And here's an excerpt from the memoir I've been shopping around: https://thesmartset.com/out-of-philadelphia/
I'm off for a long Thanksgiving - back here on 28th.
How out of favor is travel writing? The last New York Times Style Magazine devoted to travel contained nothing but photographs and downloadable audio of sounds. Yesterday the magazine’s Travel issue featured fiction by novelists and short story writers.
What’s the proper response when a magazine whose editor ignores your pitches bombards you with emails to take out a subscription?
That trickster optimism: The editor wrote “I’ll pass on this” and I read “I’ll pass this on.”
The difference between freelancing and publishing a book is a bit like that between catering and opening a restaurant.
A few years ago, at the Miami Book Fair, I heard a New Yorker cartoonist talk about the submission process. Once a week he and the other cartoonists would bring in 10 drawings. Though a regular contributor, he was lucky, he said, if a couple were accepted. In the old days, he added, you could take the rejected ones and sell them elsewhere, but the New Yorker had become pretty much the sole home for sophisticated cartooning.
It’s a similar situation now with humorous writing: If your piece is deemed “not right” for “Shouts & Murmurs,” there are not many places you can take it.
Which makes me wonder: Are we all getting more than enough laughs from dog videos?