Overcoming Inertia

On Friday I was tempted to clean up my Thursday gay marriage blog posting and send it out for publication.

But I was also tempted to take a walk, go pick up a book I ordered in San Francisco, and/or watch Ellen DeGeneres announce her engagement to Portia DiRossi on TV.

Early in the afternoon I got a sweet email from my father, who had seen the posting and urged me to try to get it published. This made me realize that I needed to wait until Friday evening for my weekend to begin just like everyone else. I spent the afternoon polishing the piece, giving it a real introduction and tightening up the writing. (And correcting a misspelling Pipi found. That was embarrassing.) I sent it to the San Francisco Chronicle, the Christian Science Monitor, and the Advocate.

That may seem like an unlikely lineup ("One of these things is not like the other….”), but the Christian Science Monitor did publish me once before. They run an essay every day, and their web site says they welcome differing points of view, so I took them at their word.

The Christian Science Monitor got back to me very quickly. The editor said the piece was a little too topical for the Home Forum. I don’t think she meant this euphemistically because she offered to personally forward it to the Op-Ed person—which she did. I got a similar response from the Chronicle—my story is now with the Insight section editor there.

No word yet from either of these new editors, or from the Advocate. As always, I will keep you posted. And I’ll keep trying other publications as well.