Why is My Article Not Published

We recently received an email at GSO, York. Some members were concerned that articles submitted to Share had not been published. Here is my edited reply.

Thank you for the email that you sent to GSO which has been passed on to me. My name is Stuart, I am an alcoholic and the present editor of Share magazine. After reading your email I carried out some research. From January of this year 86 articles have been submitted to Share magazine. Of those 86, 70 articles have been, or are to be published in Share.

Some articles have not yet been published as they relate to Steps or Traditions relative to later months in the year or arrived too late and may be published next year. Others have been put to one side as they will be featured in our Prison issue coming out in July this year.

I thought it might be helpful to explain what happens to articles received at GSO York. Once received they are emailed out to the Share team. This includes myself and at the moment, three Share Readers. The Readers read each article, assess them and give them a score from one to six. These scores are then sent to me, the Editor, with additional comments. A score of one means a great article and should be printed. A score of six means unsuitable for printing in its present format. As the Editor, I find that the Readers act as the â??Group Conscienceâ?? of Share magazine through the feedback that they pass on to me.

The things that the Team at Share are generally looking for are the Experience, Strength and Hope of the author, just as we would in a meeting. As in a meeting we are not so keen on lectures or articles that mainly consist of quotations. Some articles submitted are more about the Authors holiday, work or opinion rather than their Experience, Strength and Hope in recovery.

The title page in Share lists the criteria for submitting articles and we are guided by this. Some articles are more about service, workshops, and conventions. These are passed to AA News.

Sometimes articles are written which are contra to our Twelve Traditions and are therefore not suitable for publication. We do have a suggested word count of one thousand words as a maximum. As the Editor I can, at times, edit these down to a suitable length, but, some articles are difficult to reduce without destroying the voice of the author and may therefore not be included for publication or I may decide to split the article over more than one month if it carries a good message.

When the Readers score a six for an article there may be various reasons for this. Sometimes an author may include peopleâ??s names or the names of companies or products and therefore that article goes against our Traditions. By editing these parts out of the article I often end up with an article which we can use. On the other hand some articles contradict our Traditions so much that I am unable to include them for publication.

I do hope that you find this short explanation into how we put Share magazine together helpful and I hope I can encourage all our Fellows to write an article for Share. We love receiving them, we really do!

Stuart J. Editor, Share Magazine