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?
Some writers need to write – others need to avoid the guilt of not writing.
Not all writers find pleasure in the act of writing – James Baldwin called his office “the torture chamber” – but all know the exquisite pleasure of having written.
My story of starting out in the '70s in Trenton, NJ: https://longreads.com/2018/07/05/letters-from-trenton/