an acceptance at persimmon tree

An acceptance at PERSIMMON TREE this morning, of a story I've been unsure about placing. I thought of it as a story that had already had a lot of rejections, and was startled to discover that it's only had two. (Two is nothing!) I think because the story is fairly conventional, and about an older woman who feels invisible, I had trouble deciding where to send it. PERSIMMON TREE is an online magazine of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry by women writers over sixty, so it's the perfect place for this particular story. 

That's always a tricky thing, finding the right match for a story. There's a useful post by Allison K. Williams over at the BREVITY blog this week ("Rejection Is Not Feedback") that points out the obvious (very hard to remember as a writer): "The process of reading work for publication is not the process of reading to give feedback. When journal editors read, yes, they are evaluating the overall quality of the work. But they’re also asking, Does this fit our mission? Do I personally like it? Did we already accept something similar last week? They are assessing where the work fits in the overall structure of the magazine and its mission. A piece that isn’t the right fit must be let go, regardless of how good it is."

I had a story published by PERSIMMON TREE a while ago that I've always liked. It's not about an older woman, but it's about the generation of women now in their sixties—their coming of age in the nineteen-sixties and seventies. It's not autobiographical (definitely not my mother) but I happen to be left-handed, and have a toe like that, and I grew up in suburbia where a lot of women in my mother's generation were questioning their lives:  "Mary Most Contrary."