The waiting is the hardest part...
2005-09-14 12:04 p.m.
So, I wrote a story. I posted something about it here. Miz Hobbes, a published poet, offered to critique it for me. (Do people still call him Hobbes at all? Do I need to differentiate?) This was Weds. I also sent a copy to my dad.By Sunday, Dad had responded, Hobbes had not. I was sick of waiting, so I changed a few things that Dad had suggested, and sent the story on its way. Monday morning, I saw that the website was down. Clearly, my humble little story was so bad, it destroyed everything it came in contact with. It was a minor miracle that I had been able to type it without my hard drive bursting into flames. Or maybe God was laughing at me. "Foolish mortal! You think YOU can publish a story? Back to food service with you!" I am going insane. I check my e-mail twice a day. Maybe they never got it. Maybe I should resend it. I followed their style guidelines, but I forgot to designate where the chapter breaks could be. They want everything longer than 3000 words broken into installments, and I see now that my story quite clearly has four separate sections. I should send just a quick e-mail, pointing that out to them. These aliens of mine do something called Joining. Sometimes, I capitalized it, sometimes I didn't. I did a search and replace to make it consistent, and inadvertently capitalized one occurance of the word "join" in a completely different context. I should send them an e-mail, letting them know about this typo. I should send them another e-mail, apologizing for sending them so many e-mails. See? I'm a wreck. I know my story is as at least as good as some of the other stuff they've published, if not better. I know that having one random website tell me I'm good is basically meaningless, and what I really should do is print out a few dozen hard copies and submit the damn thing to someone who might want to pay for it. That's a long and scary road, though, and I'm not sure if I'm quite ready for it. First, I'll wait for this site to tell me they love me, (OHGOD WHAT IF THEY DON'T, THOUGH?) then I'll worry about the next step. The site says to wait two weeks before inquiring. They obviously didn't mean me when they said that, though. This is an emergency. I'll just send them one little e-mail.... No. I won't. I will wait two weeks, and then I'll ask. They'll say they never got it, so I'll make those few corrections, and send it again. Professionalism. Yes. I am being perfectly rational about this. I've got Tom Petty stuck in my brain now. I should check my e-mail again.
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