Stillpoint Spaces' digital Journal explores the interdisciplinary, creative, scholarly, and clinical aspects of psychoanalysis and depth-psychology. We accept essay-length submissions from analysts, scholars, writers, artists, and others on a wide range of topics including: clinical work, politics, philosophy, literature, film, current events, and their intersections with psychoanalysis of any school. 

Stylistic Guidelines 

Excellent writing takes many divergent forms: the experimental, exploratory, dangerous, meandering, and difficult. Like the other Stillpoint members, I am excited to feature a diversity of voices and styles on Stillpoint’s International Journal. At the same time, I encourage most contributors to follow the short list of stylistic guidelines listed below. That is, these guidelines are intended for the majority of submissions, except those specifically working with an experimental, or otherwise unique format. My hope is that we can speak as collectively-built chorus, one that has many voices, all speaking in harmony. In large part, these guidelines are based on the nature of writing in the digital era, when readers need to be engaged quickly, told what they are getting in the piece of writing to follow, and helped along with simple formatting to account for the realities of reading on a computer screen, tablet, or smartphone.

~Anne Marie Spidahl, editor  

 Nuts and Bolts

1.     Get your reader’s attention in the first sentence.

2.     Give your reader a sense of what the essay is about in the first paragraph. Though these blog posts are not formal essays, your reader will be grateful for a “roadmap” or an overview of the essay to follow.

3.     Focus your focus. You have your topic. Now what are you going to say about it? Are you making an argument for or against the given idea, approach, etc.? Are you posing a specific question about it? Are you laying out a series of steps for readers to take in relation to this topic?

4.     Keep paragraphs short and unified. Think of each paragraph as an “idea unit,” unified around a single topic or subtopic. Starting a new subtopic? Start a new paragraph. Short paragraphs are an especially useful tool when writing for a digital audience; with short paragraphs you give your reader a visual break. You will also invite his or her engagement with each of your ideas by breaking them down into manageable parts.

5.     End strong. The conclusion can be the most challenging part of a piece of writing. In the conclusion you can unify what’s come before, provide an effective cliff-hanger to keep your reader thinking about the topic or keep your reader engaged and anxious for the next post. You can also hint at ‘next steps’ based on the ideas you’ve explored… and more.

6.     Keep it short and sweet. If possible, keep blog posts around 1,500 words.