Helpline
Roy Hewetson, Portishead, Bristol
Your writing problems solved with advice from Diana Cambridge
Email your queries to Diana (please include home-town details) at: diana@dianacambridge.co.uk or send them to: Helpline, Writing Magazine, Warners Group Publications plc, 5th Floor, 31-32 Park Row, Leeds LS1 5JD. She will answer as many letters as she can on the page, but regrets that she cannot enter into individual correspondence. Publication of answers may take several months. Helpline cannot personally answer queries such as where to offer work, or comment on manuscripts, which you are asked not to send.
Q Where there’s an online alternative (such as in Writing Magazine) are postal submissions at a disadvantage and (in absence of specific requirements) should they:
1 Be stapled and/or page numbered including/excluding the title page?
2 Should the title page confirm email attachments available and if so as single doc, pdf, etc, and which of these might be preferred?
Roy Hewetson, Portishead, Bristol
A Postal submissions – if the rules say they will be accepted – are not at a disadvantage. Submissions are often printed out anyway as part of the judging process. You must number the pages: and you need your contact details on a separate page. Staples or paperclip? Stapling is perhaps safer (although some guidelines will state not to), certainly for a short story. For a novel, a tied bundle paper clipped is usual.