Submissions decisions are always hard. How long are you willing to wait to hear from a top magazine? Do you set your work aside while you wait and wait and wait? Or send it out widely? And if you do, do you send it to top magazines only? Then move down  a tier after some rejections? For flash especially, is it better to be online than in print? For a future collection, is it better to leave most of the pieces unpublished? And even if you read magazines closely, it's hard to tell whether you're a good fit or not. Often you get rejections from magazines you thought were a perfect fit.

Still waiting on two top magazines where I've published before, for decisions on submissions I sent in January and February. Just sent a status query to the January magazine and got a very nice note back about how behind the editor is because of the pandemic, with a parenthetical reference to child care that left me feeling guilty. I have my fingers crossed on both of them.

I have a flash about a Zoom meeting that I thought was topical and timely but I haven't been able to place it. Rejection Saturday. Rejection Sunday. And then today, a long, Bartleby-tinged story where I started with just the top places (since it's not timely and I'm in no hurry and why not) just got an amazingly soft rejection from the venerable lit mag STORY of all places. They would "love a chance to read more of my writing IN THE NEAR FUTURE." Naturally I have nothing at all to send them. It's not often that I write a long story, and lately all of my energies have been tied up in The Lunatics' Ball. Well, I can treasure this anyway. Strange game where writers treasure rejections.

It's been raining, buckets and buckets, which ordinarily wouldn't be news, but this year it definitely is.

later
​The sun is out and I've gotten four more rejections. One of the long story from a magazine where I submitted it in July (not so friendly as the one from STORY), and three CNF in one swoop. My horoscope didn't hint that I'd be a rejection magnet today. I'm afraid to open any more emails.

Even though I don't have an Instagram account (Facebook and Twitter feeling like more than enough for the present). 

Big thanks to the wonderful writer Marcelle Heath for including me in her Apparel for Authors series. This was fun.

Really pleased to see "Half Fish Tale, Half Ars Poetica" up in the new issue of HARPY HYBRID REVIEW on "Myth." The great cover art is by Elena Valdés Chavarría.  

Time to start thinking about what I'm going to say!

Reading the essay won't do, as it's not only online, but there's also an audio recording of me reading it online.

​The first proofs I saw didn't include the Joseph Cornell shadow box and I was holding my breath, but the EIC Trish Murphy managed to post it and the art looks great.

And here's a surprise tweet this morning from the writer DeMisty D. Bellinger, who teaches at Fitchburg State University: "Teaching Jacqueline Doyle (@doylejacq) this morning. Taught this one last year and I think I'm going to keep it in my regular rotation:" Linked to … "Two Guys Carrying a Toilet Into Taco Bell."

So I wandered into the kitchen to tell Steve, who was eating breakfast, who said, "I think it should be compared to 'The Death of Ivan Illych' because they're both about existential angst." (When I told her, she said, "Yes! I see this!")