Wanted: Guest Bloggers

Got some­thing to say about writ­ing, art, inspi­ra­tion, cre­ativ­i­ty, moti­va­tion, process, craft, lit­er­a­ture, read­ing… or pos­si­bly cheese?

Got some­thing that writ­ers or book lovers REALLY need to see?

Want to respond to some­thing I’ve writ­ten, even if it’s to com­plete­ly dis­agree with me and tell me I smell like soup? And not that I smell like the good kind of soup that reminds you of child­hood win­ters, but some­thing with weird goat cheese, too much salt, and sea­son­ings that make you won­der if it has­n’t gone a lit­tle off.

Want to take advan­tage of my (cur­rent­ly) 40,00–60,000+ page views per month and adver­tise your own online endeav­ors in a thin­ly veiled self-pro­mote-a-thon wrapped in the “sheep­’s cloth­ing” of an arti­cle? (For which I will only demand a shoutout in return.)

Want to put an arti­cle or three out in the world, be read by lots of read­ers, but with­out hav­ing to start your own blog and do all that self pro­mo­tion? Or just want to try blog­ging on for size a few times before you start one of your own?

Want to even make a cou­ple of bucks? (Oh yes. I said it. No just “expo­sure” here!)

Then I want you!

Hey, I got­ta get a book writ­ten. I need a day a week where some­one else can do some of the heavy lift­ing.

Bring it!  

Read this whole page––I’ll know if you did­n’t

Then drop me an e‑mail. (chris.brecheen@gmail.com) As long as what you want to write is most­ly coher­ent, at least oblique­ly about writ­ing, no more than 82% hor­ri­bly offen­sive to cishet white males, non-abu­sive to demo­graph­ics typ­i­cal­ly pushed to the mar­gins of our soci­ety, does­n’t make me cry (except in the good way), con­tains at least one vul­gar­i­ty, innu­en­do, or sal­vo of F‑Bombs to main­tain the stead­fast and unswerv­ing lack of deco­rum I main­tain around here, I will con­sid­er your arti­cle.

Now pay­ing peo­ple and hav­ing the traf­fic I do does mean that I usu­al­ly get about two hun­dred or so replies to a post like this, and I get to be a lit­tle picky, so please put on your Sun­day best and read every­thing very, VERY care­ful­ly.

I’m obvi­ous­ly not going to host any­thing that is utter­ly shit­ty to me or some kind of elit­ist skid­mark about who deserves the label of “writer” and who is a “total poseur.” Miss me with that shit. More impor­tant­ly, miss my read­ers.

I also can’t promise that if you write an arti­cle on why I’m totes wrong in my Wrong­face about some­thing like writ­ing every day or read­ing a lot that I won’t write some kind of rebut­tal, but all opin­ions on writ­ing are welcome—even ones anti­thet­i­cal to mine. (I do reserve the right to refuse a post for any rea­son, but I promise that rea­son won’t be because I dis­agree with you about dai­ly writ­ing or you think NaNo is unam­bigu­ous­ly awe­some or what­ev­er.)

And… if you’re one of my reg­u­lar guest blog­gers, I’ll even give you your own link on The Reli­quary (unless you’d rather I did­n’t) and let you post links to your own fic­tion. The mag­ic num­ber is FIVE reg­u­lar arti­cles to open up those priv­i­leges. (And then we’ll talk ratios.)

Here are some guide­lines so we don’t waste each oth­er’s time. If you don’t at least get through them, this isn’t going to go well (and like I said above, I have a way of know­ing):

• If you send me offers to do web con­tent, I mark your mail as spam. I know when I’m look­ing at a legit­i­mate offer for a guest blog.
• If you are a robot, I will mark you as spam. Unless you can do dish­es. Robots that do dish­es are wel­come.
• If you can’t fig­ure out what this blog is about, and offer to do arti­cles about steam roof­ing or tantric sex tech­niques or some­thing, I’ll mark your mail as spam. I’m not just web con­tent here; this blog has a theme and every­thing.
• Please read the para­graph below the bul­let points very, very, very care­ful­ly.
• Your writ­ing is yours. I’m going to ask that you let the post run on my page for a while before you cross post it, but ulti­mate­ly I respect that as the gen­er­a­tor of the cre­ative effort, your writ­ing is yours. If you ask me to remove it, I will. If you repost it some­where else, that’s okay. IT IS YOURS!
• There are no author pass­words to Writ­ing About Writing–you’ll sub­mit your arti­cles to me. I will post them if they are good enough to post.
• The more for­mat­ting your post needs (ital­ics, bold, under­lin­ing, bul­let points, pull quotes, dou­ble tab para­graphs), the more like­ly it is I’m just going to copy and paste it, and it will come out look­ing STRANGE on Blog­ger. I hon­est­ly don’t know why this hap­pens, but the font ends up being small no mat­ter how many times I try to fix it. It’s much bet­ter if you need only a few for­mat­ting changes, and I can start with fresh text and do them myself.
• If you skipped all that dull text up above, this blog is about writ­ing, art, inspi­ra­tion, cre­ativ­i­ty, moti­va­tion, process, craft, lit­er­a­ture, read­ing, and maybe cheese. Don’t skip the para­graph below though.
• Right now I’m not pub­lish­ing fic­tion oth­er than my own. I would be will­ing to pub­lish fic­tion of any of our reg­u­lar guest blog­gers but get­ting that dis­tinc­tion takes some doing. (Five reg­u­lar arti­cles.) If you have some­thing more cre­ative (like some­one men­tioned poems about writ­ing), run it past me. I might be up for some­thing like that.
• I will be as lib­er­al as I can about gate­keep­ing, but you do have to be able to write a lit­tle and there is com­pe­ti­tion. I am going to get a lot of respons­es. I’d love to pub­lish them all, but I will (at most) be pick­ing one every oth­er week. An inco­her­ent rant about the tyran­ny of gram­mar or some­thing you slapped togeth­er in ten min­utes prob­a­bly won’t be make it. Write your best shit (you should nev­er sub­mit less any­way), metic­u­lous­ly fol­low all the sub­mis­sion guide­lines (you should always do this), and let loose. But don’t get too ner­vous about whether it means you’re a good writer or not. It just means there’s com­pe­ti­tion and maybe some oth­er top­ic fit bet­ter or you’ll nail it in a year with prac­tice. I mean I can’t write that well, and I post all my stuff. 
• You don’t have to agree with me, par­tic­u­lar­ly about writ­ing stuff, but I’m not going to post wild­ly diver­gent social posi­tions, humor that punch­es down, or deeply prob­lem­at­ic phras­ing. Any­thing I post here isn’t an “I agree with this 100%!” endorse­ment, but if I hit pub­lish on it, I’m going to be the one to answer for it when I get pissed off read­ers in my com­ments. If you want to write about how the PC police are agents of “the libs,” and they won’t let you even use the word “tard” any­more, go start your own fuck­ing blog, so I can nev­er read it.
• I won’t make any con­tent changes to your writ­ing, but I may make some copy edits. If a proof­read­ing change might change your mean­ing, I will run it by you.
• Please fuck­ing read the para­graph below.
• When I say “I will make some edits”, I want you to under­stand that I’m not a copy edi­tor and would­n’t be good at it even if I want­ed to be. I’m not here to fix up a post from scratch that you did­n’t have time to proof­read. Clean it up. 
• You may link out as much as you want (even self-pro­mo­tion­al links) with­in rea­son, but I’m going to check them all—if they go to spam­my shit, I won’t pub­lish your arti­cle. I don’t have a rubric for “with­in rea­son.”  If your post is more links than arti­cles, no. If it has two dozen sol­id cita­tions for the point you’re mak­ing, we’re still total­ly gold­en. If you have linked to six sep­a­rate self-pub­lished books on your Ama­zon page about sex with dinosaurs… well, it bet­ter be one great fuck­ing arti­cle. 
• Please, for the love of all that is holy, and in the name of Posei­don’s left nip­ple, read the god­damned fuck­ing para­graph below.
• If your post is a giant ass com­mer­cial for some prod­uct, then you need to be pay­ing me for adver­tis­ing space. (I offer very rea­son­able rates.) And if your prod­uct isn’t awe­some and some­thing I total­ly believe in, that’s not going to hap­pen any­way since WAW is gen­er­al­ly ad free. Thin­ly veiled self pro­mo­tion under the aus­pices of some­thing that at least resem­bles an arti­cle is total­ly okay though—just know that it might not get a lot of hits. I only get about 200 views on arti­cles that aren’t liked or reshared through some social media. If my read­ers don’t like some­thing, it does NOT do very well. If they do, well, they know where the like and share but­tons are and it quick­ly goes viral.
• Be aware of, and at least pass­ing­ly com­fort­able with my pol­i­tics and social jus­tice posts. I absolute­ly do not require guest blog­gers to agree with me—certainly not about every issue. How­ev­er, there is noth­ing more des­per­ate­ly unpro­fes­sion­al than writ­ers so hap­py to be pub­lished any­where that they turn around and are shocked to see their own plat­form throw out a social posi­tion they can’t abide by. Also, include the word sparkle­fuzz in your email’s sub­ject line if you want any sort of reply from me at all. This shows me how you’ve actu­al­ly tak­en the time to read the guide­lines, and gives me an easy way to search for them when I get buried in emails which is all the time.
• Seri­ous­ly, read the para­graph below.

The very impor­tant para­graph:

W.A.W. isn’t mak­ing very much mon­ey arti­cle per arti­cle. I can’t offer more than a cou­ple of dol­lars (cur­rent­ly $10 for an arti­cle that does on aver­age as well as the ones I write, and more if it does bet­ter). Most guest blog­gers ask to fold their pay­ment back into W.A.W. as a dona­tion, but that’s nev­er expect­ed, and I’m hap­py to pay you for your writ­ing. If your arti­cle brings in heavy traf­fic, we will fig­ure some­thing extra out so I’m not tak­ing the hard work of a writer with noth­ing but the promise of “expo­sure.” Plus of course if some­one sends me a dona­tion ear­marked for a guest blog­ger, I will pass the mon­ey onto them and even cov­er the Pay­pal fee—that’s for them, not me. It may not add up to much (unless you get mil­lions of hits or write for me a lot) but if it came from your work, I’ll make sure I’m not tak­ing advan­tage of you.
Less impor­tant para­graphs, but you prob­a­bly should keep pay­ing atten­tion if you don’t want to be frus­trat­ed:

I dis­cov­ered when I had can­cer that comb­ing through guest blogs can be near­ly as time con­sum­ing and require as much band­width as just writ­ing an arti­cle, so I’m not going to run more than a cou­ple of guest arti­cles a month at the most until/unless I have a reg­u­lar and I can trust that what you’re send­ing me is The Good Shit™

THIS PROCESS WILL TAKE TIME BECAUSE I AM A WRITER (with a child­care sec­ond job), NOT A MANAGING EDITOR. When you email me in the appro­pri­ate way, I star the email as “impor­tant,” and it may take me two weeks to a month (or more) to get to it. I then send back a “form” reply to every­one who did­n’t spam me or pitch steam roof­ing arti­cles with the next step (which involves either a sam­ple of some­thing you’ve writ­ten so that I can get a sense if you have the chops to write the arti­cle you’re pitch­ing or prefer­ably the ACTUAL arti­cle you’d like con­sid­ered). I usu­al­ly nev­er get a response to the sec­ond email. This process can take a month or more so if you’re in a ter­ri­ble hur­ry, you may need to throw down a rope and swear on the soul of your father, Domin­go Mon­toya, that I will clear out my email cache alive. Hon­est­ly, most peo­ple just ghost me after not get­ting a reply imme­di­ate­ly. If you aren’t ready to be patient… well, real­ly you should­n’t be doing sub­mis­sions anyway—just go self-pub­lish.

Of those who send me some­thing they want pub­lished, about 10% actu­al­ly make it to the blog. Now, just so you know, while I do get sub­mis­sions that aren’t ready for pub­li­ca­tion yet, it’s actu­al­ly far less com­mon than just sub­mis­sions where folks don’t fol­low the direc­tions. I’m not even talk­ing about anal reten­tive direc­tions that you get from most pub­lish­ers like sin­gle spaced or page num­bers. I mean they don’t reply to the first email. Or they link me some­thing and nev­er tell me if that’s their sam­ple or if that’s what they want me to pub­lish. Or I ask about a biog­ra­phy and a pic and nev­er hear back. Or they send me six emails in a row won­der­ing if they can write ten to fif­teen arti­cles a day.

I know it seems like hoops and an assem­bly line and believe me, on this end, it’s ten times worse, but trust me that once we’re done with the hoopla, the rap­port will be very infor­mal and friend­ly and unless your posts get real­ly off top­ic or weird, I’ll give them a lot more lat­i­tude than the first one–it will be a much less stress­ful process once you’re “in.”

Also… most of the writ­ers who do get all the way to the pub­li­ca­tion point send me between two and four arti­cles and then lose enthu­si­asm. Maybe it’s just not the ins­ta-fame they were hop­ing for or it turns out it’s hard­er work than they thought to keep crank­ing out posts every week. So if you’re seri­ous about this, the best thing you can do is read every­thing care­ful­ly (like this post and the e‑mails I send you), and stick with it.

Just like writ­ing itself.