NONSENSE

Deadline: 9 FEBRUARY 2014

Mad Hatter: “Why is a raven like a writing-desk?”

“Have you guessed the riddle yet?” the Hatter said, turning to Alice again.

“No, I give it up,” Alice replied: “What’s the answer?”

“I haven’t the slightest idea,” said the Hatter.

We want to start 2014 a little feverishly, like a carnival ride, with our hats on sideways and a wink on our grins, paying tribute to one of our favourite writers and illustrators: Lewis Carroll.

We’re inviting you all to put your top hats on, dine with candelabras, sing with mice and grin at Cheshire cats. Maybe even indulge in a pen name. Perhaps invest in a feather pen and tip the clock hands back, stand on your head with your hands in your shoes – tell us something silly.

But, remember – there’s logic in nonsense, you just have to know where to look.

Lewis Carroll

Yes, we’re paying tribute to Alice in Wonderland's creator, but we’re also remembering the nonsensical wonderers who came before and after ­– Edward Lear, Roald Dahl, Dr Seuss, Edward Gorey, Ivor Cutler. Take the eccentricity from each of these writers and artists, and through thick, blurry specs, you’ll see the logic and the dots the lines, the clever craft of painstakingly intelligent and illogical penmanship. 

Sometimes though, you won’t see it. Sometimes it’s just nonsense. But it’s always fun – it’s illogical logic. Are we making sense? No? Good.

Rhymes & riddles

Lewis Carroll is the pen name of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, but you all knew that. Make your own pen name. Dodgson was a tremendous mathematician, professor and photographer, there was always more than meets the eye.

Carroll also had a habit of making up words and making them stick, making them memorable and fun to roll around in our mouths – uffish, mimsy, galumphing – even more than 100 years later. He was a neologistic wizard. Try it yourself – see if it sticks. Become a portmanteau connoisseur.

Or give us riddles, puzzles, acrostics, rhymes that we can remember and say over and over again, just because it sounds nice, beats like a drum and has a steady, galloping rhythm.

Fairy tales

Of course we want fairy tales – à la Alice in Wonderland - but we don’t want the sickly, happy ever after, cupcake sort of stuff. No Once Upon a Time. Nor do we want Brothers Grimm (we’ll save that for a different theme), we want weird worlds full of characters that fizz, hiccup and chortle - the Mad Hatter, the Mock Turtle, the Dodo, the rabbit.

Become a child again. Carroll, Dahl and Lear were writers that seemed to understand how to talk to children. If you've forgotten, you might need to look through the looking glass again.

Taboo

Don’t be afraid to go a little outside the box, here – we welcome this with wide, Cheshire grins. Carroll was never afraid of taking Wordsworth’s words, sticking them on the wall and playing pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey with them. Bend the rules, we’ll let you.

Better yet, have a nosey on Carroll's lesson on how to apologise to someone for standing them up. It's brilliant.

Read our submission guidelines for full details on where, what and how to submit. Read a list of our favourite things to see the sort of things we love. Even better, unlock our archive and get a taste for our style - it'll only help you in the long run. After all, we might not be your cup of tea, and we'd like to be. Like a tea tray in the sky...

We're looking for the very best illustrators, photographers, designers and artists to work with. If you think you've got what it takes, get in touch with us at synaesthesiamagazine@gmail.com.

The madder, the better. And please don’t be late, we simply can’t accept your submission otherwise. Plus, you’ll upset the rabbit.

Source: Vintage Winnie

These are a few of our favourite things

by Carlotta Eden - Editor
@1chae

Editors are mothers. They cradle words in their ink-stained hands and rock them gently until they hiccup and burp and sleep without fidgeting. Sometimes they have to be strict, and tell words that they can’t play with that other word because that other word isn’t good for them. Sometimes they have to say no because that’s how stories get better. But mostly they love words and just want to see them grow into great, great stories that others point at and go, heck, I wish I’d written that.

So we’ve decided to write about what we like and what we don’t like in our submissions. And if you don’t like what we do like, then that’s fine. Maybe it’s just not meant to be. It’s important to remember that your submission absolutely doesn’t have to be perfect. We’re not expecting Shakespeare. If you bring us something that makes us coo we’ll tell you it makes us coo, and we’ll work with you to turn that extra o into an r so it makes us go corr.

We like poetry that howls from the rooftops. We don’t like poetry that shouts into a microphone. One commands, the other imposes rudely. We like modest poetry, poetry that tells us, actually, it’s pretty terrifying being human but y’know what? Here’s a puddle. Look at its rainbow.

We’re not particularly drawn to poetry that laments, or mourns, or talks about how much it misses its boyfriend. We don’t like poetry that feels sorry for itself.

We like poetry that talks to us like we’re humans, sometimes even friends, and poetry that goes bungee jumping and, if it’s not feeling up to it, puts its feet up and flicks through crappy TV channels. Not because it can’t be bothered, but because it’s honest. It doesn’t try hard. 

We like short stories that come to bed with you and kiss you somewhere you didn’t know you liked. We don’t like short stories that preach, or teach us a lesson, or politicise or talk about David Cameron, unless it’s about someone who performs plastic surgery on himself to make him look like David Cameron because, wow, what? We like short stories that make us go wow, what?

We like short stories that tease and don’t necessarily give us what we want. If there’s a word in your story that you have to think twice about, get rid of it. Get in and get out. We don’t like stodgy prose or long-winded narratives. We can tell if you’ve tried to be Mary Shelley. We really, really can.

We like short stories that say hey, babe, take a walk on the wide side. We like stories that take us on a Greyhound bus to Baton Rouge. We like stories that have been gunned down to the ground and come back fighting. We like short stories that question the minority that are questioning the majority without asking a direct question. We like short stories that are the beginnings of a knock knock joke but not the end. We don’t like sob stories, but we do like stories that whisper, I had to write this.

And if you still want to know what we like, we like Ian McEwan, Miranda Kerr, Adam Marek, Alice Munro, Kurt Vonnegut, Denis Johnson, Ben Brooks, Tobias Wolff and James Frey.

We like it even more when you read our submission guidelines. Please stick to our theme; we simply cannot accept your submission otherwise, no matter how wonderful. We only have a limited amount of space to design in the magazine, so submissions must stick to word limits. We just want to make your page look magnificent.

Submission Guidelines

Deadline & Theme

The deadline is now CLOSED. Check back here soon for a new theme and deadline date!

What to submit

All work must be your own creation

• Short stories and flash fiction
• Poetry
• Songs/lyrics
• Book/short story/poetry reviews
• Writing tips
• Writing exercises
• Creative articles on the subject of synaesthesia
• Photography
• Illustrations
• Cartoons
• Sketches
• Paintings
• Digital design.
• We like interviews. If you have experience with synaesthesia or know someone who has - send them our way! If you think you'd be an interesting candidate to interview, tell us why.
• We can accept already published work, as long as you have permission from the publisher/author/copyright owners, and we have proof. 
• Nothing is off-limits. No, really. As long as it's your own work, there is no restriction on genre, style, format... so long as it's in English.
• Anyone can submit, so long as the work is your own creation.
• Use synaesthesia. Confuse your senses. It can only go in your favour if your submission is either synaesthesia-related, or evokes a sense of synaesthesia. Have a read of our What is synaesthesia? page, if you're unsure what that entails.

Submission requirements

• All submissions must correspond to the current theme. No matter how great your submission is, if it has nothing to do with our theme, we just cannot accept it. If we're impressed, we may keep it for a future issue - if the theme corresponds. But you may have to send in your submission again, because not all of us are elephants.
• We can accept up to four (4) submissions per person; 1500/2000 words for short stories, 1000 words maximum for articles, reviews, writers' tips etc, and go wild with poetry (not Paradise Lost wild..).
• All submissions must be sent to: synaesthesiamagazine@gmail.com. No regular post, because we have no address.
• All submissions must include a 3-4 line author bio in third person. Nothing too verbose, either. Author photographs are also welcome, but not essential. Please note that biographies may be edited for design purposes, but will always convey biographical information accurately.
• Any photography/artwork must be of good digital quality with file size no less than 1MB.
• Please send all submissions on or before the current deadline. We cannot accept submissions received after the deadline.
• Copyright remains property of the author.
• Please let us know in your submission email if you are unhappy for your submission to be accompanied with poetry/photography/words/illustrations in the magazine.

What we can offer you

We appreciate that no-one is making any money out of this (but who's to say we're not getting you one step closer to publishing your future best-selling poetry collection?) and, as writers and photographers ourselves, we know what's like to receive impersonal, detached, demoralising feedback. Or no feedback at all.

Here's how we work: after we've reviewed all our submissions, we'll compile a shortlist. Once we've compiled a shortlist, we'll go into editing mode. We'll give you as much feedback as we can (under time constraints); we might suggest edits, ways you could improve, or we may just praise you unconditionally. No artist improves without a second pair of eyes, and luckily for you, we're your second pair of eyes.

Our blog

Our blog (the one you're reading!) is still in refurbishment. We would to make our blog a place to come to in between issues; a place to pick up helpful tips on writing, photography and artwork, for inspiration and articles and information about synaesthesia. If you would like to be a guest contributor, please don't hesitate to get in touch with us!

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If you have any questions, or you'd like to send a submission, please contact synaesthesiamagazine@gmail.com

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