Past as Prologue
Not quite a year ago, I wrote an essay for an essay contest about the experience of being diagnosed with breast cancer for the second time. At the time, just finishing the essay felt like a major triumph. I didn't expect to win the contest—which is good, since I didn't—but I always planned to revise the essay and send it out to other publications in the hopes of one day seeing it in print.
Then, well, life struck, and I honestly forgot all about it.
But in the last couple of weeks, two things happened that reminded me I was sitting on something potentially publishable. The first, of course, was Elizabeth Edwards's announcement about the return and spread of her breast cancer, followed soon after by a similar announcement by Tony Snow about his colon cancer.
The second was the scandal about the wave of U.S. Attorney firings, which reminded me that a classmate from last year had written a really important story about the evisceration of the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice. She wrote the piece in a class we had together (the one I ended up auditing after I had to withdraw from school) but was unable to find a place to publish it. So she resigned herself to letting the story languish on her laptop, despite the fact that it had shared (with a story by my pal Danielle) a major award at graduation.
When the recent scandal broke, I was one of the people (including our professor) who encouraged her to dust off the story and try again to sell it, or at least to write a well informed op-ed about it. It took less than 10 days before it ran as the cover story at Salon last Friday.
Between the two events, I realized that this might be an excellent time to pull out my essay, give it a serious edit, and try to find a market for it.
With any luck, I will report good news—and my first real byline—sometime soon.
If not, you'll read it (the not-so-good news, as well as the essay) here first.
Then, well, life struck, and I honestly forgot all about it.
But in the last couple of weeks, two things happened that reminded me I was sitting on something potentially publishable. The first, of course, was Elizabeth Edwards's announcement about the return and spread of her breast cancer, followed soon after by a similar announcement by Tony Snow about his colon cancer.
The second was the scandal about the wave of U.S. Attorney firings, which reminded me that a classmate from last year had written a really important story about the evisceration of the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice. She wrote the piece in a class we had together (the one I ended up auditing after I had to withdraw from school) but was unable to find a place to publish it. So she resigned herself to letting the story languish on her laptop, despite the fact that it had shared (with a story by my pal Danielle) a major award at graduation.
When the recent scandal broke, I was one of the people (including our professor) who encouraged her to dust off the story and try again to sell it, or at least to write a well informed op-ed about it. It took less than 10 days before it ran as the cover story at Salon last Friday.
Between the two events, I realized that this might be an excellent time to pull out my essay, give it a serious edit, and try to find a market for it.
With any luck, I will report good news—and my first real byline—sometime soon.
If not, you'll read it (the not-so-good news, as well as the essay) here first.
posted by Jody Rosen Knower at 5:29 PM
1 Comments:
Jody,
Congrats to your friend and I can't WAIT to see if anyone picks up your essay. :)
xo,
Christine
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