The glamorous life
Sep 6, 2004 Writing
From editors in the past 2 weeks:
“This isn’t quite right for us. … Thanks for the pitch.”
“Thanks for your pitch, but we no longer do any service of this kind. Thanks, though, for your interest.”
“Sounds like a fine piece. Alas, we’re overbooked at the moment for features, and we’ve done a fair amount on the subject. We’re always looking for short items… Your pitch is right on target but the timing doesn’t work.”
“We have a staffer doing ongoing research into various aspects of this issue and are not yet ready to commit to a freelance piece on the subject. I will keep your query, however, and when our writer decides which angles she expects to cover, then I may get back in touch if your proposed article might possibly be part of the package.”
“We saw this study as well (and received many freelance pitches about it), but have already written it up in house.”
I did get one acceptance and some of those rejections invited further queries. There are also rejections by no-reply. These are editors who send a form email that says, “If you don’t hear from us in x number of weeks, consider youself rejected.” And I have some assignments that I didn’t have to chase.
I just wanted to share this because I’m querying anyway, dammit despite the repeated rabbit punches to my ego. Generally I quit querying and go crawl under a rock when I get a bunch of rejections but this time, I’m hanging in there. May the force be with me!
Possibly related posts
Ack! I need to add an entry
Sep 1, 2004 The Story of My Life
My front page is all wonky when I have no entry up here. I was thinking of blogging more regularly again but only thinking about it and not actually doing anything to facilitate that. I’ve been crazy-busy and crazy-tired and trying to figure out how to get some time to sit and be quiet. I really need to stop and re-focus because things swung slightly too far past bustling on into backbreaking. Have no fear — soon the work will dry up and I’ll be complaining about that. See, it’s always something with me.
I’ve decided to hire someone to clean our kitchen and one bathroom twice a month. That is if I can get it into our budget. I’ve been a housewife for seven years now and still haven’t figured out how to keep my kitchen floor clean. (I believe mopping it would help.) The truth is, I am really terrible at house keeping because I don’t like it. And I’m never going to like it. It causes me terrible angst to walk across a sticky floor but not enough angst to actually make me do anything about it. In the evenings, when Brett is home, I want him to spend time with the kids, not cleaning so what the hey, we’ll hire someone. And that’ll help the family, right?
Listen to me, can you hear how guilty I feel? I’m rationalizing.
To assuage the guilt, I’m looking for an individual and not a service because I think they’re generally exploitive. There’s a nice guy here in town who makes his own eco-friendly cleaning supplies and does a good job (says my friend who uses him) and that sounds about perfect.
I’m just feeling overwhelmed lately and Madison — like her brother — is not one to sleep through the night. There’s not a lot of room for give in my life but house cleaning is definitely something I don’t mind turning over to someone else. And hopefully, that will give me more sanity for the kids.
Speaking of the kids, what would an entry be without pictures? A boring entry, that’s what! So here they are in all of their glory:
–The two children posing nicely
–Two children who love each other
–Chub-a-lub Madison, in a hat knit by her Gram Pam