One Does Not Simply Get An Article Pitch Accepted

So, I've been trying to pitch an article (no shit - that's what the title says!) to an online humour magazine, of which I am a regular and enthusiastic consumer. I'm pretty sure that no-one goes into something like this without secretly imagining that the editor will read their pitch and be dazzled into paroxysms of joy by the quality of this new, undiscovered gem of writing brilliance, but, delusions of grandeur notwithstanding, I didn't exactly expect that it would be easy. Plus, I know from experience that these things are always much harder the first time out than they are on the second or third. But, dear God, what a first time out it was. I think, by mid-week, I was already slightly deranged by sleep deprivation (full-time job, home, work on pitch, go to bed at 1am, and then, because the restless spirit of that goddamn paperclip that used to be the scourge of MS Word has apparently taken up residence inside my skull since being justifiably murdered by Microsoft, my brain would immediately flip into a two-hour cycle of, "It looks like you're trying to sleep! Would you like me to (a) endlessly recycle the past four hours on a three-second loop of crazy, or (b) Shut the fuck up and die? And option B is a lie.)



Then, Thursday evening, after a week of jumping through ever-shrinking hoops of fire, the pitch was unceremoniously rejected.

So, that was fun. My initial reaction, of course, was to throw an epic sulk and decide, ok, fine, that's fine, don't accept my pitch, I don't care I hate you I hate myself I hate EVERYTHING... and then I realised something important.

I am not three years old.

They rejected a pitch, not the being known as Rachael Kelly.

There was a suggestion within the rejection for how it could be made more acceptable.

So, I've spent the past day, which is considerably less time than a week (but I now understand the correct formatting and requirements, you see: second time around!) re-jigging the idea as per suggestions, and have just re-pitched. I await their response with baited breath, but if they don't go for it, what have I lost? Certainly not the right to redefine "Persistent Little Shit" as "Rachael Kelly: Seriously, You Might As Well Just Go With It, Because She's Not Going To Go Away Until You Do."

I think I might finally be ready for this, you know....