We make our writing guidelines VERY clear. They list exactly what to do to submit your work to us. Yet we’ve been receiving many submissions without a subhed (the 1-line tagline below headlines on Substack), author photo, or author bio, which are all stated requirements in our guidelines.

While we’d never reject a brilliant personal essay because of those, due to time constraints, since submissions that are missing information require more work on our end, they become lower priority than submissions that follow our guidelines exactly. (DON’T resubmit, please, or you’ll just be creating more work for us, and taking time away from the editing and publishing and event organizing that’s the heart of Open Secrets.)

We greatly appreciate all human-authored, non-AI submissions (and wish anyone sending us AI submissions would see the value in centuries of actual creativity by people using their hearts, minds, and souls), and look forward to publishing many of you throughout the year.

Reminder: Personal essay submissions for our full-length and flash (Hobbies and Object-ives) sections are only open to Open Secrets subscribers, free or paid. Here are our most recent writing guidelines. The final deadline for full-length submissions is July 31, but the closer we get to July 31, the more booked up our 2026 editorial calendar will be.