Tingly Possibilities

I heard last week that my scholarly paper on the inverted moral code in Eleanor Estes's book The Witch Family, the paper I revised for the second time, appropriately, on Halloween, has been accepted for publication in the children's literature journal The Lion and the Unicorn. Of course, I'm thrilled. I worked very hard on the paper, and it's satisfying to have my efforts bear fruit.

But now when I turn on my email to check if I have any new messages, I can't turn it on in tingly anticipation that I might hear from The Lion and the Unicorn about my Witch Family paper. I COULD hear an encouraging response from my editor at FSG about my revisions to the sequel to 7 x 9 = Trouble!, which I sent off to her before Thanksgiving. So that is one little tingly possibility. And there are standing tingly possibilities: I might get an email saying that How Oliver Olson Change the World is on some end-of-year best books list, or that Being Teddy Roosevelt is on some state readers' choice award reading list, or that some school somewhere wants me to come for a school visit. All of those could happen. But with the Witch Family paper, I knew that sooner or later I HAD to hear from the editor, and after two rounds of revision, I was pretty confident that it would be good news when I did. Whereas I might get no email at all showering accolades on Oliver, or nominating Teddy for a prize, or offering to pay me a lot of money to spend glorious days talking to school kids about writing.

I need more tingly possibilities! So I guess I'd better write another article and send it out somewhere, or do something else that puts me in the position to have a GOOD chance of turning on my email and getting some little delicious tidbit of news. Though I'll go turn it on now, anyway, to see if Margaret has emailed me about the sequel, or if some school wants me for a school visit, or if anybody has somehow felt in the mood for giving me a prize for something, anything.