First and foremost: Ruined Music is looking for true stories. Nonfiction. Essays. It-really-happened-to-me. Length: 700-1,500 words.

Please submit your story in the text of your email or as an attached Word document. Send to submit@ruinedmusic.com. Put SUBMISSION in the subject line of your email so the spam blocker doesn’t eat it.

Please include, at the top of each story, your name, email address, phone number, and the name of the song/artist/album you’re writing about. (We won’t publish your contact information.) If you don’t want to use your full name on the site – or if you want to use a pen name – just let us know how we should credit you.

Please include, at the bottom of your story, a sentence or two about yourself and a URL, if you have one. For example: “John Doe is a boring pseudonym who lives and surfs in La Jolla, California. He writes horrible poetry at sentimentalcrap.com.”

Please don’t submit your story more than once. Because of the volume of submissions we receive, we can’t publish everything we get. Send us your very best work! If you don’t hear from us within one month of submitting, please understand we can’t use your story.

While it’s fine to include some background details about an ex to provide context, please don’t get too explicit with names and identifying information. For example, do not write “I cannot listen to Prince ever since I got dumped by Ashley L. Wegman, that slut, I hear she’s driving a blue Camry and working the night shift at the Cincinnati Airport Ramada Inn now.”

Related: please do not pepper your story with strange and possibly illegal expressions of threat and/or revenge.

If you want to quote stories from the site in print or online, please ask us first. Thanks.

Hey kids, always read the fine print! By submitting your story to us, you hereby:

Grant us a non-exclusive, royalty free, perpetual license to publish and display your story here on the Ruined Music website; and
Grant us the right to use your name (or pen name) and biographical information in connection with your story; and
Represent that you own all rights, including copyright, in the story you’re submitting; and
Represent that your story is not defamatory or libelous to any third-party; and
Permit us to edit your story for spelling, length, and grammar.
Stories are published at our discretion, and we reserve the right to remove any story from the site at any time and for any reason. If you believe that your story has been published on Ruined Music without your permission, please contact us immediately.