The point to the book: Obviously, the point to the book is for teenagers, pre-teens and “tweens” included, to express themselves and what they have gone through. I was once told that your poetry was one of the only ways to guarantee you have reached out to someone. Well, here is your chance.

All over the world there are teenagers going through crap and being expected to behave and react a certain way. We all know that it never works out that way. We have to find a way to let out all this stress and pain and hate. Most of us have turned to writing for it. More often than not teenagers write poetry to get out these feelings. But what do you do with these poems once they have helped you? Put them in a folder and into a drawer to collect dust? Throw them away? I have never believed a poem, no matter how immature or “stupid” it might seem to the original author, has ever finished it’s job. To give it a home with other poetry like it, to help other teenagers going through what you are, is a better option.

The origination of the idea: The idea for this book originated about two years ago when I and my friend were talking about our poetry one day. After a few hours of discussion we decided it sucked that adults didn’t understand what was going on in our brains. And we decided that it wasn’t fair they expected us to act like they did when they were our age when we go through different things now. Most adults don’t understand how hard it is to be a teenager in these days. So we came upon the idea of putting a book of poetry together, written by and for teenagers from all over the world.

A second reason to this book was, of course, the possibility of helping another person who is going through the same things we have. It’s hard to keep going when you feel singled out in the world. Sometimes you just need a small reminder that other people have gone through what you are going through to keep yourself going.

The plan for this book: There is a plan for this collection of poetry. The plan is to collect a significant amount of poetry from teenagers all over the world, organize it together in a volume and get it published.

No, there is no publisher lined up waiting for this to be able to publish it. No, we don’t plan on finding a publisher to publish this any time in the real near future. I would like to avoid finding a publisher until we have a significant amount of work organized together. I hope, by doing this, that we can avoid a deadline of any sort that would draw the collection short and deny some teenagers the chance to submit their works of art.

The benefits: The most important benefit here would be that you get your work shown and you get to show how great you are. You get full credit for any piece you submit to the book. You get the opportunity to possibly reach out and help another person through a hard time that you might have faced. More importantly, you get to have your voice heard.

The “catch”: If you want to call it a “catch”, it’s that no one is going to be getting any money out of this. None at all. You get nothing special but your work in a book and your name as the author of the work. All you get is the credit.

No one will be getting money from this book. Any money gained from the publication and selling of this book will be donated to some cause voted on by those participating in the book. My name will not be on the book as the person behind the scenes. As with the title of the book, the ‘name’ placed on the cover will be voted upon by the participants.

The art work: The work submitted to this collection can be about almost anything. Poetry isn’t the only thing accepted with this collection. Short stories and actual art work is welcome as well. Naturally these two things have rules and limits. Short stories cannot be excessively long and they must be about something relevant to teenage life. A story about a puppy getting lost two blocks from home would be acceptable as it might be taken as a form of symbolism. On the other hand a short story about aliens coming to earth and a huge war with everyone dying that would have no connection to anything a teenager goes through would not be. The art work cannot be massively huge, it would have to be relatively small. In fact the smaller the better.

The rules: I believe the rules are simple enough so here I shall list them for you.

1. All submissions must be sent to Rass at rassdacoolgurl@hotmail.com
2. Submissions must include the following:
   1. Your full real name
   2. The title of the work
   3. The work
   4. What you would like to be recognized as (your pen name) and any additional information you would like to be placed with your personal information and pen-name.
   5. Any additional information you would like posted with your work, what you were thinking and what inspired the piece of work, what you want the audience to understand, etc etc.
   6. Please include what category you believe this piece should be labeled under. If you don’t then I will label it on my own and you will just have to accept it.
3. There is no actual language rule as far as swear words go. I would have to ask you nicely to keep it down with the curse words since this is supposed to be an age friendly book but if you need the words to get the point across of the poem then swear all you like.
4. All submitted pieces must have some valid point. I will not accept simple poems that have no real point and I will not accept random immature pieces of work.
5. The last and most important rule: at the bottom of the email in which all of the information and aforementioned things are included in, you MUST put the following sentence.

I, (enter your name here) , give explicit and exclusive permission to have the original aforementioned 

works published by you, Rass. Any infringement can and will be punished.

*IF ANY OF THESE RULES HAVE NOT BEEN FOLLOWED THEN I CANNOT AND WILL NOT ACCEPT THESE WORKS.

The exceptions: Of course there are exceptions to every rule, except for the last rule. The main exceptions would be, of course, that not only teenagers can submit work here. Pre-teens, teenagers, people in their “tweens” and of course adults who have wrote something to encourage or help a teenager may submit their work.

Category’s: The category’s are, but are not limited to, the following:

1. Feelings

1. Love
2. Hate
3. Fear
4. Sadness
5. Loneliness

2. Misunderstood
   1. Being Stereotyped
   2. Biased against/Discriminated against
   3. Any form of “ism” (sexism, racism, etc etc)
   4. Just being plain misunderstood by people (parents, teachers, friends, etc)
3. Sex
4. Faith/Religion (or the lack there of)
5. Abuse (any and all kinds)
6. Suicide
7. Drugs (this includes alcohol and cigarettes)
8. Depression (yes it gets it’s own category because it’s so much of what teenagers go through)
9. Fantasy
10. Life (your outlook on life etc etc)
11. Other

Additional information you might like to add is as follows:

1. Race
2. Religion
3. “Clique”

a. Goth

b.      Prep

c. Punk

d.      Loser

e. Druggie

f.  Gangster

g. Rich

h. Poor

4. Sexual orientation
5. Sex (male/female)
6. Age
7. Location in the world (USA, Canada, Russia, Australia, India, etc etc)

If you need any additional information that has not been included or would like me to explain something to a greater degree please email me at rassdacoolgurl@hotmail.com and I will get back to you as soon as possible.

Last Note: I would like to ask you to pass this on to anyone and everyone you know. Not just the people who might be interested but anyone who might know someone else that might be interested. Thank you for your help.