HOW HARD CAN IT BE?

Last night I drew up a list of places to send my story "Vampire Snippets", and threw in McSweeney's, the hyper hip magazine founded by Dave Eggers.

Instructions are to send submissions by email. Easy-peasy. I'd already written a cover email to another magazine, so I copied the text, change the name from "Blah blah blah" to "McSweeney's" and pressed send. Only after I hit send, I realized I hadn't attached the story.

OK, so I'd email embarrassed myself in front of an anonymous member of the anti-establishment literary establishment. It stung, but I bucked up. The Poet did the same thing once, with a poem he submitted to the big reputation (that is, big in the world of experimental poetry) online magazine Jacket. He ended up getting published.

So, OK. I cut and pasted the text into a new email, checked that I had the correct address and I'd spelled "McSweeney's" correctly, and hit send. Only after I clicked the send button I realized I had forgotten, again, to attach the story.

Doh!!!!!!

Suddenly, I felt exhausted. I looked at the bottom right corner of the screen. It was 10pm. "Serves you right for trying to do this stuff so close to bedtime!" I said to myself. I resisted the urge to send one more email to set it right. Wiser to wait until the morning.

So this morning after breakfast, I fired up the computer, attached the story before I put in any text or even address, so I couldn't make the same mistake a third time. Put in a PS excusing myself for the previous two emails. All good. I pressed send, moved on to the next submission.

Next email submission, I copied my text from the McSweeney's submission email. Only then did I realize I had called McSweeney's an "online magazine". Nope, wrong, not an online magazine. Aaarrggghhh!

There is no way to reach out into cyber space and pull an email back. I can only hope the anonymous, hip, literary counter-establishment member who reads the emails at McSweeney's just skims.