I can appreciate the irony of the February 25th cover for The New Yorker.  In a series of nine panels, a writer writes a book in the Winter, the book is accepted for publication in the Spring, someone buys and read the book in the Summer, the book is put out in the recycling bin to be picked up by a homeless person in the Fall, and the homeless person tosses the book into a fire in the Winter.  Since I'm planning to write my first novel starting on April Fool's Day and ending on New Year's Eve, I'll find out next year if my book will get the same treatment.

I would love to have my novel to be accepted by a publisher next year.  However, I'm in this for the long haul.  I'm planning to write a novel per year for the next five years to have a one-in-five chance of getting published.  I might get all five published or novel number six might be the lottery winner.  Publishing is a very uncertain business these days.  The rejection slips I'm seeing more often these days for my short stories are from magazines that ceased publication.