Submission Guidelines

Email microfiction submissions to thegeelongcereal@gmail.com

If you are a regular Geelong Cereal writer, you will have been offered access to the posting portal. Please accept this invitation, familiarise yourself with the portal (it's super easy), reach out if you have any questions, and use it wherever possible.

Please use block paragraphing only.

Please submit your work using only .docx or PDF formats.

Please submit your work in a 12pt serif font such as Times New Roman or Garamond.

Please be sure to include your name or handle and always give your work a title.

In your email, please state your name and the title of the piece.
Bonus points for including a word count, and a short bio with a picture of you (or your cat etc) if you plan to be a regular contributor.

A note about pictures.

Geelong Cereal will not publish any AI generated or significantly AI-manipulated images.

You are welcome to include some definitely not AI pictures with your work, however it will not always be possible to publish them. If you include pictures they must be your own original artwork, used with permission by the artist, CC lisenced or public domain images, or photographs taken by you, which do not depict anything that breaches privacy or copyright laws. Images of children that could be used to generate abuse material won't be published.

Content guidelines and content warnings.

Work deemed highly offensive will be refused. The purpose of Geelong Cereal is to provide a warm, encouraging and fun place for writers and artists to publish their work.

Geelong Cereal publishes work suitable for adults and mature teenagers 16+. Stories may contain adult themes, strong language, drug use etc, just please don't send in extreme graphic and or sexual violence, hate speech etc. We also won't publish tedious inflamatory political rants or anything defamatory. Content warnings will be provided where necessary.

Be considerate, help us create a welcoming and creative space, and most of all, have fun!

Specific guidelines for serial fiction.

If you are submitting a long piece to be published in sections, please clearly divide the work into roughly equal parts and number them. State in your email the number of sections and the approximate word count of each.

If you are planning to write an "on the run" serial, please send the first 2 episodes (each between 500-3000 words), an overview of how the story is likely to progress, and indicate how many episodes you forsee writing. A commitment to a minimum of six episodes and to writing an ending is required.

Microfiction

Microfiction Editions feature stories up to 300 words.
This can take any form or style you choose including fiction, poetry, mini-memoirs, two Sentence Stories, fifty word reviews, and our favourite, micro-serials.
Please read previous editions for an insight into what kinds of micro-stories we publish.

Please email your submission to:
thegeelongcereal@gmail.com

Important things to consider before submitting writing to Geelong Cereal

Geelong Cereal provides a welcoming and inclusive platform for writers at all stages of their creative journey to give a voice to their stories and to experiment with different forms and share their work. Newer writers are highly encouraged to share work here, build confidence and find their voice, and many more established writers happily share stories here as well. It's a lovely community that way.

Many writing competitions and publications only accept work that has not been published. If there is a chance you may want to enter your work into a competition or submit it to a literary journal, we recommend you do that first. Geelong Writers offer several publishing opportunities thoughout the year including some competitions which are worth familiarising yourself with.
Geelong Writers Inc

Geelong Cereal is a free digital publication staffed by volunteers. We do not pay for stories; the purpose of this publication is to publish work by writers and artists at any stage of their creative journey.
You retain copyright of your work and if you ask for it to be removed, it will be, no questions asked.

Please note that by sumbitting work to Geelong Cereal, you confirm that you hold the copyright and publishing rights to that work and it is not subject to any contracts.

We will aim to respond to all submissions as soon as we can but sometimes there may be delays. Please wait 7 days before reaching out.

Please check out the FAQ page for more important information.

Please email your submission to:
thegeelongcereal@gmail.com