And it's off!

Very few people outside the academy realize that 40% of a research professor's time is assigned to research and publishing.  That's 2 days or 16 hours a week.  How can a professor like me account for such great gobs of time in the annual report unless she sends out manuscripts for review and consideration for publication?  I try to submit a manuscript every 2-3 weeks.  It keeps things moving along.  :-)  There are so many conference deadlines that it is easy to set 2-4 writing goals a year based just on those. Recently, I discovered two free web-services that send me calls for manuscripts at least once a week:  h-net.org <http://www.h-net.org/announce/>  that distributes calls related to the humanities and researchraven.com <www.researchraven.com/> that distributes calls for special issues of health and medical journals. Of course, I also subscribe to CRTNET, the list serve for the National Communication Association. These notices help me locate appropriate outlets for my work. One of the attractive things about the calls is that they are tied to deadlines, and the deadlines motivate me to get things out and under review. Yesterday, I submitted two book chapter proposals for a September 15 deadline. I have a revise and resubmit due on September 29.  I seem to have a deadline almost every two weeks. That's one of the secrets to my writing productivity.  What helps you get the manuscript off?