A recent family situation pulled my out of town for most of last week, because of that I am slightly behind on my mission. I am pleased, however, to announce that article number two has been submitted. I chose the Virginia Horse Journal to submit to. The VA Horse Journal had a request in the August issue for stories on “how your horse helps your mental health.” They wanted the story to be around 250 words. I pondered, I can write something on that topic! So I sat down and wrote out what I wanted to say not considering word count. I just wanted to get my ideas down and then condense as needed. When I finished writing, I highlighted my text in Word and reviewed my progress, 823 words.
Holy Cow! Are you kidding me? I was trying to be concise. Hmmm…this isn’t good. How long exactly is 250 words, like two sentences? I don’t know if I can do this! After I got over my small huff, I thought to myself. Alright, this is excellent practice for yourself in learning how to condense. A wonderful exercise for me to maximize word usage without my story losing its message or meaning. This is GOOD for me. I want to improve my writing…right?
So I began cutting…and cutting…changing wording…and cutting some more. It was downright painful. I felt like I was sitting in a chair with duct tape over my mouth and only a small hole in the center of it. Through that small hole only every fifth word could be heard. I had beautiful, descriptive words that I felt so bad erasing had to close my eyes when I did it. This is so HARD I kept thinking! I wondered if this is what it was like to live in a third world country and have no freedom of speech. No, absolutely not… that was thousands of times worse. That thought made me glad that I live in the U.S.A. A privledge many of us take for granted everyday. Not in every country could I have my own blog that I have the ability to spout off about absolutely anything I want to. I started to feel better and excited about my rather breif story. After all of the cuts had been made and my writer’s figurative bleeding begun to clot, I checked my word count one last time… 270 words. I couldn’t bear to do anymore and hoped they would accept the story as is, and off it went.
Here is the contact for the Virginia Horse Journal. A different topic of interest is listed in each edition for the upcoming edition. If you write one and it gets accepted, be sure to let me know so I can pick up a copy to read!
Virginia Horse Journal
email – vhj@virginiahorse.com fax: (540) 351-0279 P.O. Box 858 Warrenton, VA 20186So far, no word on the article I sent to the USDF Connection. I sent a follow up email a little over a week later to make sure they received the article. No response. One thing I have noticed in this day in age of technology and computers, is a bit of lack of respect for communication. Send me a one word email that says, “received.” Or a short email saying, “your article is terrible, please don’t send us anything else.” Some sort of response or acknowledgement of your existence might me nice. I like to know where I stand…silence is the worst to me. Maybe that’s why I have so much trouble condensing my writing. FYI…this post is 605 words long 
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I, too, have trouble editing myself. I love using descriptive words, and seldom submit articles for publishing in magazines for that very reason! LOL
Interestingly, one on-line social networking entity that has given me an opportunity to self-edit that I don’t mind is Twitter, believe it or not! You have 140 characters to get your message across…talk about short!
I hope your article gets published…it would be good to know just how strict they are about word-count.
I also agree with you wholeheartedly about the deteriorating practice of being considerate (or, should I say, professional). To me, the most important thing about my business is service. Notice I did not say, customer service, because that only addresses one area; service should be extended to existing and potential customers, vendors, fellow professionals, networking contacts, etc., etc, etc.
So, I fully support your viewpoint about acknowledgements and communication.
Just as an aside, make sure that when you edit your own work that you don’t miss unintended usages of words with spellings that are alike–spell check won’t catch those! Things like– their/there, lose/loose, lead/led (which EVERYONE these days seems to misuse!), and others. JMHO
Again, good luck on the submission!
Mary,
Thank you for your comments and your support! One of the things I enjoy the most about this blog, is getting the opportunity to meet and converse with individuals in other parts of the county and world. I took the chance to glance at your website and noticed you are down in sunny Florida. I will have to look you up if I am ever down that way. Maybe even get a lesson
!
I am slowly realizing that getting published is a bit like politics. You have to learn the game to be successful. Who you know may play even more of a role than the quality of your writing. The nice thing for me if the magazines do not publish my things, is that I can publish them on The Art of Dressage. It sounds like you are a bit of a writer yourself. Please let me know if you have any of your own work published, I will pick up a copy myself to read. I think we all have to support each other! Also, if you have anything educational you have written that you would like published on my blog, please feel free to submit. I would love to have others submitting articles all of us can learn from!