Hi everyone,
So this has been going on for a while now, but fair's fair, so has the whole pandemic business.
For those who don't know, The ABC Project (Anything But Coronavirus) is a not-for-profit short story writing project focusing on material that's not about coronavirus (or anything tangentially related, such as pandemics in general). It was open to anyone who enjoyed writing short stories, hoped to get their work e-published, and wanted a distraction from current events. More information on the debut post, here.
It was originally put into practice around this time last year, and I got a few submissions (thanks, folks!)
I was hoping to have the book at the publication stage by now, but at the moment I don't have enough usable material for a full volume. So initially I thought "ok fine, I'll just write the bulk of it myself and use what I've got from other people."
... That didn't work.
Turns out I'm a much faster editor than a writer, and trying to write most of a workable volume by myself meant that other projects I wanted to work on fell by the wayside. I want to catch up with my other work, and this felt a lot more feasible as a collaborative project where I was doing more collating and editing than writing.
So cards on the table, that's where we're at right now. I really don't want to cancel due to lack of interest, and it would be great to do at least something with the material I've got, with permission from contributors, of course.
For now I'm going to re-open entries, with a general recap on guidelines, and hope that it's something folks would still enjoy doing. This would be a really good opportunity to get some writing done if you're looking for a motivator, and to get some of your work out there.
So, by way of a recap:
- I'm taking short stories between 3000 and 9000 words.
- The theme is "Anything but Coronavirus", but obviously that's very broad, so I encourage writing with escapism in mind. More suggestions for ideas are on this post.
- No coronavirus = generally no pandemic fiction, or anything that specifically focuses around topics such as quarantine, national lockdowns, viral illnesses etc.
- The end goal is to create a digital book (not a zine or social media publication). The finished product will be distributed on Draft2Digital and published with their listed partners. It will then be available to download for free.
- Strictly original fiction. Assume general copyright rules apply, so nothing that makes use of established, non-public-domain characters and settings. (No fanfiction, in essence.)
- No hate speech
- No erotica. I don't mind references to sex as a general topic, but it shouldn't be the main theme.
- I'd suggest keeping things reasonably light. It doesn't all have to be sunshine and rainbows; I'm on board with the odd dark theme, but generally I'd encourage staying away from making things too bleak. This wouldn't be a good platform for dystopian fiction, for example.
- I'm aiming for something like a "teen and up" rating, and would prefer to lean away from excessively "adult" topics (graphic sex, graphic violence, gratuitous swearing etc.)
- Writing quality doesn't have to be up to physical publication standard, but I'd prefer for submissions to have a basic grasp on punctuation, paragraph structure and so on. A wall of text with no commas or sentence breaks isn't great to work with, and likely not something I'd be able to accept.
- I get the final say in whether a submission is accepted or rejected.
- Submissions should be sent to josie.anybutcovidproject@gmail.com. Google docs would be the ideal format for submissions, but otherwise send it in whatever format works for you.
