ABC Project: 2-Month Reminder and Summary

Hello, remain indoors and happy late May.

We are now slightly under 2 months from the ABC deadline, so I thought I'd stick up a reminder and recap the details conveniently in one post. So, to reiterate:

• Word limit is 3000-9000
• Official deadline for submissions is Friday 17th July 
• The finished product will be distributed on Draft2Digital and published with their listed partners. It will then be available to download for free. 
• General content guidelines are here, a few additional thematic suggestions are here
• I've had a couple of enquiries about copyright, so to sum up: Draft2Digital doesn't acquire the rights to a published work. The book as a whole will be my intellectual property, but the individual stories will belong to their authors. There's a bit more information on their FAQ page here. I'll also be using a standard copyright page with this kind of template:

With the stories listed as belonging to their individual writers. 

• Reminder: nothing featuring existing characters or settings that aren't in the public domain. (No fanfiction, in other words.) 
• Submissions should be sent to josie.anybutcovidproject@gmail.com. Google docs would be the best format for submissions. Otherwise, just put the text in the email body and I'll sort out the formatting. 

Feel free to email me at the above address with any further questions. I'm really looking forward to seeing what people have done!

                          

ABC Project Update: Deadline Announcement and Recap

The Toymakers by Robert Dinsdale, if anyone's wondering

Hi folks, 

This will, hopefully, be my final post on the subject for a while, barring questions answered. We've got a deadline now!

I'll be distributing the finished work to Draft2Digital's partners, listed here. It will be free to download. For reference, I'll also be writing and publishing under the pseudonym Polly Davenport. 

Submission deadline is Friday 17th July. I'd suggest getting submissions in a little earlier if you want any in-depth editing, but that's the only concrete deadline. 

Submissions should be sent to the usual email address (josie.anybutcovidproject@gmail.com), preferably as a Google doc or Word document. (Or just bung the text in an email body and I'll sort out the formatting.) To recap, the word limit for a story is 3000-9000, and additional rules and guidelines on content can be found here. A few additional thematic suggestions are in this post. Multiple submissions are allowed. 

Again thanks to anyone who's helped me get the word out, signal boosting is always useful. Good luck to all those participating, I'm really looking forward to reading your submissions. 

Let's continue to make lockdown somewhat more tolerable!

ABC Project Update: Questions Answered & Suggested Themes (and a Random Podcast Rec)

  

Hi folks,

Yep we're still indoors. How about that.

Just wanted to clear up a couple of things I've been asked about the project (deadline still pending, by the way, I want to do a bit more signal boosting before posting a definitive one. Once again cheers to everyone who's helped out with that).

So, to begin with, answers to a couple of specific questions below, and then a word on theme suggestions.

• Multiple submissions are allowed
• This is an original fiction thing, not a fanfiction thing. So nothing with existing, non-public-domain characters, settings etc. (For the record though, if anyone wants to do a similar thing for fanfiction hit me up, I'm game for that too.) 
• Themes...?

The themes one is awkward, because ultimately the only real established theme is the one I've mentioned: anything but coronavirus (and the other prohibited topics I mentioned on 

the introductory post.) By extension I suppose distraction/escapism are additional themes. 

However, it turns out that there is actually quite a lot to talk/write about besides coronavirus, even though it doesn't really feel that way right now. At the same time, it would feel very cheaty to have a phrase like "anything but" in the specification and then start going around adding a load of extra conditions to it. So with regard to that, if the theming is too broad and if a little narrowing-down or additional guidance would be helpful, here's a few suggestions, which participants may feel free to follow or disregard as the case may be:

• Write something based around the things you want to do once the quarantine ends. 
• Write something based around the outdoors/travel. 
• Fantasy/sci-fi/quirky speculative fiction. Don't have much reasoning for this other than personal taste, although I suppose you could argue that it's suitably distant from the world we're currently living in.* 
• I want to re-iterate the suggestion to keep it reasonably light, but once again that's a bit of a hazy guideline since the distinction between "dark in a fun way" and "dark in a way that's just bleak and depressing" is very much in the eye of the beholder. I mean, I enjoy some pretty macabre stuff, of the "bloodthirsty murder mystery/ghost story" variety, and a part of me just doesn't want to ward people off that possibility entirely. But again, if it helps to narrow it down, write with a view to the idea that we need some optimism and levity right now. 
• Visit a writing prompts website or use a plot generator like this one, find something fun to base a story on from there. 
• Diversity of characters/experiences is highly encouraged. (Not a theme as such, just something to mention as an aside.)

Hope this is useful.

*Speaking of which, if anyone's after podcast recommendations, I've been getting heavily into Uncanny County recently, which stylistically has a very Twilight Zone feel to it. It might be very good for anyone who enjoyed the dark-tinged weirdness of Welcome to Night Vale but wants something a little less surreal. 

ABC Project Update: Word Limit and Publishing Platform

Good evening everybody, this is Josie Redacted coming to you with a new update live from Still Indoors, UK. 

Having done a bit more extensive E-publishing research, I'm planning on eventually publishing and distributing the finished anthology on Draft2Digital. It'll be available to purchase digitally for free, however I haven't decided yet which retailers I'm planning to distribute to. I'll be posting an update on that as and when I have more information. 

Also, I've decided the story word count limit is going to be 3000-9000. 

I don't have a submission deadline yet, at the moment I'm still focused on spreading the word. One will eventually be posted, probably in a few weeks' time. 

Sending thanks to everyone who's taken an interest so far and helped me get the word out. I'm feeling pretty optimistic about all this and think it's going to be a lot of fun. If anyone has any further questions or wants to receive updates please email me at josie.anybutcovidproject@gmail.com. 

Everyone take care and have fun writing about Not All This. 

Also here's some flowers. I want these posts to have better thumbnails. 

The ABC Project

Hello, good evening and remain indoors.

Do you a) enjoy writing stories, b) want an incentive to write stories, and c) want to talk about literally anything besides the damn virus?

I want to organise a not-for-profit short story writing project, working title: The ABC Project (Anything But Coronavirus).

Basically what it says on the tin: anyone who wants to would contribute a short story about any topic they like, barring coronavirus (and adjacent topics, but I'll go into that a bit more later.)

So effectively it's for anyone who wants a distraction from it all and a motivation to write something at the same time. (Also, from a purely selfish perspective, if I can pull this off it might look really good on my CV.)

I'd like to eventually put together a volume for digital publication, and am currently exploring avenues for E-publishing. I'll be writing a followup post when the details are a bit more set in stone, and will also be going into details regarding word count limits, submission deadlines, and so on. (For the record, we'd probably be looking at something like a 2- or 3-month deadline.)

Once I receive a submission, I'll fix obvious typos and adjust the formatting if necessary, but won't make any other changes unless requested by the author. (I have a bit of experience with freelance copy-editing, so please let me know if you'd be interested in more in-depth editing or feedback.) If I find any content that's confusing or ambiguous (e.g. continuity errors, something that may or may not be a typo, etc.) I'll query it with the author but won't make any changes without their permission. It's up to my discretion which submissions are ultimately included, but submissions on any topic (barring the ones mentioned below) are welcome.

Rules and Guidelines (so far):

Prohibited topics are as follows:

• Coronavirus
• Pandemics 
• Quarantine or enforced isolation
• Social distancing
• Apocalypse (because of the potential overlapping themes; I'm well aware that this is not actually the apocalypse) 

A couple of other notes:

• No hate speech. 
• No erotica. I appreciate that this is a hazily-defined topic at times - the stories would be aimed at an audience of adults and young adults, so I'm open to sex as a topic as part of a wider narrative. But it shouldn't be the primary topic, and stories shouldn't be specifically geared towards turning readers on. 
• More of a suggested guideline this one, but: In my head, one purpose of this project is to give people some fun escapism in a deeply stressful and uncertain time. As such, I'd somewhat advise against anything too dark and despair-filled. Naturally, this is open to interpretation and personal taste is personal taste, so it doesn't specifically prohibit anything, but this probably isn't the right platform for your dystopia fiction, for example. 

There will most likely be some additional guidelines mentioned in followup posts, but these are the basic primary ones. I'm not going to drastically change the rules or the fundamental basics of the project, we'd just be talking about details I haven't fully established in my head yet. 

Anyone who is interested in contributing, please send me an email at josie.anybutcovidproject@gmail.com.

Let’s have some fun writing about Literally Anything Else!