Keep your eye out for the next issue of Blood Orange Review appearing online later this month. Below is an excerpt from a forthcoming essay by Calvin Mills entitled "Mathematics, Gallbladders, and Sticking Your Babies in the Mail". To be alerted to the publication of the next issue, which will include the full text of this essay and other great works by new and established writers, enter your contact information in the box to the right of this post.
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This simple mathematical approach allowed me to see my rejections not as personal attacks, but as steps forward, items checked off a list. Incidentally, this method did work for me. I landed a story before I hit 100. I still use this method from story to story. I keep sending them out, and sometimes I actually smile a bit when I get a rejection in the mail, because it means my evil plan is working.
Now that you’re considering doing the math and sending your big-eyed babes out into the wild, wild world, here are a few thoughts to help you stay sane during the process:
1. Never have just one baby in the mail. . .
2. Consider the magical power of “buffer time”. . .
3. Read rejection letters just far enough to determine they are actually rejection letters. Then stop reading. . .
4. Sometimes adversity is your friend. Don’t believe me? Make a list of 100 successful child actors. Try to find more than five who you admire now that they’re grown up. . .
5. Remember that there is always another (or a better) magazine out there. . .
Of course, after the thin, crummy advice above wears off, some small part of you is bound to feel like a failure when an editor sends a neglected baby back to your ZIP code. But don’t let that part of you be a big, important organ like your brain or your heart. Don’t even let it be your lungs—we don’t want them letting you down while you sleep. Sleep apnea is a bitch. Allow the failure to be housed in a small unimportant organ inside you—one you can live without. A tonsil or appendix would be my first choice, but many of you may already be sans these superfluous organs. Then what? Okay, I know what you’re considering, but let’s not lose our fertility over this. I was thinking more along the lines of the gallbladder, or a single kidney. Do some research, and choose your own failure hotel somewhere on a less popular street along the super-highways that are your entrails. Once you’ve designated the location, run your establishment like the old commercials for the Roach Motel, “Rejections check in—but they don’t check out!”
Calvin Mills teaches English at Peninsula College in Port Angeles, Washington. His stories and creative nonfiction essays have appeared in Short Story, WeirdTales, The Caribbean Writer, Tales from the South Vol. 1, Timber Creek Review, Southern Indiana Review, and other journals and magazines.
Now that you’re considering doing the math and sending your big-eyed babes out into the wild, wild world, here are a few thoughts to help you stay sane during the process:
1. Never have just one baby in the mail. . .
2. Consider the magical power of “buffer time”. . .
3. Read rejection letters just far enough to determine they are actually rejection letters. Then stop reading. . .
4. Sometimes adversity is your friend. Don’t believe me? Make a list of 100 successful child actors. Try to find more than five who you admire now that they’re grown up. . .
5. Remember that there is always another (or a better) magazine out there. . .
Of course, after the thin, crummy advice above wears off, some small part of you is bound to feel like a failure when an editor sends a neglected baby back to your ZIP code. But don’t let that part of you be a big, important organ like your brain or your heart. Don’t even let it be your lungs—we don’t want them letting you down while you sleep. Sleep apnea is a bitch. Allow the failure to be housed in a small unimportant organ inside you—one you can live without. A tonsil or appendix would be my first choice, but many of you may already be sans these superfluous organs. Then what? Okay, I know what you’re considering, but let’s not lose our fertility over this. I was thinking more along the lines of the gallbladder, or a single kidney. Do some research, and choose your own failure hotel somewhere on a less popular street along the super-highways that are your entrails. Once you’ve designated the location, run your establishment like the old commercials for the Roach Motel, “Rejections check in—but they don’t check out!”
Calvin Mills teaches English at Peninsula College in Port Angeles, Washington. His stories and creative nonfiction essays have appeared in Short Story, WeirdTales, The Caribbean Writer, Tales from the South Vol. 1, Timber Creek Review, Southern Indiana Review, and other journals and magazines.
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