{{{Nora}}}

In mememe stuff, please tell me I'm not the world's worst idiot. Remember that article I posted about in Great Write and linked to on my LJ? My first bylined anything since 2003? Well, it turns out it wasn't as live as I thought--it was up as part of beta-testing, and is not actually part of the site's official launch scheduled for next week. I'd just assumed that since there was live content on the site and some of it was mine, it had launched already. Which I think was a logical thing to assume, though I remembered being surprised the editor hadn't emailed everyone, since she's been generally sending updates. And my article isn't one of the ones being used in the initial launch.

So I used it as a clip. Including as a direct link in an email query. A link which no longer exists.

I just emailed the editor telling her what had happened, apologizing (for what, I'm not sure, but I was feeling all embarrassed and grovelly and like I should've known better somehow) and asking where my article is on the editorial calendar so I can explain to the other editor what happened.

Please help me get that stupid superstitious part of me that's wanting to regard this as a Bad Omen to shut the hell up. Because, you see, it was a good omen to sell on my first query of 2005, after having nothing under my byline in all of 2004, so having a problem related to that article feels like a reversal of fortune. Which is completely stupid and illogical and superstitious.

Did I kill it with my "OMG I'm so embarrassed & feel like an idiot" story?

Come back, Bitches!

t waves at Susan

I tend to worry way too much about that type of thing too, Susan, but there are bound to be glitches in a new web site and the editor you sent the clip to probably realizes that too. I looked at it (great article, by the way), and I certainly didn't have any clue that it was a preliminary version of the site.

Susan, it is not a bad omen. Talk to the editor. Don't grovel; you have nothing to grovel about.

Maria, OMG, I am in love with your dress. When you're done getting married in it, can I please marry it? When's your date, again?

Susan, what everyone else said. I'd just be repeating good advice already given.

Maria, OMG, I am in love with your dress. When you're done getting married in it, can I please marry it? When's your date, again?

Hee! October 1, this year. Yes, you can marry it, but I'd still like to visit every once in a while. But, um, won't Saget be uncomfortable sleeping on the floor?

I'm happy to sleep on the couch. With your dress.

Thanks, y'all. I'm still new enough at this writing business that I feel like I'm navigating a maze, and that if I'm not careful I could make some mistake that feels tiny but is actually irredeemable.

Most mistakes aren't irredeemable.

I'm not sure there are any irredeemable mistakes in writing, unless it's the sort of mistake that makes the NY Times. The main market is the hundreds of mid-size publications, and I don't have any sense that the editors of these talk to each other, much less sit around gossiping about authors. If they do get together, these days they'll be talking about budgets.

Actually, we do sit around gossiping about writers. But the only ways to be, like, blacklisted are to be incredibly rude to your editor, to talk shit about one publication to another, to say horrible things about an editor or publication on your blog or to lie.