Sometimes the submissions process is inscrutable. Today I withdrew an essay that a journal had commissioned two years ago but had never gotten around to publishing. Despite many sweet-tempered queries, I received no explanation of what was going on. Maybe the editors didn't like the piece as much as they used to? Maybe the journal was having a financial or an editorial crisis? I don't know the backstory, but this morning I finally got tired of being in limbo, and I reclaimed my essay.

A similar thing happened a few years ago, when a journal accepted both an essay and a poem and then published neither. In that case, I did become aware that the journal was foundering, although I never directly heard from the editor. And in yet another case, I submitted poems to a journal and never heard back about them, until the print journal arrived with my poems featured in it. I'd never signed a contract, let alone received an acceptance letter.

I understand that, for many editors, running a literary journal involves neither pay nor adequate staffing. Still, it seems to me that if you decide to be a journal editor, you also ought to commit yourself to corresponding with your contributors. It's not like we won't sympathize with your problems, but no one wants to feed her work into a black hole.

Okay, now I'm done complaining. In other news, the Harmony Huskies boys' basketball team still stinks; and according to his friend, who was spending the night, my older son sleep-asked, "Do you have any Monopoly tips?"