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Lorraine Mace |
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Notes from the Margin — June 2011 |
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Here’s a sample of my humour column in Writing Magazine. I’ll change the page each month, but if you want to catch Notes from the Margin hot off the press, why not subscribe to the magazine? It’s a great read. Return to Sender (Not) How you ever wondered about this mythical character who returns undelivered emails? Sometimes he/she/it adds a message of sympathy, or even, from time to time, a full-scale apology, such as: “sorry, it didn’t work out this time, but I’m giving up now.” You can almost hear the tears falling at the failure to perform this essential public service. This is all well and good, and at least we get to know that our lovingly crafted submissions to editors and publishers have somehow been diverted into one of cyberspace’s black holes. It’s not perfect, but it’s a lot better than thinking the emails have arrived when, in fact, they have disappeared altogether. However, I have my suspicions about the postmaster who is in charge of the cyber office between Writing Magazine and me. I haven’t yet worked out what he’s up to, but he’s hoarding my emails so they don’t get through. This is bad enough, but – and this is a pretty big but – he isn’t returning them as undelivered. This means while I’m patting myself on the back for getting my column in long before it’s due, our beloved editor (all hail and grovel, grovel) is wondering why my work is late. I am a bit anal about keeping ahead of deadlines (okay, a lot anal, but this isn’t about me as much as it’s about that postmaster chappie, of whom more later). Anyway, as I was saying, I like to get my articles off with at least a few days to spare. So when I received a message from Jonathan asking where my copy was, I was a bit flummoxed. Still, no problem, I simply forwarded the original submission. The next day I received another email from Jonathan asking for the copy. Eeek and other words (also four letters, but not publishable) rent the air of my office. I forwarded the forwarded message from the day before. This time it got through and I relaxed – until the following month when the same thing happened again. And the month after that, too. I was now sending the copy three or four times to two different email addresses before the column reached its destination. But the postmaster wasn’t returning the undelivered mail – so where was it going? By the fourth month the saga took another twist – messages from our beloved editor (all hail, grovel, grovel) stopped arriving in my inbox. We were reduced to, gasp, using the telephone and making direct contact, just as people did in the old days. Trying not to feel as if I’d contracted bubonic plague or become persona non-grata, I asked if there was another email address I could use. As a result I now have the private email address of our beloved editor (all hail, grovel, grovel) and guess what – those emails all get through first time of trying. Now, either the postmaster dealing with Writing Magazine’s post-box hates my articles and destroys them, or (and this is much more worrying) he likes them so much he doesn’t want to share them with anyone else. I have visions of a hunchback of Notre Dame-type person scampering around with the files, stopping every so often to stroke the pages and cry, “mine, all mine.” (Okay, sorry, I’m a writer – I have a vivid imagination.) The other possibility is that someone with no interest in writing whatsoever is bombarded each month by multiple copies of my column. He or she is most probably already in touch with his or her solicitor to take out a restraining order. A more serious consideration, though, is how many other emails are not being delivered to the intended recipient. Does this mean I should be contacting anyone who hasn’t responded over the last few months? Can you imagine the scenario? Ring, ring ... “Hello, this is Lorraine Mace. I sent you an email two months ago with my masterpiece for you to consider. Yes, I know it says on the website not to call, but the postmaster is obsessed with my work and might not have delivered the email. Don’t you think this proves I have a fan base? No, please don’t put the phone down. I’m not insane, honestly. Hello? Hello ...?” Actually, there is a twist in this tale. The postmaster may hold on to the column every month, but he delivers emails with invoices attached. When on the phone to our beloved editor (all ... oh, you know the rest) you can imagine how much explaining that took!
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