Introduction

Eclectica is a quarterly World Wide Web journal devoted to showcasing the best writing on the web, regardless of genre. "Literary" and "genre" work appear side-by-side in each issue, along with pieces that blur the distinctions between such categories. Pushcart Prize, National Poetry Series, and Pulitzer Prize winners, as well as Nebula Award nominees, have shared issues with previously unpublished authors.

Eclectica is a not-for-profit publication. As such we do not currently pay contributors. We do guarantee that your work will never go out of print, and it will be in good company; all of the work in Eclectica undergoes a rigorous submission process. Contributors are also eligible for inclusion should we produce a print anthology.

Because Eclectica operates solely on reputation, word of mouth, and Google, we appreciate it when authors include us in their lists of publications.

Rights

Eclectica acquires First North American Serial Rights, a one time, non-exclusive use of Electronic Rights, with all rights reverting to the author upon publication. We expect authors to follow proper publishing protocol: with the exception of collections and anthologies, a given piece should not appear in more than one electronic publication, just as it should not appear in more than one print publication. Note that work appearing in Eclectica is permanently available online in our archives for public reference. If an author does choose to re-publish work elsewhere on the web, Eclectica should be credited as the original publisher.

Criteria

We pride ourselves on giving everyone (high schoolers, convicts, movie executives, etc.) an equal shot at publication, based solely on the quality of their work. As such, there are no criteria for who can submit. Because we like eclecticism, we tend to favor the varied perspectives that often characterize the work of international authors, people of color, women, alternative lifestylists, and straight white men—but others who don't fit into these categories often surprise us.

Content

Although we are interested in all styles and genres of writing, prospective authors are still encouraged to read a current issue of Eclectica before submitting. We are always interested in fiction, poetry, essays, creative nonfiction, drama, book and movie reviews, travel writing, interviews and humor/satire. Works which cross genres—or create new ones—are especially encouraged. This includes prose poems, "heavy" opinion, works combining visual art and writing, electronic multimedia, hypertext/HTML, and types we have yet to imagine.

There are no restrictions as to length. We are happy to consider long stories and novel excerpts, although we may discuss serialization of extremely long pieces.

Technical

Submissions must be sent by e-mail and should be sent as plain text or as an attachment in any popular word processor format (PC or Mac). If you must send an attachment, we prefer Microsoft Word. Send to:

submissions@eclectica.org

Poetry submissions should be limited to five (5) works per author, while fiction submissions should be limited to three (3) works during a submission period. Authors should expect an editorial response shortly after the posted submission deadline (see below). Please know that due to the high volume of submissions, we cannot provide critiques of your work.

Deadlines

We've settled into a quarterly schedule, roughly corresponding with the seasons. For no good reason, the winter issue is called the January/February issue, and is actually up from January 1 through April 1. The deadline for each issue is the first day of the month prior, so the January/February deadline is December 1, and the April/May deadline is March 1. Any work received after the deadline is automatically considered for the following issue. Some have found that if they send us something three or four days late, we'll still consider it for the current issue. It happens, but there is no guarantee, so if you want to control your own destiny, send the work before the first of the month.

Notification

Whenever possible, we try to communicate when a submission has been received and when the author can reasonably expect to hear a decision. However, since time constraints make it almost never possible, we ask that you assume we a) received your submission and b) will be notifying you of its acceptance/rejection sometime between the deadline date (first of the month prior to release) and the day of release. Usually, it'll be the middle of the month—to give enough time for edit approval, bio request, etc.

Personal information

Most authors include a cover letter/note with their submission. This can and probably should be very short. The editors tend to ignore these cover letters until after a piece has been fully considered, since we want to concentrate on content over someone's pedigree. On the other hand, we are human, and if someone manages to catch our attention with a personable, effective, to the point cover letter, we are probably predisposed to look at their work favorably. We'd like to think we're still going to be objective, but at the very least, a decent cover note is a sign that the author in question can write—a good thing if we're about to invest time in reading his or her work. And when people have no cover note at all (some don't even have their name on their submission!), we find it a bit annoying, impersonal, and/or careless.

The Editing Process

Please submit your work with the following things in mind:

First, know that your piece will be edited before it is published. You will have an opportunity to discuss those and additional edits prior to the piece going "live" to the readers. Authors who feel their writing is sacrosanct, and that any alteration of it by an editor constitutes a personal violation, would do better to send their work elsewhere.

Second, although seemingly in contradiction to the first point, your work should be in what you consider to be a finished state at the time of submission. As such, you should not, after having submitted a piece, send a revised version of it at a later date. Without going into all the details of why this is not a good idea, we just hope you'll take our word for it that this is not a good idea. It's especially disconcerting when an author responds to an acceptance notice with a revision. If we liked your work as it was, we liked it as it was. We also don't have time to read another version of it when we're scrambling to put an issue together, nor do we have the inclination or the patience to figure out how the new version differs from the old.

Removing Old Work

Over the years a handful of authors have written, asking that pieces be removed from the archives. In all but two cases, these requests were denied. The editors look on such requests unfavorably, in part because removing pieces from the archives requires a great deal of work to repair all the corresponding links, in part because permanent inclusion in the archives has always been a condition of acceptance, and primarily because the editors have no interest in dismantling something that has taken well over a decade to build. In addition, we feel that there's something sad about not letting the record speak for itself. We urge authors not to second guess what they wrote at an earlier period in their lives, just as we as editors prefer not to second guess what we accepted for earlier issues.

Simultaneous Submissions

As per "Rights" above, we are not interested in previously published work. While we will consider simultaneous submissions, please be sure to let us know that they are simultaneous and keep us updated on their publication status. It's disappointing as an editor to invest a lot of time in a submission, only to find it was accepted weeks or months before by a competitor. In general, few simultaneous submissions have ended up appearing in Eclectica. Since we tend to read submissions in batches and not as they trickle in, a high quality submission is likely to have been accepted elsewhere before we get to it, and if the piece in question wasn't strong enough to be accepted elsewhere by the time we DO get to it, it's probably not going to be what we're looking for, either. There have been exceptions, though, so it's really up to the writer. All we ask is to be kept informed.

A few more words...

About the mechanics of writing in general: It's not unusual to find mechanical "mistakes" in the works of great authors like, say, Hemingway. And there are plenty of experts who disagree about when a comma is absolutely necessary or when one should use which or that. However, there are rules, and there are rules for breaking those rules, and they are relatively simple, especially if one thinks of oneself as a "writer." We find an unbelievable number of comma splices, comma faults—a plethora of improperly used semicolons, colons, dashes, hyphens, etc... We ask that you take the time to proof your work, and if you aren't sure about something, to look it up. There are plenty of good references on the web; one only need to utilize a search engine. Finally, the following example may be helpful, as it illustrates the number one punctuation error that we see:

WRONG: She saw but he didn't.

RIGHT: She saw, but he didn't. [Two independent clauses joined by a coordinating conjunction require a comma.]