PHILADELPHIA, PA-

I have been waiting nearly two years to see what was a new story of mine finally published. 

A few years ago, I got busy sending out this story to literary journals, and after flurries of rejections (all standard—I didn’t let it get to me), I finally had an acceptance at a prestigious literary review. I was very pleased.

I became less pleased when I learned that it might be nine months or so from the time of acceptance until the eventual publication.

Sigh. Just standard publishing world time lag, I thought. Typical that it takes months to hear back from these journals, and then many months more before the story comes out.

As I filled out the writer’s contract, I read that I would be paid $50 upon publication.  I have to say that even though that is a pittance for the solid month or two of working time that this particular story cost me, I was kind of looking forward to fifty extra bucks. That’s a tank of gas, or two pizza deliveries. That’s a mani-pedi-wax. (It is not a new pair of shoes, a week of groceries, a massage, or even a tube of eye cream.)

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