2 new acceptances

 So on the way up to Grand Rapids for a writing conference while n the bus, I saw that I got an acceptance. Great! It was for a flash I’d written awhile back and then largely forgot about. Then while out running, I remembered it at exactly the same place in the run that I was inspired to write it.

That’s how I think or rather remember. If I forget something, I’ll remember it again if I go back and stand in the same place where I remembered it.

So I was running and remembered the piece and that I’d forgotten about it. I pulled it up on my computer and decided to add another line, then sent it to my critique group, who liked it except for the line I added. “You don’t need it; it sounds like you added it.”

Yup, okay. And I sent it off. 

A week later an acceptance. But now I have to figure out how to bring up my submission grid/tracker and update it and inform the other places I sent it to that it is no longer available. I did this the next day after picking up my registration packet and getting wifi on my phone in order not to use up data. I sat in the Fireside or Fireplace Room at Calvin University before the official start of the Festival of Faith and Writing and had Google noodle the password and I got in to my Duotrope tracker to see who/where I’d already sent it and then inform those journals. All this before going into the Exhibit Hall where I had to walk anonymously among the other festival goers all finagling for a chance to talk to publishers and editors. I sort of already know my stuff wasn’t anything they were looking for.

Oddly, enough, there were very few literary journals there in attendance.  But plenty of writing MFA schools and people willing to ghost write your book. 

Anyway, the next day as I sat in one of the lounge areas at Calvin I saw that one of the journals I’d pulled the piece from had written to congratulate me and . . . I clicked on the email ACCEPT something else I wrote. Oops, this meant that I’d accidentally doubled up at that journal, which is something you shouldn’t do when sending out your work. Often the journal would just 86 both pieces when that happens. Instead Persimmon Tree liked one of the pieces and asked if they could include it in their next issue. Yes!

This piece was written not to long ago and had been read by my critique group and another beta reader who passed it up. I called it my lesbian-ish story, though, it isn’t really. It isn’t really about sex at all but a Christian grandmother who indulges in pornography until her dementia sends everything sideways, asking the question: Who is our true self? I don’t know! But everything feels possible, maybe. 

Anyway, it was fun being at a writing conference/festival and celebrate two acceptances.