Write for Yohaanei.

What we publish

• One moment you lived. A night, a phone call, a waiting room, a drive home. Not your whole story, just the part where you were most there.
• The details only you noticed. What you could hear, what you did with your hands, the thing someone said that you still remember.
• True, and yours. It happened to you. You can change names to protect people; tell us, and the page will say so.
• From the other side. Something you’ve come through, at least partly. What you learned is welcome; advice for the reader isn’t.
• As long as the moment needs. Usually 500 to 1,200 words. Not an essay, and no padding.

If you’re still in the middle of it and it’s hard right now, it isn’t time to write it yet. Please talk to someone: in India, iCall 9152987821; elsewhere, findahelpline.com.

What we don’t

• Advice, lists, or pieces about a topic rather than a moment.
• Composite or borrowed stories, or anything improved for effect.
• Anything written for keywords or for a link. Guest-post offers from SEO agencies are declined.
• Writing produced by AI and presented as your own experience.
• Details of self-harm or suicide methods, or anything that identifies a real person without their OK, or a child.

How to pitch

Email nilabh@yohaanei.com with the subject Lived pitch: [your name]. In 200 words or fewer:

• When and where it happened.
• The moment itself, in a sentence or two.
• One detail you’d build it around: a sound, an object, something someone said.
• A line from our quotes that fits it, if one does. If none does yet, tell us the feeling: we’ll look for one together and check it against the original.
• A line about you, the language you’ll write in, and where your other writing lives, if anywhere.

Please don’t send the full piece unless we ask for it.

Your pitch stays in Nilabh’s inbox. Nothing you send goes into a database.

What happens next

• We reply to every pitch, usually within two weeks.
• If it’s a yes, we agree the length, the fee and a month. We may ask to read the full piece before confirming.
• Editing is mostly questions, up to two rounds. We never change your voice, your facts or what you meant without asking. You approve every edit, and nothing goes up until you say yes.
• Publication is with the name you choose (your own, a pen name or initials), your city, the line it’s paired with, and a link to your site if you’d like one. Lived runs one piece a month, so a piece we love may wait for a later month, with your OK.

What to send, once it’s a yes

No formatting, no special software; we do the rest. In one email:

• The piece as plain text, in the email or as a Word file or Google Doc. If you wrote it in another language, the original too.
• The name to show and your city, and the name for the payment if it’s different.
• Whether any names or details were changed.
• If you’d like: a recording of you reading it, made on your phone in a quiet room, in English, in your language, or both.
• A link to your site or profile, if you’d like one.
• Confirmation that it hasn’t been published anywhere, including your own blog or social media.
• How you’d like to be paid: bank transfer, Wise or PayPal.

AI, language and translation

Write in the language you think in. AI may help you translate or tidy your own words; it cannot write the moment for you. If your piece is translated, we prepare the English with you, you check every line, and we publish your original alongside it with a short note. We may ask you to restore your own phrasing where a translation smooths it into something generic.

Payment and rights

Yohaanei pays for every Lived piece it publishes. The fee is agreed with you before you write and paid on publication. You keep the copyright; Yohaanei gets a non-exclusive licence to publish the piece, its translation and your recording, and after 90 days you may publish it anywhere else too. If you ever want it taken down, ask, and it comes down.

Staying safe

• You never pay us. No reading, editing, publication or “verification” fee, ever. A “Yohaanei” offer that asks a writer for money is a scam.
• We write only from @yohaanei.com, and we never ask for a password or an OTP.
• We may ask who you are before publishing (a public profile or earlier writing) so readers know a real person lived each piece. Readers only see the name you choose.
• We pay you, and only you, after publication.