So I was diddling around tonight, tinkering with the future website for the spiff-ass Colleen Coover comic book Small Favors, which I am designing(the website, not the spiff-ass comic book).
Then I get this e-mail. It’s from McSweeney’s. It’s a rejection letter for a piece I sent them last October or something. The odd thing about it is that I received a rejection letter for this selfsame piece last December.
And I can’t really translate this second rejection letter. It kind of sounds like this reader read it, liked it, and gave it to someone else to read. So maybe it’s like a “Hi, yeah, this is McSweeney’s, and maybe we want it after all” thing, or maybe it’s like a “Hi, this is McSweeney’s, and we like this but we’re all full up and so I’m going to give this to some of my pals at the New Yorker and the Atlantic Monthly.” Or maybe it’s like a “Let’s send those dopes some more encouraging things and then laugh about it while we drink our expensive wine.”
I don’t like to think about that last one.
And the piece, “Haute Cuisine,” was really the last piece that I really polished until it shone. This was last summer, I did this. And then I sent it off and I haven’t really written anything since, I’ve been all worked up and haven’t been able to get the ink flowing. Although, goddamn, if that fucking thing gets published…
I mean, just the fact that someone’s showing renewed interest in it…
Jeez.
Maybe I’ll be able to start writing good things again.