07 - Stranger Things

Oh, I screwed up. Really really screwed up.

I was using the last e-mail message I sent to the New Yorker for the e-mail address, and forgot to change the subject line. Editors HATE it when you resubmit. I once submitted a short story to a big deal editor at the Atlantic, who actually sent it back with encouraging words and a few criticisms. I revised it and sent it back, but I must have accidentally re-sent the same cover letter or something, because he sent back a scathing note about how I’d already sent it.

So, I just sent this submission twice, once with the old subject line, once with the new! Fantastic then.

Other than engendering more hatred from what I suspect is only an e-mail filter sending anything sent to the shouts@newyorker.com address directly to the trash, it probably doesn’t matter, anyway. I don’t feel this is my best work, and it’s late, and it’s about the Red Sox, and strangely, no one actually seems to think that them sweeping the World Series is a big deal. I doubt it’s going anywhere.

But I still firmly believe that the Red Sox winning was a truly historic event! They gave me hope, which I’ve had more and less of lately. A few weeks ago, Adam saw that I’d bought a Red Sox hat, and asked what happened to the Yankees cap I wore two years ago. I told him that maybe I’d bet on the wrong horse last time and (just to really mix that metaphor) that the Red Sox seemed like the patron saints of lost causes. So if there’s hope for them, there’s hope for me.

But my hair hasn’t fallen out yet, so I’ve only worn the hat once, while gardening. I don’t know what that means.

I’m five days behind with this submission, due to a wedding in Chicago and a nasty cold. The nasty cold is still in effect, but I’m going to try to get caught up. It’s just that right now I’m trying to neither pass out nor have “bukies,” as Kylie likes to say.