Memorial Day Miracle

Rejections don’t come as any surprise now; the question is whether they’ll be the form-letter or warmer variety. I have close to 50 of them stacked on my desk from the 20 stories I’ve been submitting since last summer. “The Calling” has garnered the most (10), but I keep revising it and sending it out. Some writers have had a story rejected 40 times before it was published. So despite repeated rejection, I haven’t lost hope. Probably a good idea if I plan on sticking with this writing thing for the long haul!

The planets must have aligned for me last weekend. I woke up wrestling with an idea for a story that had been cogitating (and regurgitating) in my mind for a few weeks, picked up my laptop and pounded out the first draft, revised it a half dozen times, and sent it off to 10Flash Quarterly. I haven’t submitted anything to them before, but my 1,000-word story fit the theme for their October issue, and I hoped it had a shot at getting published. It’s all about finding the right magazine at the right time.

The writing/revising/submitting process consumed three hours of my morning, and I was in dire need of some exercise to get my blood flowing again; so I took my bike out for a quick 5-mile ride. When I got home, I checked my email out of habit and found a message from 10Flash waiting in my inbox. I assumed it was one of the usual auto-generated responses: “We’ve received your submission” but instead it was a note from the editor:

“That's just evil. You made me snort my diet Coke. I'll have to buy it, of course, for the October 2010 issue of 10Flash.”

Wow. Write, submit, receive a same-day acceptance. That’s a first!