So I Decided to Aim High
No, I haven’t joined the Air Force. I am submitting again, this time to literary legend, “The Atlantic Monthly”, publishing giants such as Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Emily Dickenson and Mark Twain.
Yeah baby! Chalk me up to having a healthy combination of arrogance and stupidity.
Why not, I figure. There are reports where some bloke just shoots into the air and hits a bird. Happens all the time. Sometimes they even aim first. So why not me, only with a manuscript at a literary magazine? Stranger things happen.
Like the time I kissed a girl at the playground swing set, and then she threw up.
Okay, maybe not a paramount example. But it was certainly unexpected. We were teens. I imagined we’d sit there on the swings and grope—that’s what there was to do then, girls and guitars—except she suddenly groaned about not feeling so good and then threw up. Right in the sand. Kind of stained the mood.
Pulling a few strings at Google to research Atlantic’s editor, I found he prefers “clean” cover letters. Anything not about the story. Seems he’s more interested in letting the story speak on its own. Fine enough. The bad news: he’s sold on reading the opening paragraph alone to decide on the piece. So it better be good. Mine grabs (I think), shaping the character with a little humor. But it’s no hammer-to-the-shin-break-your-leg type of thing that curbs you from the Olympics, coercing you to read the rest.
So we’ll see. According to their submission guidelines, I should hear back sometime late September, about two months. Suppose the story gets rejected. Fine. There’s probability of it hitting something on the way back down. Stray bullets. Scientists create laws about these kinds of things.
Yeah baby! Chalk me up to having a healthy combination of arrogance and stupidity.
Why not, I figure. There are reports where some bloke just shoots into the air and hits a bird. Happens all the time. Sometimes they even aim first. So why not me, only with a manuscript at a literary magazine? Stranger things happen.
Like the time I kissed a girl at the playground swing set, and then she threw up.
Okay, maybe not a paramount example. But it was certainly unexpected. We were teens. I imagined we’d sit there on the swings and grope—that’s what there was to do then, girls and guitars—except she suddenly groaned about not feeling so good and then threw up. Right in the sand. Kind of stained the mood.
Pulling a few strings at Google to research Atlantic’s editor, I found he prefers “clean” cover letters. Anything not about the story. Seems he’s more interested in letting the story speak on its own. Fine enough. The bad news: he’s sold on reading the opening paragraph alone to decide on the piece. So it better be good. Mine grabs (I think), shaping the character with a little humor. But it’s no hammer-to-the-shin-break-your-leg type of thing that curbs you from the Olympics, coercing you to read the rest.
So we’ll see. According to their submission guidelines, I should hear back sometime late September, about two months. Suppose the story gets rejected. Fine. There’s probability of it hitting something on the way back down. Stray bullets. Scientists create laws about these kinds of things.
posted by about me at 10:01 PM
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