Irrelevant Cheetah

I can’t decide if I love or hate the mailman. He’s a nice guy, I’m sure, with absolutely no predilection for kicking puppies or committing mass murder with a fully automatic weapon. But it takes forever for him to let me know that I’m either (a) published or (b) still an unknown wannabe.

Like most writers and wannabe writers, I think, I hate the long response times from publishers. I hate that it will take ten weeks to find out if Ms. Smith at Knitting America liked my story about a serial scarf murderer.

Note to self: must pursue that story idea. It’s kinda twisted and just might work.

So I keep checking the mailbox, and have a new submission packet all ready to go to another market in case my latest gem of prose is rejected, for one reason or another.

The one pro to all of this is that because your work is tied up sitting in a slushpile somewhere, if you want to continue to pursue new writing opportunities, you have to continue to write. It’s that simple. Wanna be published, but “Joe and the Monster” is tied up at Magazine XYZ for the next three months? Then write another story for submission elsewhere.

I have to admit, it works. Sure, I’d like to place all of my eggs in one basket and hope that my latest story wins the Nebula Award, but until I find out, I’d better keep writing other stuff.

Now as to whether that other stuff is any good, well…