“I went for years not finishing anything. Because, of course, when you finish something you can be judged… I had poems which were re-written so many times I suspect it was just a way of avoiding sending them out.”

Erica Jong

Starting to submit your work to literary journals is a hard task.  Before you start, it can seem overwhelming. It is easy to delay submitting your first poem or prose piece to a journal indefinitely. The first submission I made took over an hour. However, now I can easily submit work in five to ten minutes, because it is a habit and I have a system established around it.

If you are one of those writers who has not yet submitted your work, or perhaps you just took a long break from submitting over the summer and need motivation to start submitting again, this article is for you. It lists all the reasons why you should start (or re-start) submitting this September.

1. Why Not?

Everyone I know is capable of procrastination. We even published an article on the benefits of procrastination. However while procrastinating might help a writer write, procrastinating does not help your writing become published.

2. Most Journals Reopen to Submissions in September

The hardest time of the year to start submitting is the summer, when most journals are closed. Many literary journals are run by academic institutions, which means that the bulk of literary journals reopen during the month of September. Also many editors of smaller journals take the summer off, which means they reopen to submissions in September as well. Not only does this mean that there are hundreds of journals that are now open to submissions, it also means that the editors have had a break or the staff has turned over. This means that your work is more likely to be read by fresh eyes.

3. Some of the Most Prestigious Journals Have Just Reopened to Submissions

So many journals have just started accepting new submissions again, that it can be hard to sort the smaller journals from the more established one. If you really have your heart set on publishing your work in a prestigious journal AGNI, Jubilat, The Iowa Review, Tin House, and the Nashville Review have just started accepting submissions again. So have a large number of other respected journals.

Just remember that you can procrastinate forever, but that is not the road to publication. September is one of the best months to start submitting, so start now.

However, to make writing this piece of micro fiction a little more challenging, we have an added twist. You have to include 5 of the 8 words listed below in your story.

Obviously this makes it a little trickier, but it also makes certain aspects of it easier, since we have already chosen at least 5 of the words your piece will contain.

The words are: Hawaii, boots, map, shelter, elm, book, saw, and rubber.

Happy Writing

Flashlight press has won a number awards for the books they publish, also many of the individual books have received awards. The Awards the press and individual books have won include: ABC Best of Books Catalog, Comstock Read Aloud Book Award, NY State Charlotte and many other. Flashlight Press has been publishing books since 2006 and all of their back catalog remains in print.

They do not require agents or previous publishing experience.  The editor tries to respond to queries as quickly as possible. The books they publish are targeted at 4-8 year olds. The book should be between 500-1,000 words in length. It should have a universal theme and deal with a family or social situation.

To submit to them you must first email a query letter to the editor, it must not have any attachments, all the information should be in the body of the email. If they want to see your full manuscript they will reply within a month.

If your manuscript is requested they will respond with an acceptance or rejection within 4 months of receiving your manuscript. Unless you are an artist they do not want to see any artwork with your submission. If you are an artist there is an additional set of guidelines to follow.

To learn more visit their website here.

The Opening Line is an online literary journal that is open to publishing a wide range of work including novel excerpts, flash fiction, poetry, creative non-fiction, and short stories. They only publish work by authors who were previously unpublished. It is very compelling to read the issues they publish, because each one contains such different work, and even though each of the authors are being published for the very first time, some of the writing they publish is very impressive and unique.

The Opening Line accepts fiction and non fiction between 300-3,000 words in length. Their guidelines for poetry are a little confusing, but as far as I can tell you can submit no more than 4 pages of poetry at a time.

They allow submissions to contain writing of a graphic nature, but such work must include a warning at the beginning of it. All of those submitting their work should be aware that if their work is accepted it will be published in a downloadable e-magazine format. Occasionally work will instead be featured on their website instead.

They are open to publishing most genres from science fiction to romance, but they ask that you include the genre in the headline for your submission.

They accept all submissions via email. They expect the cover letter and basic information to be in the body of the email, and the work itself  can either be in the body of the email or submitted as a word attachment. It generally takes around 6 months for the editors to respond to submissions.

To learn more about their submission process, visit their website here: http://www.openingline.org/p/submissions.html

Truth & Beauty is a work of non fiction. It is about a close friendship between two women writers. They are friends and nothing more, but some people refused to believe that. That seems to be the core controversy that surrounds the book.

I was shocked but it encouraged me to look up lists of banned and censored books to see how many of my favorite books were on them. I was surprised by the results. Many of my favorite books as a child and as an adult were on the list including: Bless me Ultima, A Wrinkle In Time, Looking for Alaska, The Glass Castle, The Perks of Being A Wallflower, and many others.

Banned Book Week runs from the 21st till the 27th of September. This week celebrates the freedom to read. You can learn more by visiting their website here: http://www.bannedbooksweek.org/

We informally polled our readers as part of banned book week and below is a list of some of their favorite banned books, in no particular order.

1. A Wrinkle in Time

2. To Kill a Mockingbird

3. The Bible

4. The Handmaid’s Tale

5. Catch 22

But first, a bit about our contest series. Every week we are going to have a contest on our Facebook Page. The contests will change from week to week, but the winners will always be published in the magazine. The contest winner and the runner up are chosen by a voting system, and then the editors of Authors Publish will select several additional entries from the rest to be the Editor’s Choice winners.

Below are all the winners of this week’s contest. This week the challenge was to write a witty one liner.

The next contest starts at 9 am PST on Saturday. The contest will be related to villains.

The Winner

The Runner Up (A Tie)

Editor’s Choice: