I wrote a short story this week.

The subject matter is not important for discussion here. Today I edited it and submitted it to a literary magazine for consideration for their next issue.

To be honest I’d be surprised if they accepted it. Not necessarily because it doesn’t have  merit of some sort as a tale. Rather the volume of submission these magazines get is apparently overwhelming and that they are severely limited in terms of what they can publish.

That’s the reality about writing (or indeed music, or theatre or art) though. There is no shortage of writers and there never will be. There will never be a point where theatre owners will say ‘Oh if only there were more actors’. Live music venues will never close down because there simply wasn’t enough talented musicians to perform.

So even an obscure, online journal is inundated with writing when they put a call out for short stories.

Of course I am making the assumption here that my story would reach the standard that they are looking for. And having read some of the past issues, I would hazard a guess to say that it is.

Having it selected would be more an ego boost than anything else. The money they pay is very little, so even if it is selected I won’t retiring to my Barbara Cartland Pink Mansion with a poodle to write more racy, yet tasteful historical romances.

It would be more a case of smug self satisfaction that someone liked something I had created enough to include it on a website that might be read by a few hundred readers.

I’ve really only been writing stuff down in the last few months. Living in Amsterdam my brain was – how shall I put this discreeetly – a bit foggier.

Coming home has been such a massive upheaval (not entirely a bad thing, not entirely a good thing) that jotting down my thoughts on a computer screen has helped to make sense of the crazed muddle in my head.

In any case the story has gone out.

Let’s see if they come back with an answer.

(Rumour has it that oftentimes you never hear any feedback – so this is a highly probably eventuality – which I’ll cope with, without my usual wailing or hysteria).