Contributions : Pusanweb welcomes
contributions from everyone. Many of you may be new to Busan,
or to Korea, seeing things with the fresh (confused !) eyes of
an outsider. Some others will be longer term residents, while
a few may now live in different parts of the world but still
feel the pull of East Asia. We especially welcome stories and
comments from Koreans who feel able to write in English, and
for that matter from folk of any culture who find themselves
somehow involved with things Korean.
Themes :
Pusanweb is pretty open about the sorts of topics its
contributors can choose. Some themes are universal, but most
of the stories which turn up are connected in some way with
Korea, or at least with East Asia. At times you may feel
strongly about your congressman in Dallas, Texas, or the state
of garbage services in Ontario, or even airliners flying into
New York skyscrapers. You may be brilliant and witty on these
very important matters, but usually such things are best sent
to any number of other Internet forums. A percentage of
contributions to Pusanweb in the past have been "adult
writings". So long as they are credibly within the law (we ask
readers to click a consent form) this is OK, sort of, though
we are basically interested in stories which have a Korean
slant. If they happen to be a bit hot too, well so be it. Now
and again culture shock gets to a visitor so badly that they
want to slag off against everything Korean. Pusanweb has no
illusions about life in Korea, but on balance we've chosen to
live here with good grace. If we feel that a writer is likely
to upset too many readers by being super-aggressive, we may
occasionally draw the line.
Who writes and how?
: Some of you will be quite talented writers, while others
may be trying their hand for the first time. Within reason, we
will try to give you all a showcase. There are countless ways
to write well, but a few simple tricks help greatly.
a) If a story is interesting
for your friends, it is probably interesting for lots of
people. However, you might have to give the world in general
(especially readers overseas) more background, more "word
pictures", than your friends need.
b) The habits that bore
people in conversation, like being completely self-centered
and saying "I" all the time, are usually a turnoff in writing
too. That said, a few giant egos can get away with
being the center of the universe..
c) In a new culture, things
can be upsetting, and you may have reason to be furious. Anger
is energy, and there could be a story in it, but as in face to
face talk, letting the facts speak for themselves is usually
more powerful than a stream of bad language.
d) A big advantage of
writing is that there is time to invent all the clever
comments you can never think of in conversation. This is
great, but don't let it become too unreal ...
e) Finally, when your
masterpiece is done, it is the most important thing in the
world and you want everyone to see it immediately. Experienced
writers become wary of this halo effect. Usually it pays to
bite your tongue, shove it in a drawer for a few days, and
forget it. Then, when the fever has cooled, come back with the
fishy eye of a stranger. There are almost always snippets to
add or improve.
Layout,
punctuation, and stuff ... Contributions to Pusanweb turn
up in all kinds of disguises. However, we'll love you more if
you follow a few simple rules; (the Pusanweb team are all
volunteers, and you can save us sleepless nights).
a) All the layout on
Pusanweb, including type size, is set to templates. The closer
your submission looks to the template, the easier our life
is.
b) Please, if at all
possible, run your story through a spell checker before
sending it in. A good free word processor with a
spelling-check program is Jarte, which you can download
from www.jarte.com
c) We HATE stories that are
written in all capital letters.
d) Punctuation was invented
to make reading easier, not to keep English teachers in jobs.
Use it.
e) Except for poetry, we
would rather you didn't put a carriage return (press the
"enter" key) at the end of each line. The template will set
the page width automatically.
f) Stuff on the web (stuff
anywhere) is much easier to read if it is broken up into to
fairly short paragraphs of one to four sentences. Look at any
professional newspaper or magazine site if you don't believe
us. If you want to be read, be nice to the readers. Paragraphs
should be separated by a full line space.
Sending in
submissions
a) Please provide a valid
email address where you can be reached when sending us your
submission. For legal reasons, we need to send a confirmation
email to you and without your actual email address, we will be
unable to do so and hence, unable to publish your writing.
Also, let us know if you want your e-mail address included
with the final story.
b) Please date the story
(useful for our archives)
c) Tell us your name; (yes,
we have received nameless writings ... ) and
d) Add a title to your
story
e) Make sure your computer
program doesn't send us a virus !
f) You can either include a
story in the body of an e-mail, or add it as an attachment.
Either way, please send your story to writings@pusanweb.com
g) Some e-mail programs (on
the web or on your desktop) allow e-mails to be
formatted with bold, italic etc. They do this by saving
the text in html format (the magic behind Internet pages). An
html e-mail is easy for Pusanweb to cut and paste. If your
e-mail program only offers plain text, then you will lose
italics etc.
h) If you send an e-mail
attachment, it will probably have been formatted by some
word processing program; (that is, it will contain hidden code
symbols from that program). Pusanweb can read the most common
of these word processing files. However, we often cannot read
files made by Korean word processors, even if the text is in
English. The best solution to this is to do a "save as" in RTF
(rich text format), which is a common exchange format
recognized by many programs. Your italics etc. will be
preserved in RTF. [ Geek baby talk : i) go to the file/save
as menu and left-click your mouse; ii) you will see a
button saying something like "save as type"; iii) left
click this to see a list of file types. Select "rtf", then
save the file].
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