Write for Us

Thank you for your interest in writing for Psyched Magazine! We are a growing and flourishing magazine—both in print and online—and a community of mental health professionals and writers working together to produce excellent content.

We seek original (as in, never published before, not even on your own blog that you swear only your parents ever look at) writing.

Edgy is good.

Funny is great.

Real and hard and honest is our bread and butter.

Our Readers Are:

We are speaking to a target audience of educated urban professionals.

Some love therapy and psychology and mindfulness and spend every weekend at yoga retreats.

Some think therapists are just crazy hippies, but maybe someday when the sh*t hits the fan, they will go looking for your name and article again, because now they need a professional who gets it.

And some are casually looking for targeted self-help advice, to help them lead deeper and more satisfying lives.

We also occasionally publish pieces directed to mental health professionals themselves, such as practice-building, self-care for the caregiver, etc.

Our Writers Are:

Primarily, our writers are mental health professionals, though we welcome professionals in related fields, as well.

For our "How Has Psychotherapy Helped You?" article, we seek out stories from anyone and everyone, professional or not, who had a positive impact from attending therapy. These stories can be published anonymously if the author chooses. You can submit your articles here.

What We Seek:

• We love personal essays.
• We super-crazy-love personal essays written by therapists about their own experiences of growth, rather than the usual, “I’m an expert, so go do these three things and you’ll be happy forever, because I’m an expert”—type pieces.
• We love anecdotes from the therapy room. (Client info utterly obscured, of course.)
• We love the stuff that is a little too edgy for the other therapy sites.
• We love timely commentary on recent research and psych-related happenings in the news.

We are creating a regular column called How a Therapist Handles/Manages/Deals With (blank). The “blank” can be anything from your experience, such as rejection, burnout, racism, sexism, depression, grief, addictions, recovery, divorce, death, job stress, marital stress, a difficult boss, money, coming out, jealousy—the list is truly endless.

Keep in mind, readers crave pieces that help them identify with you, so talking about how you dealt perfectly with grief by taking extra yoga classes and drinking two kale smoothies a day will be shared less than a piece about how grief really knocked you on your ass, but you finally learned that XYZ helped you through it.

We also love pieces that help people get PSYCHED about life—thus our title and brand. We welcome anything under the banner of, “Get Psyched About (Blank)!” or “Get Psyched About (Blank) Again!”

Possible topic list here is endless, but some ideas include: parenthood, your job, your body, your relationship, exercise, your sex life, aging, mindfulness, etc.

What happens after my piece is accepted?

Once you become a Psyched contributor, you will be added to our Psyched Authors Google group. We send out quarterly sign-ups and you commit to as many pieces in that 3-month period as you like.

Please note, we use the calendar to meet our publication goals, but will ALWAYS publish additional great pieces that come through—and often in the same week. You do not need to be on the calendar to submit.

We use Sign Up Genius, which will send you a reminder a week before your due date. Please submit your article to our editors one week before your publication date at editor@psychedmagazine.com. After you submit, Katie/Molly or Jenny will get back to you with edits, at which point you can do a final edit and resubmit. We use Google Docs for ease of collaboration.

If you have a timely piece related to current events, please write TIMELY in your subject line.

What is the value in writing for Psyched Magazine?

• Writing for publication is the best possible way to get yourself found online and build your practice. We get about 10,000 hits to our blog per month, and most articles get around 500 reads, though some have gone as high as 100K views.  We will use quotes from your writing on twitter and other social media sites and will post and share with other news outlets who may link to your works and share.

• Your writing gets final touches editing.  It should come ready for publication.  We may tweak it, with your approval, for tone, story and clarity. The better your pieces are, the more they will be shared, and the more you, your practice and your website will benefit.  

• You will become part of a writing community that is supportive, fun, and creative.

• MONEY! We offer quarterly cash awards to writers. We give out both editor's choice and reader's choice awards. Each earns a $50 check—one for the editor's top pick, and one for the most-viewed article each quarter.

• You can see your writing in actual print! We select the best articles from the online magazine, send you a copyright agreement, and print them in our print magazine, which is currently offered on limited release.

May I post my Psyched Magazine piece to my own blog or website?

Yes! We’d love it if you would. However, search results actually decrease if the entire content is duplicated elsewhere.

For this reason, you may excerpt a portion of your piece, and then create a link to the full article on Psyched, using a hyperlink saying something like, "to keep reading, click here". If this does not make sense to you, please email us or see samples from http://www.traciruble.com.

You may also use the Psyched Magazine Logo on your own site for advertising purposes.

May I take the article that is published on Psyched Magazine and have it published in its entirety on a public news outlet site?

Yes! We would love that, too, and we ask that you honor our collaboration in editing and as original source publisher in naming the article with this verbiage "Originally published at Psyched Magazine" with a link to the original article.  It is customary for a news outlet to allow you to do this.  

Do I still own the copyright to my writing? How will my writing be used outside of Psyched Magazine?

You retain all copyright to your original work.  Any edits made by Psyched when we publish on our site you will also own but, as stated above, we require a reference.  We actively pursue getting your pieces published elsewhere on high profile outlets and will always list you as the original author with a link to your personal website and to Psyched Magazine each time.   

Writing Guidelines?

Cap out at about 1000 words. Shorter is usually better.

If there is a word you can cut, do it.

Edit yourself for active vs. passive voice before you submit.

Show, don't tell.

Whenever possible, start with a story.

What about my bio?

If you are a first-time writer we need a headshot and byline as well as your website URL, and any social feeds you want us to include.

We list all authors who have written within the last 12 months on our "Meet The Writers” page.

What else can I do to support Psyched and get more eyes on my work?

Like and Share your colleague's posts. Comments, Likes, and Shares drive up search rankings on Psyched and on our writer’s personal pages.

Please submit your own pieces anyplace and every place you can think of. When larger sites share your pieces, they move much farther around the web. Your personal relationships are the best places to start sharing. Topic-specific pages are also highly important for your visibility. If you write, for example, about coming-out issues, can you find the largest sites who support folks in the coming out process, and ask them if they would consider sharing your piece? Everyone wants to share good content that helps their readers, and it's another great way to increase your personal visibility.

While Facebook is easy to comment on, Google plus is the number one place to comment that has a direct impact on social media rankings. We highly recommend sharing the Google plus link to all your friends and ask them to like and comment! Here is Psyched's Google plus link: https://plus.google.com/+Psychedinsanfrancisco

If you have any questions please contact Jenny / Katie / Molly at editor@psychedmagazine.com.