A few weeks past, I went to the Elven casting call for The Hobbit. I fit the height requirements so what choice did I really have? Tall people should never back away from a request made solely based on their altitude. I consider it a civic duty. You want me to open a cabinet for you?
Funny thing now is that I'm more interested in hearing the results of the lanky, lithe cattle call than learning whether my most recent story submission is going to get published. Have I failed to arrange my priorities correctly? Or maybe I'm just a realist? Not really. Maybe it's because I'm not stacking my deck the right way. I should be sending stories to as many journals as I can but instead I'm auditioning for elven extras and doing random google searches for journal deadlines. I only have one story out now, and that's probably not going to give me the same odds as becoming one in 500 elves, standing anonymously in a cape in some woodland crowd scene. Alright, I can own it. It is a matter of priorities.
And so, I will commit to finding some damn journals and sending some damn stories to them. Really, I hate this part. I don't care about rejection; I care about the process. It's a distracting drain on time. Like trying out to be an elf, I guess, but that, at least, let me look at the other tall, skinny elven wannabes so I could assess the likelihood of my own potential for elfdom. My assessment? There are many, many better elves in this world, and it seems a lot of them happen to live in Wellington. But I can promise that I know how to rock a cape. I did that for years in high school and I'm looking for some pay-off.
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