the news

Good news!  This morning I woke up and thought BRRR!  Yippee!  

More good news!  It is supposed to only get to 92 today.  Ten degrees cooler than it has been lately.

Better news!  It is only supposed to reach 82 tomorrow!

Bad news.  I got my first writing rejection the other day. 

Great news!  I got my first writing acceptance a couple of day after that!  I am going to be published!  I am going to have a short story in the May 2009 issue of Christian Fiction Online Magazine.

The rejection and acceptance came from the same person.  Let me tell you the story.

I have been very discouraged about writing.  I have been for about a month, I guess.  Then on the writing e-mail loop that I'm on someone sent out a creativity challenge.  We were to write an opening hook for a story that had to include:

grass clippings

a hamster

an odd odor

a fire

breaking glass

Well, this e-mail loop has all kinds of well-known authors and agents and editors as well as newbies and wannabes and the whole gamut.  We're talking thousands of people.

The idea of posting a snippet of writing on there was absolutely terrifying.  So I knew I had to do it.  

This is what I posted:

I gather grass clippings into a little pile by my knee.  My son rests his head in my lap as his sobs subside into hiccups.  The sound of shattering glass makes me jump.  My eyes blur as I stare at the lawn.  I really don't want to see what's going on.

What is that smell?  I thought smoke was smoke, but apparently not.  This smells like flowers burning.  There is a pungent sweetness to it.

My eyes move to my son's head, tousled and sweaty.  Then his arms, charred with black.  His hands in which he holds his new hamster, Pete.  

Pete is dead.  

Without thinking I look up and am mesmerized by the flames eating my house.  Eating my life.  

And we just got here.

Then the editor of this magazine said she really liked it and that I should consider submitting a short story for her magazine.  So I finished the little part I wrote, turning it into a story that I really like.  But she said it was too much of a bummer for what the magazine wanted.  Bummer.  It is a little heavy, but I like it.  It is about hope and healing and God meeting us in our need.

Anyway, she asked if I had anything lighter, so I wrote something and submitted that and she liked it.  And there we go! Yay for me!