Especially when things are really funny!

Like when you had a chip on your shoulder and you made a terrible mistake, a faux pas, and then life has a way of circling around back at you, as if to nod and say, “It’s okay.”

That’s what happened to me today.

About twenty years ago, when I was still just starting to try to get published, I tried writing everything and anything, just to get a publishing credit so that I could mention it on my cover letters so editors could take me a tich more seriously.

I always admired OWL and ChickaDEE magazines! They’re Canadian institutions, so naturally I took an oral speech I’d help write for my daughter and tried to turn it into an article for OWL.

I have come to the conclusion that I am NOT a non-fiction author.

Not really.

Despite the occasional article I write for journals and stuff, I can’t write creative non-fiction. Not for the likes of such prestigious magazines anyway, but at the time I didn’t know any better and I wrote the article.

It languished at OWL in the slush pile.

And so I went to this conference back then called STORYMAKERS. The editor of OWL was Sylvia Funston. She was doing a session, and here’s me sitting in the front row, listening eagerly. And when she said that they respond back within three months, I stuck up my hand and told her it had been six months.

She was kind enough to go back to the offices, dig up my story, and sit down with me the next day to tell me why it didn’t work and what I could do to fix it.

Did I appreciate it?

No, I did not.

LOL.

Omigosh. Like I said, I’ve made every mistake imaginable on my journey to be an author.

I cringe at the way I behaved. I did not appreciate the criticism. I did not even realize what a favour she was doing for me!!!

By the time I did, she had moved on.

I wrote an open letter to Sylvia Funston, I think on this blog, apologizing profusely but I don’t think it ever wended its way toward her.

And then lo and behold, out of the blue, I get a request from ChickaDEE magazine to write a story for them! A fiction story–which I can do!

And which I did.

And now that it’s been finalized and the editing is done, I can say it feels absolutely SURREAL to have written for such a prestigious magazine as ChickaDEE!!!

I asked my editor if she knew Sylvia Funston and whatever happened to her, but no, alas, she was before her time.

I do hope I get to apologize to her one day.

But in the mean time…

CHICKADEE!!!!!!