The following guidelines are outdated and are only preserved
for entertainment:
Eyeshot has been internationally accessible
since 1999. Fiction, photographs, rants, reviews, links, essays, and other
unclassifiables are accepted and declined. We pay in dissemination and
validation, however meager.
Eyeshot once again accepts electronic (ie,
e-mailed) submissions. We do not use
Submishmasochism or whatever it's called. Although we admire the ease of
these interfaces, for Eyeshot's purposes, we prefer to work the nostlagia
tip and make things seem a little old-fashioned -- thus, for now, send
submissions to submit at eyeshot.net.
(Note: if you have no idea what Eyeshot usually posts and are just sending
scattershot submissions to sites listed on the devil's own Duotrope, please
send submissions to pissoff@dickweed.org.)
Here are some further ideas: Please include boatloads of biographical
information and links to every possible previous publication and the name
of every professor you ever heard speak or slept with at your prestigious
NYC MFA program you'll soon graduate from +$80K in debt, and -- very important!
-- make sure to mention how many times you've been nominated for a Pushcart
Prize. We would also like to see links to most if not all of your social
media accounts, esp. Goodreads, Twitter, Uganda, Tumblr, Whatnot, and Facebook.
If you would like to start a Kickstarter fundraiser thing to raise money
for a bribe to grease our editorial palms, please make sure to do that
well in advance of your submission. (Note: we can be bribed pretty easily
these days but when it comes to bills we prefer larger a lot more than
smaller.)
Specific Recommendations & Restrictions
Once there was a time when asked about submission guidelines we consulted
the many sages and they all replied, "Cows never roam from pastures with
no fences." We can't deny the wisdom of the sages. And so, there shan't
be submission guidelines. EXCEPT, to recognize that some people might want
to know what we tend to post without bothering to browse the
archive, we are now happy to offer somewhat explicit recommendations:
DO NOT SEND POETRY unless (1) it's disguised as prose, (2) it's totally
nasty & perverted, or (3) you're an
Egyptian.
DO NOT SEND ANYTHING if your e-mail address includes the words writer,
write,
poet,
or anything similar. If you are under 17 years of age, it's ok. But otherwise,
please do not submit.
PLEASE TRY NOT TO SEND whimsical pieces that are loaded with dialogue
and lots of lame pop-cultural references (we prefer mythological, literary,
art-historical, and/or misanthropomorphophagical allusions).
PLEASE TRY NOT TO SEND something about an emotionally cathartic moment
from your childhood (unless it involves dead clowns).
PLEASE TRY NOT TO SEND some small, relatively unimaginative, essayistic
piece about deli meats or chapstick or dentists.
PLEASE TRY NOT TO SEND anything that anyone would ever describe as "punk
rock."
PLEASE TRY NOT TO SEND anything if your favorite author is Bukowski.
Nothing against the man, but if he's your favorite author, please
send your submission elsewhere. Again, we have no real problem with Bukowski's
writing whatsoever, but if you're all about him, that is, if you write
like him way more than you write like yourself, please realize you're invited
to do two things: (1) pray for a big ol' rainstorm of sweet, sweet whisky,
and (2) insert and piston your skinny ashen thingy (assuming you're a boy)
into and out of the hole in the center of your collector's edition DVD
of Barfly.
PLEASE TRY NOT TO SEND anything that you would call "flash fiction."
Short pieces are fine to send, but not if you refer to them as "flash fiction."
We seem to have an unspecifiable problem with the term.
PLEASE REALIZE you can send any of the above but we won't accept them
unless they're really funny and/or wonderful. We tend to like things
that are denser (not so quick to include space breaks between sentences),
that are somewhat elusive and inventive and overblown languagewise and
not-so-sane aesthetically. OK? That's a hint intended to save us all time.
But then again, we are always open to reading anything you want to send.
It may seem like there are now some fences, but they're imaginary -- if
you don't want them to be there, that's fine - think of them as suggested
fences.
PLEASE REALIZE that we will have fun with our rejection letters if
you send your submission in an envelope with cold hard cash. Or bribe
us first via paypal. The more money you send the more performatively and
possibly helpfully we'll reject the little that we read. Please don't think
that including a dollar will get you much in terms of rejection, or that
sending $20 will entice us to accept the story. Basically, if you're feeling
masochistic and need some creative rejection in your life, you can buy
our services.
Ten volumes
of collected rejection letters are accessible here and may prove an
invaluable resource for prospective submitters interested in discerning
our editorial tendencies and taste.
PLEASE REALIZE we are no longer encouraging visitors to send stuff that's
plagiarized or transcripts of instant messages, although we did in the
past (before folks started using gchats in his fiction, FYI).
Again, if you would like to send physical objects (manuscripts, $$$
or gifts or small cat toys or ironic onesies or books/music to potentially
review), our mailing address is:
Eyeshot, PO Box 18009, Phila, PA 19147
To learn more about this site, we offer you this
link . . .
