How to contribute to Write Now
Have we invited a contribution from you? Read this.
Perhaps someone from the NWP reached out to you and said, “would you submit that to NWP Write Now?” Or, perhaps you found us and wondered about submitting your work. Either way, we appreciate your willingness to contribute to NWP Write Now.
NWP Write Now is a publication focused on writing, the teaching of writing, and approaches to teaching and learning—such as connected learning or PBL—where active engagement of learners in creative production is central. Our primary audience is the teaching community, K-University and across the curriculum, interested in writing. Our readers appreciate pieces that respect the nuances and particulars of pedagogy, but go beyond simple how-to’s to reflect on why teachers might consider different choices in their teaching. We think teachers and teaching matter and that a strong, intellectually rich, and mutually supportive community of teachers is a good thing.
Two options for submission
If we have reached out to you to contribute, you have two options: one for writers who have a Medium account or would want to create a free account, and one for writers who do not have an account and would not want to create one.
1) If you do not have a Medium account
If you have your own blog or if you have published a thoughtful Twitter thread or other content that caught our eye, we can post that content for you at NWP Write Now. We recommend you share your text as a Google doc with [editors@nwp.org] or, if the piece is well-posted on a blog, we might be able to copy/paste it. At the end of the document, be sure to write a 1–2 sentence bio, and if you are a member of a local Writing Project site be sure to include that affiliation.
When we publish a piece for a writer, it will look like this example: Online Student Morphs Into Online Teacher. Notice that the icon at the top shows “NWP Writing Project,” followed by the author’s name. Notice also the bio at the bottom.
2) If you DO have a Medium account or would want to create one
If you are on Medium, you can submit to Write Now directly, and the piece will show up connected to your Medium profile. Here is an example: How Can We Connect with Students From a Distance? Notice that the piece is linked to the author’s account and will also show up on the author’s profile page.
Submitting via Medium means that you would publish the post on your own page, then reach out to us at Write Now to be added as a writer to Write Now. When we do this, the publication will show up in your settings so that you can submit it to us. To do so, click on the “three dots” at the end of your article (picture below).
NWP Write Now should show up as an option for you (once we have added you as a writer). Select Write Now, and when you click the three dots, you should see a similar menu to the one below that allows you to “Add to publication.”
What to expect when you submit
When you submit to a publication on Medium, your submission goes into a queue for editors to review. We might send you comments requesting clarifications or edits. Many pieces, however, are published with only light editing from the editors. That editing might include style preferences such as subheads or quote blocks, correcting of conventions (yes, we use Oxford commas), or other such improvements. We also often break longer paragraphs into shorter, more journalistic paragraphs for better reading on mobile devices.
When authors submit, we expect that they have proofread for typos, etc. and checked names and references. Our audience appreciates links to cited work rather than footnotes when possible. Writers should include titles and a photo/image with appropriate rights. Pexels, Pixabay, Unsplash, and the Gender Spectrum Collection are great for sourcing Creative Commons-licensed images. (If finding a photo is challenging, we can look for one…but you might not like what we pick.)
When will your piece be published?
Publication is not immediate and varies for different pieces. We may have an opening to publish within a week or so; however, it is often the case that your submission might be held to publish along with other pieces of a similar theme. If we are going to hold your piece for a while to publish with a collection, we’ll let you know.
NWP Write Now is published on Medium, and therefore Medium’s Terms of Service applies to us. You can see more about Medium’s general content guidelines here: Medium’s Curation Guidelines: everything writers need to know.
