So What’s Your Story?

*Please note: Submissions for the Work issue are now closed! I’ll start taking submissions for the next issue this winter–please check back here periodically for details. In the meantime, I am still, as always, accepting 400-word autobiographies. Read on for details…*  

Every issue of 400 Words is structured around a prompt. The third issue is on Work.

I’ve recently revised the prompt to make it a bit more prescriptive—because, paradoxically, I think the project works better when the guidelines are tight. For the first issue of 400 Words, people were asked to “tell the whole story of your life in 400 words or less.”� For the work issue your assignment, should you choose to accept it, is this:

Tell the whole story of your working life in 400 words or less.

I’m asking it in this way because while a well-wrought anecdote is a beautiful thing, 400 Words is above all interested in the narrative sweep of a life—the choices people make, the transitions they go through, how point A leads to point B. (And also, of course, the absurd task of crunching a whole lot of personal history into a teeny tiny space.) Take whatever approach you desire, but please, prose only.

Please email your stories to editor [at] 400words [dot] com.

Don’t forget to include your FIRST NAME (or the first name you’d like us to publish), your AGE, and your CITY OR TOWN of residence. For the work issue, also include your CURRENT JOB TITLE. Please put your submission in the body of the email, rather than attaching a separate document.

Incidentally, we are also always accepting 400-word autobiographies. They’ll be running periodically on the website, and a future print issue of 400 Words will be an autobiographies redux.

SOME FINER PRINT

First Names:

We identify authors by first name, age, and city or town—not the more customary first & last.

That’s how we started doing things for the first and second issues. Then, a few people said they’d really prefer to have their last names included. We’ve been doing that for a while, but will be transitioning back to the first-name thing. We do it that way to underscore that 400 Words isn’t exactly a literary journal in the traditional sense. It’s more of a project, a cultural call-and-response, a place for people to be confessional if they feel like it. (If first name, age, and town is too identifying for you, we will be happy to run a pseudonym.) That’s not to say, though, that you can’t identify yourself as the author of a 400 Words piece. If you want to link to your piece from your blog, say, or put it in your portfolio, go for it. In the print version of the work issue, I plan to run a “˜roll call’ of authors with first and last names at the back of the magazine, but there on the page it’ll be first name, age, and place, a la how we’ve always done it.

What to Expect:

We may not reply right away, but every piece is read and carefully considered for inclusion in the print magazine, on the website, or both. (Sometimes we’ll publish something on the website but not in the magazine, or vice-versa.) We will contact you if your piece is chosen for publication.

Before you send something in, please see the legal notice below. Underneath that, there are a few more tips and thoughts about submissions in general.

Legal Notice:

By submitting work to 400 Words, you grant 400 Words and its editors a perpetual, royalty-free license to use, reproduce, modify, publish, and distribute your work, in any and all forms of media now existing or hereafter developed, including storing it on 400 Words’ servers, publishing it online at 400words.com and/or fourhundredwords.com, and publishing it in print in the 400 Words periodical (ISSN #1555-3590). 400 Words and its editors reserve the right to select, edit and arrange submissions, and to post information and remove information from the 400words.com and/or fourhundredwords.com website at any time at its sole discretion.

If you do not wish to grant 400 Words and its editors the foregoing rights, it is suggested that you do not submit work to 400 Words.

In submitting work to 400 Words, you represent and warrant that each work will be an original work, free of plagiarism and which does not defame or cast any person or entity in a false light, and that you will use your best efforts to ensure that all facts and statements in the work are true, and that the works will not infringe on any copyright, right of privacy, right of publicity, or any other proprietary or other rights of a third party.

Finally, you agree to release and hold harmless 400 Words and its editors from and against all claims, actions, and/or liability for any loss, injuries and/or damages arising from or related to 400 Words’ use, publication, and/or display of your work.

Finally:

Submissions may be edited for length, and they may be edited for grammar and clarity (or they may be left turgid and ungrammatical; it all depends). We said it before, but we’ll say it again: check out the legal notice about submitted work.

400 Words does not pay (except in good vibes, and all that), but contributors to the print edition will receive one free copy of the issue in which their work appears.