Dear Globe and Mail reader,
Lives Lived essays can be among the most difficult things to write but they can be extremely rewarding. They are often mini-biographies that can leave readers feeling as though they've had a cup of tea with the subject.
A good way to get a sense of how things work is to read a few published Lives Lived essays; they're good to use as a model for the Lives Lived essay format.
There is no payment to the writer when a Lives Lived is selected, neither is there a fee charged for publication as there is with death notices.
Lives Lived have to be published within six months of the subject's death, so it's best to submit sooner rather than later. You will probably get an autoresponse confirming receipt and you will be contacted if your essay is chosen for publication, usually within one month. You will not be contacted if it hasn't been chosen.
Please send a photograph that clearly shows the subject's face along with your submission. Send the picture as an attachment (JPG is best), and send the submission both as a Word .doc attachment and as part of the message. E-mail submissions to: lives@globeandmail.com. Please include a contact number where you can be reached during the day. Please do not mail or fax submissions.
Essays should be around 500 words long and they may be edited for stylistic reasons or length. The editor may also have questions or need to verify some information, and will contact you with these questions.
Please include the following basic information to appear at the top:
A few words describing the subject, such as "Mother, politician, scuba-diver."
Date and place of birth; date and place of death.
Cause of death.
Age at death.
The piece itself should contain basic biographical information, such as education, marriages, children and career.
Actions speak louder than words, and an anecdote is infinitely preferable to a series of rose-tinted phrases. Don't write that the subject was kind to animals. Instead, tell our readers that the subject rescued a cat from a tree during a rainstorm. The universal tale lies in the specific details.
In 500 words, you'll probably have room for two to three quick stories.
The Globe publishes Lives Lived because it feels that a person who knows the subject well can impart a personal note that would be missing from a standard obituary. Make sure you do this. Use of the first person is permitted but use it sparingly. After all, the Lives Lived is about someone else, not about you.
Editors usually demand that a story for publication be objective, but we realize that this might be difficult when the subject is someone who was close to the author. Still, none of us has lived a blameless life and it is a disservice to readers to suggest that your particular subject is the exception. In short, we want to read about both frailties and strengths. Scoundrels can be most interesting.
