Virgins and veterans

I currently have 62 manuscripts in editors' hands (or buried in their slush piles) awaiting decisions.

Some of these manuscripts are virgins, out for the first time, eager and ready to impress editors; others are jaded old veterans, having been out and back a dozen times or so, hoping for nothing more than to be in the right place at the right time when an editor has a hole to fill.

One file drawer contains an uncounted number of manuscripts that aren't currently in the hands of any editor. They are retired from travel--some temporarily; some permanently. But each one remains eager to go out again, eager to please a new editor, and every time an anthology's call for submissions crosses my desk or a new publication announces its submission guidelines, these manuscripts vie for my attention. "Send me," they all say. "Send me."

I would send them all, if I could, but only a few are chosen.

And maybe, just maybe, this time they'll catch an editor's eye.