I should have known better
Marin is the land of rich tie-dyed wearung BMW driving hippie liberals, so I should have known better than to wish for a yoga class without chanting and chakras. Yesterday, at my first session of "Ashtanga challenge" at the gym, I knew that I'd be subject to some third eyeing when the instructor started the class by lighting some incense. After sitting with our legs crossed and chanting OM a few times, the teacher started saying prayer in a foreign tongue. When I found myself following her along and saying the words in my head, I realized where I had learned it. Thank you, Madonna. I never know when the useless talent of knowing all lyrics will come in handy. At the end of the class I had to envision "a thousand petals of light float from my chakras" and then I had to "transmit my chi". Yup. At least the class kicked my ass, and at least it wasn't STINKY GYM YOGA, thanks to the incense. I'm also sore, which is good. Next time I go I will just have to find a way to not laugh to myself when I'm asked to perform chi transmission.I'm up to date on my query writing schedule, hooray. I finished two queries this weekend, and sending out five today. The way that freelance writing works is that you send out query letters to magazines. The letters are one pagers that essentially say, "Here 's a great story about fill-in-the-blank and why I should write it for you." Because editors get so many queries every day you have to do everything that you can to make the sale succinct, interesting, and irresistible. Newbies like me start out from the bottom - you expect to get rejected a significant number of times. First your rejections are form letters. Then, as you continue to pummel the editor with story ideas he/she begins to recognize your name, and will maybe write a one or two sentence comment on the form rejection letter. Then, you move further up the rejection totem when the editor writes you a handwritten rejection with some suggestions. Eventually, you get what's called a "go ahead", which means that the magazine likes your idea and will pay you to write it. All you really need, says TBF (who once got a go ahead from Cosmopolitan!), is just one go ahead from one big magazine. Once you write one story for a large publication like Self, Glamour, or Parade, the doors open up for you to write for others. *Sigh* And then ... you kiss cubicle life good bye, as you quit your day job and prance off into the sunset to write full time. WOO HOO!
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