Another Friday night. My wife is attending a teacher's staff party. My son is going to bed early to prepare for a weightlifting meet on Saturday. And me . . . I'm doing what every serious writer in America is doing on a Friday night. I'm licking stamps . . . or, perhaps more accurately, I'm sticking stamps on envelopes. Piles of them. Mounds of them. Great heaping masses of them.
I have my index cards on the table, ready to record where I am sending my latest supply of essays, magazine articles, and proposals. I'm sending material to such illustrious magazines as The New Yorker, and also to obscure literary journals like Pleiades and The Kit-Cat Review (no, this is not a pole-dancer's magazine).
Earlier in the day, I prepared for this onslaught by taking out a new mortgage on the house so that I could afford to buy stamps. What is it now . . . 44 cents for a small letter? But these ain't small letters . . . these are massive envelopes stuffed full of sheaves of paper. That's a mountain of stamps (and MOST of the manuscripts will be rejected and the stamps wasted). But that's the gamble writers engage in daily, weekly. Day after day. Week after week. Lots of stamp-stickin'. Lots of envelope lickin'. Better believe it.
A Friday night. Exciting.
But hey, if you're a writer, you understand. Friday nights are for licking stamps, stuffing envelopes, addressing mailing labels.
Turn off the TV. Get crackin'!
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