Week of December 5-11

[mrissa]

Two rejections. Two query-responses saying, "Oh, gosh, no, we never got that story." (One of them was particularly snotty, saying that if I hadn't heard back in N days, "clearly" they had never received the story. Oh, clearly. They're the only mag in the world where nothing ever falls behind a desk, gets eaten by the USPS, gets knocked into the recycling bin when it should have gone in the outbox, etc. etc. etc.)

My favorite lj bit of the day came when sosostris2012 addressed her characters: "I'm all, 'Bitch, you could have said that during the last draft.'" Um, yes. Yes indeed. I got notecards, on the theory that I wasn't doing so hot on revisions without them and might as well see if things go better with them.

Also, of course the short story that's been taunting me all week is not the one I'd like to send out for Christmas. Naturally. Couldn't be that convenient.

markgritter's plane gets in tonight; that'll be good. We can maybe get the Christmas tree decorated one of these first years. Every time I've thought about doing it, it's been night and too cold out on the sun porch to be really comfortable for more than a few minutes. It's our auxiliary fridge out there. The tins of Christmas goodies are piling up.

I keep telling myself that I don't have to do everything I can think of doing for Christmas. I am not adding anything at all to the baking list, not deliberately and not accidentally. (The banana bread got added accidentally: we had browning bananas, what was to be done? The portable turtles and the apricot peanut butter fudge got added on purpose because they're easy and seem worth it. It's the same pb fudge as I usually make, because porphyrin's Mike is spoiled, except it's made with the fancy apricot peanut butter, because Mike is really, really spoiled.) It is December 11. No additions to the baking/candy-making list in the two weeks before Christmas. This is now a hard and fast rule.

I am very good at coming up with more stuff to do. It may, in fact, be my main skill.

Comments

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

"One of them was particularly snotty, saying that if I hadn't heard back in N days, 'clearly' they had never received the story. Oh, clearly. They're the only mag in the world where nothing ever falls behind a desk, gets eaten by the USPS, gets knocked into the recycling bin when it should have gone in the outbox, etc. etc. etc."

Publishers are like that. When you send op eds to The Washington Post, you get a form email back stating: "Thank you for your submission to The Washington Post. All pieces will be reviewed in two to three business days. Due to the high volume of submissions, The Post will contact authors of accepted pieces only." I have submitted pieces to them for a couple of years now, and never heard anything. Most recently, I sent them a piece on RFID passports. When I didn't hear from them in three days, I sent it to The International Herald Tribune, which promptly accepted it for publication. Then, a day later, The Washington Post calls me to tell me that they want to publish it. When I tell them that I sent it elsewhere after waiting the three days, they tell me that I should have called them before submitting it elsewhere.

I'd be pissed, but it was The Washington Post and I need to be their friend. So next time I'll call them after not hearing from them and get told that they'll contact me if they're interested and that I shouldn' be calling them.

B

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I'd be pissed, but it was The Washington Post and I need to be their friend.

Exactly. That's why I didn't say the name of the magazine. I just roll my eyes and keep a closer eye on subs to them next time.

(If I queried every editor when his/her stated response time had passed, I would never get anything written, because I would spend all my time querying and deleting increasingly annoyed "please be patient" replies. But they seem to think I should just know that they are clearly different.)

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

It even worse for op eds, which have a "freshness" about them. I have no choice but to send them to several newspapers at once and deal with the problem if more than one publication says "yes." If I gave every newspaper a few-day exclusive, I'd get far fewer of them published than I do now.

B

[wintersweet.livejournal.com]

*Apricot* peanut butter?

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

P.B. Loco at Bigdale makes a lovely gourmet peanut butter with little bits of dried apricot in it. Sooooo good. They also do other good flavors, banana and curry and all sorts of things. Highly recommended.

Yet another example of how susceptible I am to taste tests. I would never have bought pb with things in (other than peanut chunks, I mean, which are good) if they hadn't had the little sample cups on a tray out front. I bought a walnut potica at Byerly's because I was dumb enough to try a bite of the sample. Apple cobblestone bread the same (though not recently).

[wintersweet.livejournal.com]

Wow, that sounds excellent.

And yeah, the samples at Trader Joe's work far too well on me.

[leaina.livejournal.com]

Ooh, potica. Now I'm all depressed that I'm not going to see my relatives for Christmas and I therefore won't get any of my mom's homemade potica. As Jo March would say (if she'd grown up in my family), Christmas won't be Christmas without any potica!