Great Ape is a literary journal of absurdist humor. They publish humorous fiction (including flash), nonfiction, and poetry, and they’ve been around since 2019. Each edition is published in print and as a downloadable e-book.

Great Ape accepts a wide range of absurdist humor—dark and light, concrete and surreal, serious and just plain fun—but they especially like writing that “takes the ridiculousness of human existence as its central theme.” You can read more about what they like, and what they don’t like, on their submission page.

So far, Great ape has published five editions. Each is thoughtfully designed with original artwork on the cover. Right now, Great Ape is seeking submissions for their sixth issue.

Authors of fiction and creative nonfiction may submit one piece, 4,000 words or fewer. Great Ape also accepts flash fiction. Poets may submit humorous poems of any length. They accept all forms and styles of poetry. Great Ape also accepts illustrated writing and artwork such as comics.

Great Ape welcomes submissions from all authors, and they’re especially interested in submissions from authors who identify with groups historically underrepresented in humor.

Great Ape accepts submissions via email, not using an online submissions manager or by post. They do not accept previously published work.

Great Ape only accepts submissions that follow the guidelines they’ve posted online. Please read these guidelines in full before submitting.

If you would like to learn more or submit to Great Ape, please visit their website here.

Bio: Ella Peary is the pen name for an author, editor, creative writing mentor, and submission consultant. Over the past five years, she’s written hundreds of articles for Authors Publish, and she’s also served as a copywriter and copy editor for a wide range of organizations and individuals. She is the author of The Quick Start Guide to Flash Fiction. She occasionally teaches a course on flash fiction. You can contact her at ellapeary@gmail.com.

G Editions is a small press that focuses on publishing books in the following areas of interest: fine art and popular culture, fashion and photography, architecture and design, cooking and gardening, children’s interests, and lifestyle.

Their website is beautiful, easy to use, and well organized. It is focused on selling books, and you can get a good feel for what they publish by going to the main landing page and scrolling down. In terms of artists, they mostly publish well known and established ones, like Mister Finch.

I’d only submit a proposal to them after spending time on the site and establishing that your work is a good fit.

They ask that submitters send “proposals in the form of an annotated table of contents (three-to-four-page table of contents with a brief description of every chapter). Also included should be author’s C.V. and/or biographical statement. Please note if you own the rights to the illustrations, and if not, if you have access to the required illustrations. ”

Do not submit original material. They used to receive submissions via email, but they recently removed their email address from their site. Even though they haven’t tweaked all the wording in their submission guidelines yet, they appear to only be accepting work via the post at this time.

They have good distribution, and I’ve seen their books in several bookstores.

To learn more, please visit their submission guidelines here.

Have you ever been at the wheel of your car, and one of the passengers starts telling you what to do, griping about your driving, and otherwise trying to do your job? Then you’ve dealt with a backseat driver, and it can be wearisome.

Have you ever found yourself in the kitchen or at the barbecue pit, cooking or baking or prepping the food and drinks, and other folks tell you how to season and cut the ingredients, suggest over and over again which steps to take, and tell you that “When I cook/bake/grill, I do this and that”? Then you’ve dealt with a backseat chef, and it can be annoying.

Don’t get me wrong: suggestions and critiques can be great and helpful. But there are times when you really do know what you’re doing, or want to experiment and learn something along the way, yet someone else just has to put in their way-more-than-two-cents-worth. And it’s not pleasant. You put up with it….or maybe you seethe.

This can happen with writing too. I’ve experienced this regarding my non-fiction writing, memoir pieces, even some fiction, and speeches I’ve labored on.

Have you ever dealt with someone, who was not your employer, who tells you what to write? Or offers you way too many suggestions such as names to use in your short stories, or plot twists that you really don’t want to use? And when you mention to this person that you already planned out much of the story, they get miffed or roll their eyes or say something condescending such as “Of course you have, but you might consider…”

I’ve experienced this at times over the years. Sometimes it’s funny but often it is annoying. For instance, a longtime friend of mine had asked me to include certain things in a nonfiction book I wrote, but they were barely germaine. I told her so and she acted stung.

A friend of mine from high school would tell me I should write certain types of articles and just send them to particular magazines. I told her that I didn’t specialize in those fields, and also didn’t want to write full articles for magazines without first querying the editors. She scolded me for this!

Believe me, there are times that I have asked family and friends for comments and advice for articles and opinion pieces. On several occasions I have turned to social media and asked for pertinent ideas for writing, and even for people to interview for particular written works. I am appreciative of these efforts; I thank and credit those who help me.

But there are some people who have told me what I should write, and to be polite I’ve turned to them and said “That’s not what the editor wants me to write about.” Or I’ve said “Maybe some other time I’ll write about that, but not for this piece.”

There are a few issues at play here: people who think they know better than you, the writer. SIGH, as I am wont to say. Or maybe they would like to be the actual writer and they are getting some vicarious thrill from “helping out” with my writing.

There have been times where I think the friend just had no idea what I was trying to write and wanted to have a hand in the production values. It becomes a delicate dance of being polite and diplomatic, yet standing firm and telling them that I don’t want to write what THEY want.

A few times I merely ignored the person with the “great idea” offered. I wrote what I wanted, and assumed they might forget about the whole thing. (Usually they do.) But occasionally someone came back to me, mentioned that they read my story/article/opinion piece, and asked (even demanded) to know why I didn’t follow their directives. “Why didn’t you write about that place I told you about?” for example. I have blamed it on the editor (chuckle), or have been upfront and told the person “I didn’t write that because it didn’t fit the article.”

Most of the time people hear that I’m writing such-and-such assignment and they don’t make suggestions. More often they will say “Oh” or “That sounds interesting” or “Huh? Okay.” Some people will joke around with me about my assignments. Usually that is okay as well. And I’ve learned that there are a few people I just cannot talk to in depth about my writing, because they will come up with “helpful ideas” that aren’t.

Sometimes I’ve told these backseat writers “That’s a wonderful idea! I think you should write that. Go ahead.” Honestly, I would like to see these folks write something and experience the thrill, along with the financial/professional plusses.

I’ve wondered if fiction writers deal with this as much as nonfiction and memoir writers. Or not? Do poets get this too? Do people approach them and say “Hey, why don’t you write a poem about [Subject B].”

I’ve been approached by people I know who said quite earnestly “Ellen, you should write a book about [Subject A].” I’m flattered that someone ranks my skills this highly, but they don’t realize how difficult and time-consuming it is to write a book, how tough it is to find a publisher or go the self-publishing route, and related tasks. This has been said to me at least twenty times throughout the years. At times it’s been more like nagging.

Articles or short stories or speeches are obviously somewhat easier when it comes to handling someone else’s advice and ideas, but still, unsolicited advice to writers is not easy to shoulder.

So what do we do? Smile, say thanks, and move onto a different topic? If we roll our eyes and tell people to hush up, that’s rude. There is a delicate, or at least diplomatic, road that is probably best to tread. Backseat writers are a thing, and at best, they might be worth writing about.

Another tack could be asking the person why they’ve offered their advice. Or maybe, once in a while, the person is offering you some genuinely worthy advice! Take it case by case. And remember that you would like people to read your published work, even champion it, so you don’t want to alienate them (at least not most of the time).

Bio: Ellen Levitt is a writer and teacher, and a lifelong resident of Brooklyn, New York. She is the author of The Lost Synagogues of Brooklyn, The Lost Synagogues of the Bronx and Queens, and The Lost Synagogues of Manhattan (www.avotaynu.com) and Walking Manhattan (www.wildernesspress.com). She has also written many freelance articles and essays for online and in-print publications.

Every time John Steinbeck sat down to write the next words of his masterpiece The Grapes of Wrath, he first wrote in his journal. This notebook, which was later published as Working Days: The Journals of The Grapes of Wrath gives us a look inside Steinbeck’s mind—his struggles, his inspiration, his self-doubt, and his determination.

Because I was already a devoted diarist and writer when I learned of Steinbeck’s habit, I decided I’d emulate him—not in writing a masterpiece (as if such a thing can be done deliberately)—but in reflecting on my writing sessions. I started keeping a writing log. Here’s how I did it and what benefits I’ve gained from doing so:

The tools

I chose to keep my log in a Google Sheet because I didn’t want one more notebook to carry around with me and because I was planning to “extract data” about my writing. As much as I love paper notebooks, for this experiment I wanted ease of editing. I could also abandon the project without guilt if it proved unfeasible. (If it were a notebook, I’d feel bad about ruining its clean pages.)

The contents

I made columns in the sheet for each of the following:

The date.

The title of the piece. Sometimes when I don’t know what to name the piece but I’m burning to write it, I simply enter the date as the document name.

The genre. When I started my log, I was writing sci-fi, fantasy, creative nonfiction, and blog posts. I wanted to be able to see which genre I was writing more in and how it was related to the number of words I wrote or how I felt about the writing session. For example, I wrote a lot of fantasy but hardly any sci-fi. Eventually I realised I enjoyed the former more, so I focused on improving my fantasy short stories as well as reading more of them.

The inspiration. Here I note what gave me the idea for the piece. Was it something a friend said? A prompt I saw online? An image? A dream I had? Over time, I could see where most of my ideas came from. I then used this information to guide me when I was stuck. For example, I’ve noticed that several of my short stories were inspired by combining random nouns and objects (forager + sword; knight + cave) or by listening to fantasy music. Many of my essays came about because of frustration or something I’d written in my diary or some movie I’d seen. Several times recently when I took on story-writing challenges, I used this information to help me come up with ideas.

The time when I sat down to write. I’m a morning person. Sometimes I work best after breakfast. Sometimes, it’s the post evening-chai session that produces good work. I don’t think that science has any solid proof to suggest which time of day will help you create a work of genius, but it’s still helpful to know what times work best for you. This is, of course, assuming you have the freedom to write at any time of day: I began this log during the pandemic and now I’m a freelance writer so my situation hasn’t changed much. Your mileage may vary. For example, if you’re pressed for time because of your job, logging your writing time may help you decide if you should do it before you go to work or after you’re home.

The word count.

Rating. This is an intuitive assessment of how much I enjoyed writing a particular piece, on a scale of 1-5. Sometimes it’s a solid 1. Sometimes it’s a brilliant, my-heart-is-bursting-with-joy 6. A quick calculation shows me that my average rating for 2022 was ~4, which is a very good number.

Notes. This is where everything else goes. How fun it was to write (or how frustrating). Details on how a certain conversation or thought floating in my head led me to writing the story/essay. I vent, I recognize the places I struggle (e.g. plotting), and solutions (e.g. reading more short stories to understand how they’re written). I can leave notes for my future self—changes to make in the second draft, or encouragement to polish the piece even if the first draft sucks. A spreadsheet is not the perfect place to write long paragraphs, but it works for my purposes. I won’t be putting these entries together for publication, after all. Some things we write just for ourselves. And they turn out to be as important for our writing as the actual stories or essays.

“I’ll get the book done if I just set one day’s work in front of the last day’s work. That’s the way it comes out. And that’s the only way it does.” – John Steinbeck, Working Days: The Journals of The Grapes of Wrath

If you want to start a similar log, you can create your own using my categories.. Everything here is optional. I recommend adding a new sheet to the document every year, otherwise you’ll have to scroll a lot and the document may hang.

Bio: Ratika Deshpande is a freelance psychology and culture writer from New Delhi, India. She has previously written for Tor.com and Submittable’s blog, Discover. Find her on her website.