An issue so close...

Christine Priestly on getting 'almosted'

A couple of months back I submitted a short story to The Big Issue for their big-bang annual fiction edition.

You'll hear either way by 11 June, they said.

11 June arrives. Friday. I pretend not to check my email obsessively.

My inbox stays barren.

I was sure this piece was in with a chance. As soon as I'd finished writing it, I thought The Big Issue. It has to be.

Still no word on Friday night (maybe they'd had to work through to meet their deadline?), or Saturday morning... or Sunday night... (it's the long weekend, maybe I won't hear now until Tuesday...?)

Tuesday comes and goes. I get antsy, post off some more stories. Just to feel like I'm doing something. I hate this waiting, not knowing.

Should I contact them, follow up? Or will that just drive them nuts? They did say they would contact either way, didn't they?

I decide to wait, follow up in a week or so, give them a chance. No one likes a nagger.

And then I kind of forgot about it. Consoled myself with the distraction of new possibilities.

Almost as soon as I had stopped looking, stopped hoping, my inbox filled up. Two acknowledgements from previously silent publishers, and one big fat ALMOST.

Not that I realised at first. It began with the usual, we got lots of great submissions, blah blah blah, too bad, so sad... My stomach began to gnaw. A typical opening for a group rejection. Except that it wasn't. Mine had been considered in the final few.

It wasn't an acceptance, but it wasn't a gut-wrenching blanket rejection either - AND there was the door left open: we may like to contact you...

And then a friend said to me, you should throw an 'almost accepted' party.

So who's in?

-CP