I find the habits of famous writers I admire as fascinating as those of my friends. Winston Churchill wrote many large volumes of text. He did most of his wok in concentrated focused periods, often at night. However unlike most writers, he dictated the vast majority of his later work to a typist.

W.H. Auden did not believe in writing on a full stomach. He did the bulk of his writing in the morning after a breakfast of coffee, orange juice, and a cigarette. He also tended to keep his lunches light, as he often wrote in the afternoon as well.

Raymond Chandler put around four hours a day aside for writing. In those four hours he did not have to write, but he did not allow himself to do anything else.

Last year I read a fascinating article that I highly recommend called Self-Control Techniques of Famous Novelists by Irving Wallace. I have actually not read much by Irving Wallace besides the article, but I found the details of his routine fascinating. When writing his first book at 19, he kept a work chart, a tradition he has maintained since then. The charts record the date he started each chapter and the date he finished it, and the number of pages written within that period. By the time he reached his fifth book, he also recorded how many pages he wrote a day. A page from the chart is included in the article. The article also includes a great deal of other writers routines. Trollope and Hemingway also kept charts of their progress. Balzac, Flaubert, Conrad, and Hemingway, averaged at least six hours of concentrated writing a day.

Some people associate writing with inspiration, but often that comes with a great deal of hard work and self discipline.

Your challenge today is to write about a funeral. But you can’t use any of the following words: Sad, dour, mad, upset, crying, sobbing, grieving, angry, dark, black, rain, or tombstone.

The tone of your story has to be happy. People don’t have to be laughing and throwing food at each other, but for some reason this funeral has not upset them. The reason is up to you. The narrator could barely know the deceased, perhaps no one at the funeral liked the deceased,  perhaps the deceased put it in their will that no one could cry at their funeral. There are many more reasons you could come up with.

Shows and movies like Waking Ned Devin and Dead Like Me have long played with the conventional sadness of funerals, so now it’s your turn to explore that area and put your own unique spin on it.

1. A Cappella Zoo

A Cappella Zoo is a journal of magic realism that publishes fiction, poetry, drama, and art. They are interested in altered realities, the exploration of place, perspective, and genre.  They will be closing on the 28th of February, so your window of opportunity to submit to them is a small one. They publish two issues a year, both issues are available in print or in an electronic format.

They are well respected, well reviewed, and established. They accept less than 3% of the work submitted to them. They respond to most submissions within a month and a half. They publish some of the best and most imaginative writing out there, which is why they are one of my favorite journals. Every writer receives a contributor copy. Each issue one of the chosen writers will be awarded an additional prize of twenty five dollars. It is easy to submit via their submission manager. To learn more please visit their website at http://www.acappellazoo.com/home2.

2. The Sugar House Review

The Sugar House Review is a print journal based out of Salt Lake City. They only publish poetry and they publish two issues a year. They accept around 5% of the work submitted to them. However, they take a little over six months to respond to each submission, so be prepared to be patient.

They expect poems to be submitted in packets of five poems or less. They do not accept reprints but they are fine with simultaneous submissions. To learn more visit their submission guidelines here: http://www.sugarhousereview.com/submit.html

3. The Moth

The Moth is a beautiful print journal based out of Ireland. They have published a lot of work by Ireland’s most famous authors. Even though they are based out of Ireland they accept work by authors world-wide and they ship your contributor copy for free no matter where you live. They are well respected and established.

The Moth publishes short stories and poetry. They accept submissions via email or post and take about four months to respond. They currently accept less than 1% of the submissions they receive. The Moth is another one of my favorite journals because the work they publish is unusual and creative, it often really makes you think. To learn more visit their website at: http://www.themothmagazine.com/a1-page.asp?ID=1972&page=15

4. The Baltimore Review

The Baltimore Review is an established and respected publication that releases four electronic issues a year and one print issue. They publish essays, narrative non fiction, short stories, flash fiction, and poetry. They take a little under 3 months to respond to submissions and they accept only a small percentage of what is submitted to them.

To learn more about what they are looking for you should read a few of the works they have published on their website. If you want to know about their submission guidelines you can visit them online here: http://baltimorereview.org/index.php/submit

5. The Found Poetry Review

The Found Poetry Review is an usual journal that publishes two print issues of poetry a year. They do not publish any original work. They only publish ‘found’ poetry, and other forms that incorporate elements of existing texts written by others. Because of this they actually publish a lot of unique and exciting work. They manage to have an acceptance rate of almost 20%.  They are also involved in a lot of other interesting projects such as the Pulitzer re-mix, a challenge where each day in April a poet creates a new poem from the same Pulitzer prize winning book.

Because of the specifics involved in this journal and because of their detailed guidelines it is a good idea to thoroughly review their guidelines: http://www.foundpoetryreview.com/submission-guidelines/

They pay their authors 8 cents a word and publish stories of up to 7,500 words in length, although their general preference is for stories that are around 5,000 words. They do not publish stories under 1,500 words in length. They do occasionally publish unsolicited reprints, but in those situations they pay 2 cents per word.

Lightspeed is open to submissions of short stories that fall within the boundaries of science fiction or fantasy, including speculative fiction. No subject within these genres is considered off limits.

Lightspeed accepts less than 1% of the work submitted to them. They also reply to all submissions within a week. They request that all authors wait a week before submitting another short story if their work is rejected.

An important thing to take into consideration when submitting is that they also have specially themed issues that you have to submit to via a separate system because it is curated by different editors. The current themed issue is open only to women who write science fiction.

Their main submission system and their secondary submission system are both easy to use. They do not often send personalized responses to authors, but if their rejection includes the phrase “send more” they do mean exactly that. They do not accept simultaneous submissions. To learn more please visit their website at: http://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/about/guidelines/