must remember what it's like on my end...

So, the blog's been updated a bit. I started it when I was just starting my job and trying to start grad school. Since I'm pretty secure at work now and no longer in grad school, the quips about navigating adulthood and the copious literary allusions (including the title) seem out of place. "Clever with words" how my 9th grade English teacher described me to my 9th grade journalism teacher. It became a kind of joke between me and Rens (the journalism teacher) that stuck with me through high school. I'm hoping the epithet still fits...or if not, I can figure out how to squeeze back into it before too long.

Tonight, I sent out three poems to a magazine that specializes in pieces under 20 lines. I fully expect that they will all be rejected but this is part of it, that whole writing thing, and I have to get rejected to get better to eventually get published...or something like that.

The site (that shall remain nameless) promises to read and respond to my pieces within two weeks. I don't expect that to happen either. Ideally, articles under consideration where I work should be out of the system (after full peer-review) within 45 days. I currently have nine papers beyond that cutoff. Two papers are 80+ days old. One of those papers does not have reviewers. That's not ideal.

Needless to say, when I haven't heard back from the editor in two weeks, I won't be making a phone call or sending an email. The site says to ask for an update four weeks after submission. I'm giving this dude five. I had more than one author call me today irate that I had not made a decision on their very important and potentially groundbreaking work. Because I make those decisions. Because they want me to make those decisions. If it were up to me we'd publish articles on linguistics (because I can understand those), robots (because why not), and how Mike and Ikes are secret superfoods (because they taste like awesome) and how coffee makes you pretty (because I wish it did.) Screw evolution and swine flu, I want a reason to eat Mike and Ikes.