Call For Personal Essay Submissions: Seeing some of life’s magic

Magic is a tangible idea. More often than not, magic is anything that you want it to be. It can be the person with a weeks’ worth of groceries who lets you and your milk go first for the checkout; it can be the tarot card that gives you that little bit of extra guidance, wherever it might come from; it can be the feeling of bumping into a friend at the exact time you needed one. I’m optimistic enough to believe there’s a little bit of magic all over the place, even in the most ordinary and everyday things.

So this month’s call-out isn’t necessarily about seeing magic as a practitioner might (if you’ve got some thoughts to share on that then Kate, our Magical Editor, has just the call-out for you), but it is about the things that make life a little easier, a little smoother – a little more magic.

Tell me again what magic is?

Can you remember the first time you watched your favourite Disney movie, before you knew that it was your favourite? Or the last book that you read that made you stop and think, ‘Wow, so that’s a big idea’? I’m on the look-out for life’s luxuries that stop us in our tracks, change our perspectives and set us going again, with a little more wisdom than we had the first time around.

It might not seem like magic on the surface, but something special happens in those moments and if you’ve got a standout piece of magic that’s shaped you or changed you or just made life a little easier somehow then I’d love to hear from you.

If you need some inspiration…

Speaking from (magical) experience

I’m lucky enough to have had a few magical moments in my life. The one that most readily springs to mind is from years ago, when I was young and using a wheelchair for a health condition that doctors couldn’t keep up with. Every week my mother would take me to a local crystal shop so I could pick a handful of crystals to buy; they were my one real joy during this time.

One week, as we were leaving the shop, one of the female owners rushed out and said to my mother, ‘Take this, from us.’ She pressed a healing stone into my mother’s palm and said, ‘Keep it close to her. It might help.’

I can’t say whether it did or not; that’s for another essay. But somewhere along the line, when I was upright and walking again, the healing stone got lost. A friend of my mother’s, seeing my disappointment in this, said, ‘Don’t worry, it’ll come back to you when you need it.’

Shortly after this my mother – care-giver, warrior and worrier – was diagnosed with throat cancer. We found the stone mid-way through her treatment…

And that’s a little bit of magic.

Call for submissions and guidelines

For Creative Non-Fiction and Personal Essays Charley will be running a new theme every month, from the middle of one month to the middle of the next. She will announce the next theme on March 11, 2020, which means this theme will remain open to submissions until March 10.

Essay submissions should be no longer than 1,500 words in length and, when they are submitted, the subject heading for your email should read: ‘Living a magical lifestyle call-out’. This will ensure that your essay is read in a timely fashion.

Please email submissions to Charley at [email protected] and if you have any questions regarding the themed call-out you can direct these to Charley, via this email address, too.

Please note: The themed call-out is intended as a prompt or source of inspiration for authors who would like to write to a theme. Charley will still be accepting submissions outside of the themed topic so if you have a personal essay that you would like to discuss, which is not related to the current theme, please do feel free to email Charley anyway as she’d love to hear from you.

Mookychick will also be announcing a very special call-out shortly to raise awareness for International Women’s Day.