Acceptance and Rejection

Got an essay accepted by The Drum. It's an online literary magazine that is all audio--so you listen to all their pieces instead of reading them.  Which is particularly cool for this piece, which I have always like reading aloud. When you submit though, you do it on paper. If they accept you, then you make a recording.  So I'll be making a recording sometime soon, and when the issue I'm in is published, I'll let you know!

Did not progress to the second round of the Sundance Screenwriters Lab. Not surprised, so not disappointed, except for a little bit.  The little bit disappointed happened because of the little bit of unreasonable hope I allowed to creep in when my rejection letter didn't arrive by their self-imposed deadline.  I had to email, then call, for my rejection letter, four days after that date.  In the past, with Fellowships etc, I haven't bothered, but since I'm working on boundaries, I've decided it's rude to skip the response portion.  When a person spends $35 and 12-20 hours of their life putting together materials, and you've promised you were going to respond, then you owe them a form rejection email telling them the competition was particularly tough this year, and that many deserving applicants were also refused.

So I called and left a message, and soon after received my email.

The upside is that I was using their response date a a target for a close-to-finished draft, and as a result I do have a close-to-finished draft.