Random Weekend Post: You know, with the internet and rapid communications working the way they are, I'm forced to wonder whether turn around times will continue to be as long as they are when you submit a story to a magazine or market.

Granted, I have no desire for them to become instantaneous, but I wonder how long Asimov's and Analog can go on holding on to a story for a few months before sending back a no-thank you letter.

Although, I have to say that the editors probably feel these long turn around times do other editors a favor--it's another two months that they don't have to see whatever garbage some seventeen year old kid with all the ambition but none of the willingness to listen to anybody shoots off to every market they can think of, the way I did when I was seventeen.

At Seventeen, I lacked something that has greatly hindered my ability to write since--self-doubt. I wince when I go back over some of those stories my editor (Who I usually called Mom) would desperately try to help me improve, and I would fight tooth and nail about why my wording was perfect and unchangeable, and she just didn't understand the genre well enough.

So Stanley, and Gardner, and the rest of ya . . . If you have to keep a hold of some of our stories for a couple of months, so as to allow that only three or four editors have to put up with my garbage a year instead of twelve or thirteen, or even the 52 poor things who'd have to see it if rejects all came back as fast as Gordon Van Gelder sends them--I guess I understand.

But it still doesn't make waiting any easier.