SUBMISSION
GUIDELINES FOR OUR
REFRIGERATOR DOOR.
- - - -
Our refrigerator door is currently accepting your artwork, personal essays, short fiction, and poetry for submission. Please know that we are careful about the work we publish on our refrigerator door. We want people to come away from our refrigerator door feeling invigorated and alive, as if they had just learned something about themselves and/or the world that heretofore they had not.
In short, we want to provide a cathartic, life-altering experience for anybody who comes into contact with our refrigerator door. Because of this, we expect the best and only the best from those artists who wish to contribute their work.
Guidelines for Artwork
Your artwork should be strong and bold. While we are partial to realism, abstract work is OK, too, provided it is not simply abstract for the sake of being abstract. For example, you can say that squiggle in the corner of the page is a bunny, but we won't believe it is a bunny unless the artistic strength of the piece compels us to believe it is a bunny. Having floppy ears and a bushy tail always helps, too.
We are open to all types of media as long as the work is light enough to be affixed to our refrigerator door by no more than six alphabet magnets. Collages are welcome, but if the piece of art contains uncooked pasta make sure it is glued securely. Should an uncooked fusilli or farfalle detach and fall to the kitchen floor, our dog will attempt to eat it. The last time Rusty tried to eat uncooked fusilli, he nearly choked to death. That wasn't a lot of fun.
Please be sure that the work of art submitted includes the correct spelling of your first name, the date the piece was created, and a one- or two-line description of the piece. We realize some artists don't like to include descriptions of their work because they find it
"boring and dumb" to have to write them, but we find descriptions essential because sometimes we have no idea what it is we're looking at.
Guidelines for Personal Essays and Fiction
Your writing must explode off the page and render the reader your helpless, quivering slave. As stated earlier, our refrigerator door is in the life-changing business, so be sure to pack your prose with power, grace, and proper use of punctuation. Commas are not little playthings that you can leave here, there, and everywhere. So use them wisely or don't use them at all. Same goes for exclamation points.
We prefer all written work to be submitted on either white-lined or yellow-lined paper. The color of paper doesn't really matter, but it's imperative you use lined paper with proper margins. Far too often we receive submissions that are nothing more than long scribbles written haphazardly over the entire page. In the past we've found this style
to be sweet and charming in its simplicity, but we now require work that is aesthetically more grown-up-looking.
Submissions should be no more than a page long. There is only so much space to go around our refrigerator door, as there must be room for the grocery shopping list, random family photos, and that invitation to the wedding we are dreading having to attend. Double-sided work will not be considered. We don't want readers lifting work to view content on the other side of the paper. Everything is precarious enough as it is, what with the weak-holding alphabet magnets.
Guidelines for Poetry
We are open to poetry, but keep in mind that any poem containing the word "poop" or variations of the word, such as "poopy," "poopsicle," or "pooptastic," will not be considered for publication. No one wants to read about poop while standing at our refrigerator door. We recommend you submit your poopy poem to the bathroom wall instead.
Special Note Regarding Robot Monkeys
We are no longer accepting robot-monkey-themed work, be they drawings, stories, or whatever. We've had it up to here with robot monkeys. Yes, robot monkeys are "funny" and "cool" and they make "amazing" beeping sounds, but enough is enough with the robot monkeys. Robot monkeys are so last July. And no saying that something is a tree and then later telling us it's a robot monkey. That will lead to immediate removal from our refrigerator door, and no amount of crying and spinning wildly on the floor will make us put it back up.
No Simultaneous Submissions
We understand that you have many choices for publication. Nannie and Pop-Pop's refrigerator door, your teacher's bulletin board, your babysitter's high-school locker, and Uncle Todd's full-length mirror are all fine places to display your work. However, we ask that you refrain from submitting to more than one place at a time. We don't wish to relive the turmoil we had with Nannie and Pop-Pop over your "Fat Elephant Skateboarding at the Beach" piece.
Three Questions You Must Ask Yourself
Before Submitting Your Work
Have I spelled my name correctly on my submission?
Is my submission robot-monkey-free?
Does my submission seek to make a difference in people's lives?
- - - -
We thank you for considering our refrigerator door for publication of your work. Please allow a one-to-three-minute response time for your submission. If we are busy watching Prison Break, expect a slightly longer wait time. Go clean the playroom or something. Just leave us alone and let us watch our show until it's over.
- - - -
OTHER McSWEENEY'S FEATURES:
- - - -
Submission Guidelines for Our Refrigerator Door By Christopher Monks
From John Moe's Conservatize Me: Can These Movies Make You a Conservative? By John Moe
Back From Yet Another Globetrotting Adventure, Indiana Jones Checks His Mail and Discovers That His Bid for Tenure Has Been Denied By Andy F. Bryan
Patriotic Songs Reworked for the Modern Age By Michael J. Weingarth
Stories That Would Have Turned Out Differently If the Protagonists Had Had Cell Phones By Peter Norvig
Red dot denotes content that is new today.
Black dot denotes newish content.
