Category: submissions

Explore Themed Writing Calls: Get Published!

Published on by Nadja MarilLeave a comment


by Nadja Maril, a founding member of Old Scratch Press Collective

Photo by cottonbro studio on Pexels.com

You’re looking for something to read and you go online and start googling. You enter words that describe what you find entertaining.

This is what editors and publishers do when they solicit submissions by selecting a theme. They try to narrow the number and types of submissions to zero in on what they’re seeking, based on what they think their readers will enjoy.

They choose a word, WATER, for example, and they announce their next issue theme will be WATER.  Or maybe they choose a more specific description such as CHILDHOOD MEMORIES ABOUT BASEBALL. They request that writers submit pieces specifically related to the theme. If you send something outside the theme, it will be automatically rejected

                Seize the Opportunity   

The call out can be very specific. For example, this month Screams and Wails Anthology( deadline  2/28/2026) Screams and Wails Anthology is looking for “Horror stories with music or music culture as a predominant theme.”

A part of you may be thinking, I love the music scene but I don’t write horror stories. Or maybe you write horror stories but you have very little inside information on music culture. Are you going to give up that easily? A call out for a specific theme narrows the competition, if you are willing to do the homework. Plus, you may learn something new and have fun.

Here’s another theme call-out. Tokyo Poetry Journal https://www.topojo.com/

is looking for submissions for Volume 18 for their “Gather ‘Round Children—a special issue celebrating oral-tradition poetry and the timeless power of stories carried by the human voice. Specifically they ask for poems that “feel as if they could be shared around a fire: lyrical, narrative, rooted in memory or myth, and crafted to live strongly on the page.”

Maybe you do not consider yourself a poet but you love to sing to your children. Perhaps this call-out might inspire you to try writing a poem that you imagine as a song.

The quarterly online journal Way Words https://www.writersworkout.net/waywords

Is looking for stories, essays and poems that associate with the theme Habits. The Editor’s tip: Habits are things you do the same way every time, usually with the hope of a positive outcome.

We all have habits. Some we do to make us healthier, for example, I take a walk each morning. What is a habit you’d enjoy writing about? As a bonus you could write about someone else’s habit that you admire and your poem or could be a special gift to them, even if it doesn’t get published.

Taking a walk each morning is a habit you might want to write about.

Dragon Soul Press https://dragonsoulpress.com/shortstorycalls

is putting together an anthology of short stories and the theme is
Splash. The word splash provides a good deal of latitude. I can think of stories related to swimming, waterfalls, and jumping into puddles as well as the use of the word as a term for making an impressive and immediate impact. If you enjoy word puzzles, the challenge of all the different ways the word Splash can be used should yield impressive results.

Instant Noodles Literary Magazine https://duotrope.com/duosuma/submit/instant-noodles-O0jFm

has a theme call out: Planes, Boats, Cars, Trains. The request is for poems, short essays, memoir and fiction (under 500 words). The pieces are for publication online in Issue One of Volume 6 (Deadline 3/15/2026). The ideas one could conceive of  that one could submit are fairly wide ranging. So if you are a writer, how are you going to make you piece of writing stand out from the crowd?

 As one of the editors on the project, I thought I’d share what attracted me to this particular theme.

Most humans live a fairly frenetic life, often on the move. In the famous ancient Greek stories surrounding Oedipus, he is asked a riddle by the sphinx in exchange for safe passage and his life, “Who walks on four legs in the morning, ​ two legs at noon and  three feet in the evening? The answer “Man” has humans crawling as babies in the morning, walking on two legs as adults and needing a cane ( the 3rd leg) in the evening. Mankind is always on the go. If not walking, we’re in the car, on a train, plane, or boat. (Feel free to include buses, helicopters, and subways).

Many of the best stories and poems involve getting from point A to point B via a car, train, boat, or plane. Are you up to the challenge? LET’S START WRITING….

WRITING PROMPT

        Planes, Boats, Cars, Trains

Looking out the window, inside at the passengers or thinking about something? What happens when you’re on the move?

Interesting things can happen when you’re on the move and in a confined space. Plenty of murder mysteries take place on a boat or a train. The number of passengers are limited and there are places to hide.

The passenger looks out a window and see images that may bring joy or dread. They may be stuck sitting next to a stranger they find fascinating or an acquaintance they’d prefer to avoid. Create a scene, write down a memory, convey your feelings about a brief journey.

Then think: What if? What happens if the protagonist has lost their ticket or the car breaks down? Maybe it happened, Maybe you’re imagining it happening.

Here’s the hard part. Make it short. Every word should count. Read what you’ve written out loud. Each phrase/ and/or sentence should provide something essential. Whatever you can eliminate, start crossing stuff out.

Read it again. Let it sit for a week. Do another revision and make certain whatever and whenever you submit to Instant Noodles  Literary Magazine or any other publication, you have carefully reviewed your work and it is ready for publication. Check over carefully for grammar, spelling, and punctuation errors.

Thank you for reading and please follow us here and on Facebook.https://www.facebook.com/OLDSCRATCHPRESS/

Nadja Maril is an award winning writer and poet who has been published in dozens of online and print literary journals and anthologies including: Lunch Ticket, Spry Literary Journal, Invisible City Literary Review, Instant Noodles and The Journal of Compressed Creative Arts. She is the author of Recipes From My Garden, published by Old Scratch Press (September 2024), a Midwest Review California Book Watch Reviewer’s Choice. An Anne Arundel County Arts Council Literary Arts Award winner, her work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and The Best of the Net. She has an MFA in creative writing from Stonecoast at USM. 

https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/recipes-from-my-garden-nadja-maril/1145598579

The Year’s Not Over Yet!

Published on by gilliampoet1 Comment

Looking to get some final submissions in before we say good-bye to 2025? Here are some places that are open for submissions! Click the link to be taken to their submission guidelines.

FREE

Posit is accepting prose and poetry until December 5.

Have a good sense of humor? Defenestration is accepting short stories, poetry, creative nonfiction and visual submissions and seeking humorous pieces through December 5.

Up the Staircase Quarterly is accepting poetry and visual art until December 10. They have a tip jar option for $3.

Southern Florida Poetry Journal (SoFloPoJo) is open to poetry, essays, and flash fiction until December 14.

Fish Barrel Review is open to poetry, prose, and visual art until December 15. Submissions are free, but they do also have paid option for expedited responses or feedback.

The theme for Spectrum‘s Vol. 69 is ‘consumption.’ You can submit fiction, poetry, nonfiction, and art until December 31.

Psychopomp is accepting poetry, fiction, nonfiction until December 31.

PAID

For a $3, $5, or $10 donation, Passages North is accepting fiction, poetry, short-shorts, and nonfiction until December 13.

OnlyPoems is open to both free and paid submissions for poetry until December 15.

Red Ogre Review is accepting poetry, music, and visual art until December 31 for $3 or $5 donations.

For a $3 reading fee, Five Points is accepting very short fiction until December 31.

Arc Poetry is accepting poetry submission for a fee of $2 per poem until December 31.

Calyx is accepting poetry and prose until December 31 for a $5 fee ($3 if you are a student).

These are only a handful of the journals that are currently open to submissions. There’s still time to get your writing in before the end of the year. Start 2026 off strong by submitting before December ends!

Photo by Andrew Schwark on Pexels.com

Welcome Beatriz Fernandez: Newest Member of Old Scratch Press

Published on by Nadja Maril2 Comments

Old Scratch Press Short Form and Poetry Collective is pleased to announce that Beatriz Fernandez has recently become our newest member.  “I am thrilled and honored, “she says, “to join an online community of fellow writers from around the globe who support each other’s work, provide feedback and share our various skills and strengths.”

Although she didn’t try to get published until she was in her late forties, Beatriz has been writing all her life. 

“I write in both form and free verse, both mainstream and genre, and have recently begun to write flash and short fiction. In poetry, I favor historical persona poems written in the voices of women, whether historical, mythological, or fictional figures. I also write speculative poetry and short fiction. I try to include my love of robots, androids, or time travel in most of my stories.” 

Over the past ten years, Beatriz Fernandez’s work has been nominated for the Pushcart prize four times, and has been published in anthologies and journals as various as Label Me Latina/o, Prime Number Magazine, Strange Horizons, and Whale Road Review.  She’s authored three poetry chapbooks: the most recent, Simultaneous States, (Bainbridge Island Press, 2025) included some poetry set in Puerto Rico and some speculative poems.  Her eco-science fiction flash fiction piece, “Flow Time” was published this summer in a special Florida themed anthology by Gaslamp Pulp, a division of Nat 1 Publishing.  That publisher also just accepted her Puerto Rican Frog Prince adaptation titled “The Coquí Captain” for a children’s anthology of reimagined fairy tales.

Beatriz grew up in Philadelphia, Spain, and mostly Puerto Rico and then came to Florida to attend college.  During her junior year she established her Florida residency, met her husband, and began working in libraries.  “I fell in love with all three,” she says, “and subsequently found no reason to leave any of them!”

Describing herself as a late bloomer in both her library and writing careers; she became a professional librarian in her mid 30s.  On the way, she obtained an M.A. in English literature but found herself to be too much of a generalist to focus on a dissertation topic. 

“During this time,” she says, “I seemed to be under the impression I was a budding novelist while the reality was that I was writing more poetry than anything else.  My lightbulb moment came when I won a Writer’s Digest poetry contest that I entered on the very last day.  That stroke of luck seemed to finally put me on the right road and actively seeking to improve my poetry style.  I embarked on a long-distance phone tutorial with poet Andrea Hollander, who is a brilliant teacher and mentor, for several years; she helped me find my true voice. “

“Many writing classes, confabs and workshops later,” she says, “I’ve published almost every poem I’ve ever written! Now I feel I have come full circle—after starting out my writing career with long-distance tutorials, I’ve joined an online community of fellow writers.”

To learn more about Beatriz and to hear her radio interview on “Here and Now,” you can visit her website here

Thank you for reading this post and visiting the Old Scratch Press Blog. Next Saturday October 25th at 5:00 p.m., three members of the Old Scratch Press Team are participating in a special online reading from their newly published books. FREE. Read more about it here. And follow us on Facebook.

It’s Not Too Late for Gravy

Published on by diannePLeave a comment

The holiday/end of year issue of INSTANT NOODLES, the issue where we always ask people to try for humor. Do you have what it takes to make us smile?

Submissions for 2025 are open through November 2, 2025.

The Old Scratch Press team asks that all fiction/non-fiction pieces adhere to a word count of 1,000 words or less. 

2025 Themes and Topics

GRAVY is our 2025 winter holiday theme. Give us your best holiday gravy fails, mishaps, ridiculous gravy encounters (any December holiday, from Hannukah, to Solstice, to NYE, etc.) or your best wry work about gravy, in general. The point of the end-of-year issue is always to be light-hearted to downright silly. Submissions for GRAVY are open through NOVEMBER 2, 2025; the issue will publish on DECEMBER 1, 2025. Please CLICK HERE to submit. We’re looking for short fiction, non-fiction, poetry, drama, art, and multi-media.

INSTANT NOODLES is always free to submit to, and free to read. We’re about to announce the pieces that were published that we’re submitting to BEST OF THE NET and PUSHCART, so stay tuned to this station!

Thanks for being an INSTANT NOODLES participant and/or fan! We appreciate you giving indie authors a place to get read!

Seeking Sanctuary in what you Read

Published on by gilliampoetLeave a comment

For many of us, reading is a means of escaping the clamor of the real world for a brief time. The theme of the current issue of Instant Noodles is “Sanctuary.” If you’re seeking to give your brain a respite from the news feed, head on over to read the latest issue, curated by the members of Old Scratch Press!

Instant Noodles is open for submissions for our Winter issue! If you have a piece that fits our “Gravy” theme and is on the light-hearted side, please check out the submission guidelines here! We try to fill our Winter issue with fun and mayhem, so please remember that HUMOR, not melancholy is our ask for this issue!

Old Scratch Press is also seeking new members to join our collective! If you write short form pieces (like flash fiction, poetry, or flash memoir), and you’re interested in working with our collective to publish your collection of work, check out our submission guidelines at Duotrope to see if we might be a good fit! The submission window closes on August 31!