astounding stories to share that can bring hope, wisdom and clarity to others — why not give it a go?
Guidelines for Writers:
If you are going to send articles to any publications including our own here are a few tricks to getting your articles accepted by an editor and published.
Firstly, despite what you may think, most editors have little time to fully immerse themselves in what you have written. In the moment of their receiving your article and possibly delegating it to another to read, you have no idea what mood or head space the reader is in. So it comes down to catching their attention quickly:
You can do this by…. removing all effort on the part of the editor by providing your photo, your address, your contact details and most importantly, supplying a simple message on your motivation for writing, ie: I like to receive a two line sentence telling me what it is important for the reader to know. That gets my attention.
Even if I like your article, my next concern is how much work I have to prepare your article for the graphics department. Time is money in publishing.
- Text — we prefer you to use our Submissions page to upload your article as text only (no Word doc attachments — see end of this page for other submission channels); just copy and paste your text into the text box and fill out the other details. Other guidelines for text are: — never use any brackets in text. It's good to highlight important "high value" sentences or quotes so that they can be quickly pulled out for reader attraction boxes. Under heading — always have a 'by-line' defining the article title that adds weight to the heading and helps the reader. Editors don't have time to make one up.
- Pictures — Attach high quality .jpeg, head and shoulders colour photo of you — each time. Do not use a snapshot of yourself with your friend on the beach last summer. No one has time to crop them out and try to improve them. Head and shoulders only, be looking at the reader, make sure there are no shadows, remove 'red eye', smile — check through a couple of other magazines to see how others writers have made themselves look. If you have supporting graphics or pictures send in .jpeg. Good pics accompanying an article will invariably get your article included because you have really helped support your article and saved the desktop designer hours of work.
- Your Bio — Always have your bio at the end of the article — two paragraphs only comprising who you are, what you do, if you want to promote your activities then detail when & where you are doing something next and add your contact details, including web page if you have one. If it just reads, "Mary is a housewife with two children and lives in Towoomba and loves fishing and hunting" that gives a picture of who you are. I suggest not to give a phone number just refer people to your email and website if you have one — this protects your privacy. If you want to provide a special offer for readers — don't forget to tell them — don't wait for them to find it on the website — they might not go that far.
- Length — It is good to offer a short and long version — especially if the article is going to be printed. Print publications have different needs and spaces to fill. I like to receive two options — 750 words or 1500 are good average sizes.
- Content — Allow yourself to develop your own writing style — how you lay the article out, structure and hard hitting points you want the reader to see and remember. The golden rule is no self aggrandisement and no advertising, your product, project or business unless the story specifically relates an experience around these things and then it must be handled in a sensitive way.
Remember that today readers do not like being taught or talked down to, they do like to read other people's real experiences. In a short article where you are sharing an understanding try to include a 'case study' or perhaps your or a partner's experience. When you are writing about someone else always ask them if it's OK first, even consider getting signed permission from them, especially if you are going to publish a book. You can certainly use your own experience — it's always attractive to read that the writer is real and human too. If you can be light hearted and amusing do so, it is a real gift — anything is better than dry and boring. Everyone loves Steve Bhaerman adventures with his Swami Beyondananda and although we can't all be as witty as Steve, we can all be open, honest and real.
Someone once complained that I told the truth too much and was too vulnerable — how exiting to be able to create disturbance through being honest! Just be upfront, wear your heart on your sleeve and tell it like it is, without flowers and definitely no 'holier than thou'. - Read and re-read — Before sending your article to anyone, always ask a couple of other people to read it for spelling, grammar and feedback. Ask yourself the 'So what' question as you read the finished article of what you have written. Does the article give the reader something practical to relate to? Can they try it out? Is it going to be really helpful? Or is it just intellectual theory that no one is going to benefit from? Writing is a great opportunity to see just how much you are willing to expose for people to see. There is a lot of spiritual growth available for 'would-be' writers.
- Keep it personal — People relate to people. Life is not about text book material. If the article is about feeling — does it conjure up emotion? For example, if it was about sex then would the reader feel it? If it is about cars would we want to race out and test drive one? The same must apply to all communication — how can we motivate the reader to trust and experiment — to try it for themselves and thus truly appreciate the value of what you are sharing.
- Having a benchmark — Learn from the professionals — One of by benchmarks is a writer from Hawaii called Alan Cohen, you will find an article from Alan in most of our Journals — he is one of the most popular writers in Spiritual teaching area today. He offers me and dozens of other publishers a selection of articles each month. Three 'simple' and easy to read articles are emailed from him to all publications around the world with a spiritual or human interest focus. Alan is an experienced professional.
I love his articles because they all have a neat moral or message hidden in the story, often they are based on, or relative to something that has happened to Alan personally, either recently or perhaps based on recollection. All the articles are worthy of printing because they are interesting, easy to read, always provide benefit and assistance to the reader and for me the publisher/editor. They come complete; I don't have to waste hours of time following up to publish them — that's the trick. - Becoming an author — You may become so prolific at writing short articles that down the track you start to compile them as individual as chapters for YOUR book. You see, invariably your 'style' will have a theme and one article of expressed realisation will lead to the next — a work in progress.
- Publishing Your Book — Today anyone can be a published author. A few years back to get a book published required a minimum of $7,000+ and a big storage area in the back of the garage which in truth never got emptied. Now you can self-publish, electronically through what is called 'On-demand' publishing. If you get to that stage we know a superb and inexpensive graphics person who can set your pages, and has all the knowledge to help you make it happen, from beginning to end.
Once you get the hang of this and if the desire to share exists within you, it becomes really good fun. You will soon find yourself waking in the night, slipping out of bed to the computer and in the quiet hours before dawn with a big cup of tea beside you 'thrashing' out a download of thoughts as the flow dictates. Bringing up emotions and feelings from your subconscious will become addictive and before you know it, although much might go into the recycle bin you will amazed at how much really 'good work' appears that deserves being offered to the world.
Within weeks of receiving your manuscript emailed of course, as a .pdf attachment the publisher will post you a sample copy complete with colour cover and back to hold in your hands — now that is exciting. From then all you do is order the number of your books that you want — anywhere from one to a thousand. This requires a much smaller investment and each book is printed one at a time — so there is much less upfront investment required to become an author.
So, back to your Way of the Heart article — You send it in and we'll check it out and evaluate your story for inclusion in the next Journal. If we approve, we'll send your text to our graphics lady who turns your article into something visually special ready to be included in a subsequent issue.
It may not be possible to publish all our reader's stories in the Journal but this is where the Spiritual Library comes in. Again, if the article is approved we would like to include it in the "Real Life Stories" category of the Spiritual Library.
The cost to us for the formatting, graphics and online publishing of each article is US$15 — approx Au$19 a cost which we do have to pass on to you. For this your article will presented as an attractive magazine style format — interesting layout and font, photo and your bio at the end. Also as an author in the Library, you will have a short author profile, your biographical details and an author image, which appears with your article in the Spiritual Library. Of course, once up on our site you are free to use this article — i.e. email to other magazine or to share with friends. You can pay this small fee upon receiving confirmation that the article is approved for the Library.
Action:
Sharing from the Heart — it all starts with the one desire to share your truth. The biggest hurdle is getting started and allocating some dedicated time each day to write. When the urge to leap up in the wee small hours comes upon you, go for it. It is when there is no one around, all is quiet with the world that our guides and Spirit can interact with us — they can't resist one who is dedicated and you will receive more help than you can imagine.
Please contribute your article online using our Submissions page, or if that seems too complicated, send your contribution with all the aspects as set down in the Guidelines above to Wini, our Office Manager — office@elohim.com. Wini will contact you as soon as she has read your submission either way.
Have a great time with this — I do hope that you are inspired and that we will receive, your first article one day soon.
Blessings to you all,
Raj
