Well, today I got my long awaited reply. They like the piece, and want me to make some minor rewrites. Their comments were very positive, and I think the changes they suggested are spot-on. I fell over myself sending them an e-mail that they could expect my rewrite in a day or two.
For reasons that must have seemed good at the time, I edited the original version of this story in my computer's temporary directory before sending it off. I remember now that I thought I'd just make a change here and there; but I actually re-wrote, re-shuffled and revised the entire story. Time away from a piece really helps you look objectively at it during the editing process.
Every Day Fiction has an online submission system, so I just copied and pasted the text in there, and that was it. Except of course that I'm very dillegent in cleaning out my temporary directories.
I don't have a copy of what I sent them.
What to do? Well, I ate humble pie and sent this little "PS" e-mail to them:
PS:I'm hoping to get an e-mail with my story soon, and a note that says, "No worries, mate, these things happen."
Is it possible for you to e-mail me a copy of the submission that I made? It appears that I stored the file in a temporary directory, and it has been deleted. I'm sorry to ask this; however, I know that I made a lot of changes since the last version of this story I still have. It wouldn't be appropriate for me to work again from that version.
Again, I'm really sorry about his mistake - I've broken one of the golden rules of submitting works for publication.
Has anything like this every happened to you? Do you think I did the (w)rite thing?
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4 comments:
After reading this post, someone sent me a link to this "Basic Instructions" comic. I thought it was quite apt.
We all have similar mistakes- I sent off an edit to an ezine, only to find out it was the wrong version, containing grammatical errors, which actually got posted! So, I had to email the editor and tell them there were spelling mistakes on their website.
They fixed the errors ASAP and still accept my work today.
Phew.
Good luck.
Congrats on the accept! Um, I actually had the same problem at EDF's sister site EDP. Wanted a few minor tweaks on a poem I could not find. At first. Got lucky and found it in my trash bin. Hardcopy.
Peace, Linda
Thanks for the comments. Update: The very kind people at EDF sent me my submission back. Very grateful.
I'll work on it tomorrow. I have a flash fiction piece for Shift Miner due tonight, and I haven't kind of starting writing it yet.
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