How can you submit to New Moon's blog?

I got the following question in New Moon's blog email account yesterday:

Hey New Moon! I love your magazine! I've been reading it for about two years, and it's so cool to see how it's progressed. Your blog is awesome, too. I'd like to submit a story, and I was wondering if there was a word limit. Thanks! --Alex, 13

This is a good question. We haven't set a specific word limit on blog submissions, but I think we don't want anything TOO long because that's hard to read online. I think 600 words, the length of an average New Moon article, is a good maximum length for a blog post. But blog posts can also be much shorter -- even 50 words are so is long enough to be a blog post!

The type of work we accept for the blog is a little different than what we accept for the magazine. For the blog, we like posts that address things that are going on right now in the world. What's cool about the blog is that we can publish stuff right away. In the magazine, it takes a minimum of 6 months to publish news, so that makes it trickier to stay on top of current events! Our themes list on the side of the blog lets you know which categories interest us most.

And speaking of submissions, I got some great poetry submissions from Emily, 12, today. I'm posting one below:

Low Fat Water: No Sugar Added
It started with lip gloss
As simple as that
Then all kinds of make-up
Cover up baseEye liner, too
To disguise our little faces
But that's not all...

Plastic surgery
Botox and injections
Take away my wrinkles
I don't want to get old
All I want them to see me is
Perfect

Then I need to watch my weight
I need to appear healthy
Slim FastWeight Watchers
SplendaLow fat from A-Z
Soon they'll even edit water

And software
You know what they do?
Let's take off half my body weight
Blur the forehead
The world could rotate on that pimple!
And it's all cuz I wanna appear
Perfect

I can't show I'm sad
People might think something's wrong
So I smile and I laugh
I won't show that tear
And it's all cuz I wanna appear
Perfect

We're so edited out
To make a perfect impression
But is there room for living?
Is there time for being human?
Amidst all this editing?
Amidst all this editing out mistakes?
Is there time for learning and growing?
Having fun?
No
But we don't really care
Then again, there's no time for caring

Step back and look at us
Look what we've done to ourselves
And the world
Things are hardly real
They're so edited out

Look at us now
Then come back in the future
When we'll see life passing on a computer
All the tragedies will be deleted
"Tragedies"
Come back in the future
And I swear
There'll be low fat water
No sugar added

You can read more of Emily's work at www.agwritersjournal.blogspot.com!