Sparked is a journal for pieces ‘sparked’ or inspired by writing prompts & exercises from a specific set of websites. For our current purposes we’re mainly focusing on prompts posted at NotebookingDaily.com and we will also accept submissions from notable prompting partners such as 3Elements Magazine, Rattle, Furious Fiction, r/WritingPrompts, Poets & Writers & others. Read the archives & this “Online Mixtape” to get an idea of what we like.
READ THIS, PLEASE
Submit three pieces of unpublished writing for free by email. Please do not submit again until we respond. Send your work to us in the body of an email at sparkedlitmag@gmail.com. Send additional submissions via ‘tip-jar’ method below.
Title your email: Submission [Your last name] – [Genre] ; so it would look like “Submission – Huset – Poetry”, include a short cover letter with a 3rd person bio under 50 words, & paste your writing into the body of your email. Attachments will not be opened.
Length: We are open to all lengths, but know that if you don’t hook us at least with the writing by the second or third page (or say, the 20th line in a poem), we probably won’t make it to page 20.
You MUST link to the prompt or exercise which ‘sparked’ your piece & also it must be clear that the piece came from that prompt. If your resulting piece has been edited away from that original prompt but you still think it is close enough, include a note about the changes in your email.
As we are author-forward here, we will be paying all authors even if it’s a token amount. That said, every author we publish will be paid $2 via paypal. If you’d like to ‘pay it forward’ and forego that payment, sweet, we appreciate it, just let us know after we’ve accepted your piece.
Additionally, for those with a paypal.me account we will be adding ‘buy them a coffee‘ link at the bottom of their piece, for happy readers to be able to tip small amounts (or, as we suggest in the link, roughly the cost of buying someone a coffee). If the author would like to have that tip option please include your paypal.me address in your submission email. If you don’t have one here’s a link that explains how to set up a Paypal.Me account in minutes, it’s super easy and really does just takes a couple minutes. Of course if you’d rather not participate that’s fine too.
Regarding Reprints: As many prompts have places for interaction, a lot of prompt responses are what many journals would consider ‘already published’. We’ll look past that if the piece was posted where the prompt is. If the piece is published on a personal blog we ask that the piece is replaced to a link to the page on our site when it is published.
If you would like to submit more than once every three months you have 2 options. Option Number 1 is to join the patreon where you will enjoy such benefits as comments or feedback on submissions as well as suggestions where you might submit your writing, a weekly newsletter, private discord, monthly workshop & more. Tiers start at just $2 a month, & the money really helps me keep creating content to put out there for free, & doing what I can to benefit the wonderful writing community.
Option Number 2 is to click here to donate a little cashola & receive a little bonus, then include the payment’s transaction # in the email. There is no money coming in, we don’t have advertising or grants or anything so every little bit helps, especially since we’re dedicated to at least pay a token amount, which will go up if we can raise enough donations.
For a $3 donation you can submit 3 poems or one piece of prose in the same fashion as above (this can be in addition to a free piece). For this option I’ll recommend at least 3 literary journals where I think you should try submitting those pieces (or similar pieces). You can use this option if you just want the recommendations & not to be considered for Sparked, but if that’s the case you MUST include REC-ONLY in the email title & mention it in your cover letter.
For a $10 donation you can submit 3 poems or one piece of prose & you’ll also get a short note of feedback for each piece.
For a $50+ donation you can sponsor a monthly feature, a mini contest of your own devising (including potentially an original prompt), or arrange a higher payment for authors for a month. In the case of the feature, that donation will go to the winning writer & the feature will be branded with a name of your choice (editor’s discretion to decline especially obscene or distasteful names. We’re positive here so we were thinking more of promoting yourself, your project, book, magazine, organization—or for honoring people), & you get all the $10 option perks as well, with extended notes about your pieces & more journals recommended.