This is a memory I’ve successfully suppressed for years, but it came flooding back to me last week.
When I was a college junior I submitted one of my short stories to the New Yorker.
I don’t recall the specific story, but I remember it being well-received by my colleagues in our undergraduate workshop, which is about as far as my frame of reference for what was “publishable” extended.
I knew that if you got a story published in the New Yorker, everything else fell into place when it came to forging a career as a successful author. In my youthful delusion, I figured I may as well get started, cleaned up some of the typos in the original, and mailed it off, not expecting an acceptance, but not ruling it out either.
Experience has since taught me that I was fully delusional, my enthusiasm leaping ahead of knowledge and sense. I’m grateful there wasn’t an internet culture to pour down mockery on my young, misguided head.
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