Tony Blair will stroll down the Mall today and have a chat with the Queen. Well, I'm off, he might say, and you'll like Gordon Brown. Wonderful chap. Looks to be a brilliant prime minister. And then it will be over. Mr. Blair will not be the Prime Minister anymore.
Changes like this give the pundits something to wax prolific on. Who will Gordon Brown tap as his aide de camp? Will he put a Northern Ireland guru in his cabinet, and if he does, what will Scotland and Wales have to say about that? What does this move mean? Ah, wait, but what if he should do this other thing, what are the implications?
By all accounts, Tony Blair will say 'ta-ra' to the Queen and move into a new office, where he will serve as a Mideast envoy. Still working on peace between Israel and Palestine, oh, about forty years now, thus providing Mr. Blair with ready made employment. He's still a fairly young man, after all, with a lot of good working years in front of him. Maybe he can somehow sort out the mess before he hits 65 and hangs up his portfolio.
What am I to do with the short story I wrote over a year ago and submitted to a couple of very slow reading literary journals? Will I get rejections now, after six months of waiting, because the characters in the story have changed positions and the plot has gone stale? I could rewrite it a bit, substitute all the 'Blair' references with 'Brown'. After all, the political scene in England won't change very much. Only the names.
2 comments:
It is totally insane how slow some of these editors are. I know they are inundated, but really: the whole world will change twice while we writers are sitting around waiting for a response. I say you should rewrite and send to 30 places at once, more if you can. I think 30:1 is about the odds of acceptance to rejection these days. Check out more on the topic at www.literaryrejectionsondisplay.blogspot.com
And, hey, good luck!
We're all writing historical fiction. Sure it starts out as contemporary....
I keep about twenty-five short story submissions going at a time; get a rejection and send out a fresh one. Any more than that and the cost of stamps would cut into the whiskey fund and sweet Jesus but there's nothing worth that price.
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