Contributing to Creative Liberty

Showcase Your Work Here

Our ambition for Creative Liberty is to make a space where lots of different creative people can share their work with a receptive, good-faith audience.

We believe that creators become better creators by sharing their work in this way and receiving good feedback from readers, while subscribers benefit from having a range of creative work recommended to them on a regular basis.

If you would like to contribute to realising this ambition by contributing your own work, please check out the guidelines below. Whether reader or writer, thanks again for your continued support!

We accept creative submissions in the following categories: fiction, essay, artwork, music.

Please only submit work that you’re happy to see published here; by sending in the piece, you give us permission to use it as we see fit (with due accreditation, of course).

Artwork and Music

With artwork and music, we are more interested in recruiting the artist than the art (so to speak).

Showcasing art and music needs a critical mass of different creators, whose work may be displayed together in a gallery or themed exhibition. After a certain number of artists have expressed an interest, we can think about organising something like this.

Alternatively, art and music may be used to enhance stories and articles. Art can be used for thumbnails and illustrations; music can enhance audio plays and recordings.

If the above appeals to you, please reach out to creativeliberty@substack.com with a link to your work. For simplicity, please begin the email subject with ‘CL Music’ or ‘CL Artwork’. Describe what you do and what you’d be willing to contribute. If possible, include a link to some of your work in the body of the email.

Fiction and Essays

Short fiction and essays may be submitted directly via the process below. Submissions should be between 1000-3000 words.

Email creativeliberty@substack.com using the following format:

CL Submission (category): genre/topic, number of words, name/pseudonym

For example:

                CL Submission (fiction): detective, 1400w, John Smith

                CL Submission (essay): revisionist history, 1800w, Bob Dylan

If you don’t know what to write for genre/topic, leave that part blank.

In the email, briefly describe what you’ve written, and why you think it will appeal to followers of Creative Liberty.

We use Google Docs to allow for a smooth editing experience. Please include an edit-access-enabled link to the piece on Google Docs, in the main body of the email.

Once we’ve had a chance to appraise what you’ve sent, we’ll get back to you with comments and whether we’ll accept the piece or not.

If you’ve had a piece rejected, do not let this discourage you from writing more or submitting another work in future. I hope to provide constructive and useful feedback, so that we can all get better at our craft together.

(Note: depending on the volume of submissions, we may not be able to provide detailed feedback on your work. Creative Liberty reserves the right to refuse publication for any reason.)

Editing

Do not be alarmed if you receive a large amount of edit suggestions for your accepted submission. This is entirely normal: even the most successful authors have their books extensively edited before publication.

Conversely, you should not feel pressured to accept all edit suggestions. Most suggestions are designed to stimulate your thought process about the work, rather than demands for specific changes.

Reader Feedback

The reader is the ultimate judge of quality. Once published, your work will be rated out of 5 by readers, which gives us an idea of how popular your style and topic are.

Make sure to read the comments; there may be some harsh feedback as well as praise, but harsh feedback is often the most useful to the developing artist.

Many thanks for reading, and we look forward to seeing what you have to offer!