Writers Mentor
Here are some notes about formatting, proposals, submissions, editing, style, tips, bio material, photos, and references and policies that are useful for our writers. Please read this before you submit a piece for our consideration. It will be helpful and save time for both you and our staff.
Format in which to send proposals and articles:
Please send your proposal and article by email to “ecozine1 (at) gmail.com” (replacing the (at) with @). If you are sending the article as an attachment, please send it as a Microsoft Word file or save it in a generic format such as rich text (rtf) or text (txt). If possible, please remove all tabs, indents, font changes and other formatting codes from your file, as this will save us time later.Article Proposals and Submissions
If you have an idea for an article, we advise you to send us a one-page summary or outline before you begin to write the article. We will read it and let you know whether or not we think such a piece might be suitable for Sustainable Living and, if so, how it might best be tailored to our readers’ needs and interests. Please note that an expression of interest in your proposed article is an indication that we think your idea has promise, but it is not a guarantee that the article will be published. We will try to respond to your proposal within a few weeks. If your outline or proposal looks promising, we will set a date for you to send us the finished piece. When we receive your finished article, we will determine whether it is:
a) publishable as is;
b) publishable if revisions are made; or
c) not publishable (this can happen if the article doesn’t actually cover what the outline promised or is too poorly written for publication).
Once we accept your article for publication, we will contact you if we need clarification or elaboration. Our acceptance of an article is frequently conditional upon certain revisions being made. In this case, we will contact you to discuss the revisions and, assuming that you are willing to make them, we will negotiate a reasonable deadline. We reserve the right to edit all material for brevity, organization, clarity and grammatical precision. If our changes are significant, we will send you a final edited version before we begin page layout.
Write clearly and straightforwardly and avoid jargon, but don’t hesitate to use humor or to introduce personal reflections if your subject calls for these. Our audience is ooking of information and techniques they can apply in there area. So we prefer pieces that would be of interest to a general audience. If it is a local story it should have significance to the greater environmental issues. Since Sustainable Living readers are located all over the world, try to avoid references to a particular region, province or state if such references are not important to your article.
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Please pay attention to the quality of your writing. Organize your ideas logically. Provide transitions as you move from one idea to the next. Use your best sentence structure, grammar, and punctuation. Have an honest friend or colleague read and critique your manuscript before you submit it
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Avoid overused words and phrases such as “in terms of,” “empowerment,” “we can make a difference,” “in this fast-paced, technological modern world of ours...”.
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Avoid verbosity, as in “It was unanimously agreed by all who participated and were involved in this exciting event that the participants had been empowered to really make a difference in terms of helping Mother Nature and saving the environment.” Yaaaaawn!
Please add a sentence about yourself which we can use in links to your article or review. Our typical link credit line goes something like the following: “John Franklin is the education director of the Maple Bud Foundation.”
We also need a one paragraph Bio for our writers bios page.
We also need a photograph of you for your Bio (head shot) jpg or gif files are fine.
Illustrations/Photographs
If possible, please send a selection of 8-10 photographs or drawings to illustrate your article. Digital photos are preferred. Save the photos as JPGs or GIFs and email them to us or send them on a CD. If you have trouble emailing them all at once, try sending them one at a time. For each photo, please provide a caption that describes the subject and/or action in the picture. Similarly, provide the name(s) of the photographer(s) so that credit can be given. Email images to “ecozine1 (at) gmail.com” (replacing the (at) with @)
References & Resource Lists
Resource Lists: If you are recommending resources or references for further reading, please include a complete bibliographic citation of these. This includes the title, author, publisher, date and place of publication, the number of pages, the ISBN number, and contact information for the publisher or distributor. You will usually find all of this information on the inside overleaf of the book. The aim is to give all of the information that interested readers will need to obtain their own copies of the resources.
If you are interested in writing an article and have questions that are not answered above, please contact us. We look forward to hearing your ideas!
