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If You’re Over Nitpicky Writer Submission Guidelines, This Post is For You
A no-BS take on Medium’s diverse publication rules that are driving us crazy
I know this post might get me banned from certain Medium publications, but shuck it. It’s all about expressing our views and experiences, right?
I am an approved writer for several publications here. It has been great for allowing me to share my experience, knowledge, and observations.
Even though I read through the often lengthy and rather nit-picky submission guidelines of each, it’s becoming more and more complicated to keep up with the pet peeves.
For example, the guidelines for one specifically state: “Essays exploring different writing career paths” are allowed. So, I submitted an essay on my writing career path. One of the editors sent me a note. Apparently, I violated “rules 8a and 8c” in their guidelines. Alrighty then. I visit their guidelines to get some clarity on my offense. These guidelines have an 8a.1, 8a.2, 8a.3… and so on. They mentioned that I needed to cite my sources. Ummm… this is a personal essay on my writing career. I am the source! The one statistic that was in the essay did indeed have a link to the source. Maybe they missed that.
The editor also said I needed “unique and actionable advice for writers” per one of…