FINGERPRINTS
When I was at Emerson College, I took a course called "Writing for Magazines." This was back when magazines had real pages and paid good money for articles. I got an assignment to pitch a story to a national magazine. So, I wrote about the previous summer when working at a country club and having trouble stacking plates, my male 30-something manager asked me, "What are you gonna support those with, your titties?"
Uh huh.
I put that story in a manilla envelope, along with a query letter that I'd just learned how to write, took it to the post office, and mailed it off to the editor at SEVENTEEN Magazine.
About two months later, I got a letter from the editor. She said she wasn't going to publish that story, but that she liked my writing and to keep querying her with ideas. I smoothed the creases out of that letter, hung it on the fridge, and looked at it every single day.
I pitched that editor story after story until three years later, after I'd graduated and moved all the way across the country, I got a phone call from her saying she wanted to publish my story, "The StepPeople." I screamed, thanked her effusively, got off the phone, and cried.
