Within the space of 24 hours, I've received three rejection letters and two acceptance letters. Those of you who don't submit to journals may not understand how odd this feels. For despite the decades-long supremacy of the computer, email and online submissions are a fairly recent innovation. Yes, now, instead of waiting for months for the trickling return of my self-addressed stamped envelope, I can check my email and find a stack of form-letter rejections in my inbox. It's unpleasant and overwhelming. At least when I was walking down the driveway, snapping open my mailbox, and glimpsing my own handwriting on an envelope, I did have a few seconds to prepare myself. An email rejection is an instant smack in the face.

Yet of course online submissions have many advantages as well--the savings in postage being the primary one. And this, in itself, has led me into unexpected publication pastures. For while the three rejections were all from American journals, the two acceptances were from English ones. And the interest of British editors has been a balm. Naturally, there's the immediate flattery of being liked. But also, for me--the trashy, second-guessing, half-educated American who's wasted so much of her life in thrall to English literature; this foreigner for whom England has been more or less an imaginary country--well, there aren't words, really, for how it feels to be taken seriously by a British reader.