Okay everyone, where are you all now that I need you, huh?
I knew it, the second I saw the mailman pull away from the curb and saw the thin large envelope in the mailbox (our mailbox is celebrating its fourth year without a door, and is a bit distorted, but the brave little thing has passed all those winters victorious against the snowplows). I slipped calmly out of the barn through the French doors (yeah, classy, eh?) and patiently waited across the road from the envelope until our normally low traffic level passed, my mind already constructing a spike strip for handy use.
Head held high, I retrieved the mail and recrossed the road to the house. Who? Who doesn’t like me? Who wasn’t enraptured by my story, by my words, by me–who has been know to spend a solid two weeks on describing hair?
What did the mailman think, when he saw my own return address on the envelope? Does he know? Am I a failure in his eyes as well?
In the privacy of my kitchen, I carefully tear open the envelope, knowing that most likely this submission, if not badly bent, will be back out the door by daybreak.
Okay for you, Triquarterly Review! You missed your big chance at discovering me!
But I’m a little hurtin’ inside, for all my bravado.
And, I’ll probably be a bear in class tonight.
The Lost Children: A Charity Anthology
Think of all great writers who could have wallpapered a room with the rejection slips 🙂
Oh, okay. I won’t kill and eat anyone for dinner.
A pox on them! Feh! Spit, spit!
All my curses on those illiterates!
You are now officially a writer and on your way to your first acceptance. Ya gotta start somewhere!
As we discussed, Triq is a tough nut to crack. I’ve never tried a submission there, myself.
Key: keep going.
Thanks all, I’m feeling better this morning though I can’t send out the same papers I sent Triq; they’re all wrinkled where the tears dried.
I just have one question that’s been nagging at me for years.
What exactly are French doors? Are they products of French doorsmiths? Do they have some stereotypical Frenchness? Do your French doors hate your American walls and vice-versa?
I guess that wasn’t one question…
}:)
No problem, Jason. As one of the few who pushed me into submitting, I feel I owe you an answer(s).
French doors are doors made up completely of many panes of glass. French doorsmiths, I am sure, produce French doors, but so do all other ethnic peoples, although I suspect that they do specialize in doors. Therefore, I do not notice any particular “Frenchness” to them, except perhaps for their romantic indiscretion (all those windows of glass). My French doors came from my father’s house, and I do not think they were happy–not because of their American neighbors, but because the walls are indeed a barn. This, they look down their French noses upon. The best thing about French doors is that being made up of so many panes of glass, when I am angry or upset (as could be the case if I receive any more rejections soon–rejections that you and a couple others set me up for), there is much satisfaction in the breaking of so many different windows when I fling something across the room.