Dear Brother Fox

If you think that you can figure out what will be acclaimed as great (or even good) from a limited circulation you have me beat. What follows is a parable from "real life".

Once upon a time at one of the most renowned institutions for medical research in North America there were a pair of researchers. By accident (the only way that such things happen) they stumbled upon a model system for one of the nastier cancers that afflict humans (but unfortunately only humans). Furthermore, the way in which this cancer model system operated in mice gave what may be an extremely important insight into why this cancer arises in people.

So they put their data and their thoughts in order and presented to a group of their peers. One of the scientists was being presented an award from a scientific society for their achievements. As is customary, such awards come with the right to give a lecture to the society at an annual meeting. As the last part of their talk the scientist presented their findings about the new model for the deadly human cancer. At the end of the talk the applause was deafening. Everybody congratulated the scientist on their breakthrough. And so with great confidence they wrote up their findings and submitted them to the foremost scientific journal in the world, the British publication NATURE. Rejected! They took the reviewers' comments in mind, revised the article and submitted it to the second best scientific journal in the world SCIENCE (many Americans insist that it is the best but don't believe them). Rejected! Given the reviewers' comments from SCIENCE and NATURE the scientists rewrote the paper and submitted it to the leading cancer research journal in the world. Guess what, rejected.

Finally, they took the paper, wrote it to their satisfaction and submitted to the scientific society that had applauded the findings when they were presented at the annual dinner. Accepted and eventually published. A very senior scientist of that society discussed the matter with the two scientists at a meeting where they were all very drunk. I think it was in Australia and these folks from the American Southwest were trying to ingest alcoholic beverages (very, very good wines) at the same pace as their Australian hosts. The very senior scientist, who was about to retire, had developed the very first model for this deadly cancer. It involved elaborate perversions performed on baby South American opposums. He commiserated with the two middle aged scientists. Turned out when he had made his breakthrough none of the top journals would accept his work either. Nobody believed it. It took ten years for the real beauty and importance of his work to be recognized. Eventually everybody accepted the concept and thought it was great.

After about ten years the cancer research field began to accept the two scientists work on the animal model for the very nasty cancer. The FDA (which believed in the work from the very start) worked hard to eliminate the carcinogen from human contact. The scientists were honored for their work.

The lesson from this parable are these:

If you love pain, suffering and rejection, go into Science. You will get decades of abuse. No masochist I have ever met (them p, me T) in a Psych hospital enjoyed pain enough to get an M.D. or a Ph.D. To be a faculty member now-a-days requires a love of pain beyond comprehension.

Nobody will ever appreciate your work properly. Write for yourself and your own enjoyment. My scribblings about Christian Fundamentalists in the odd corners of Texas is written to provide enjoyment for a few tens of thousands of perverts like myself. But it is really written for my enjoyment.

Submitt your work to a venue where it will be reviewed by people that think the same way that you do. THIS IS A GOOD PLACE FOR YOU AND ME. Yes I read the New Yorker. Do I appreciate the New Yorker more than BDSMlibrary. Not necessarily, they are different. I don't send my fiction to the New Yorker although I read it about as much as BDSMlibrary.

Enjoy what you write! When you are really enjoying what you write, I believe that you write better. DON'T WRITE FOR THE AUDIENCE! Write for yourself and submitt it to an audience that will appreciate it. Don't send "Christian Discipline Diaries" or "Homage to the Headmaster" to the New Yorker.

Ignore the Reviewers. What the hell do they know. If you change your article based on what the reviewers at NATURE like or don't like it doesn't mean the the folks at CANCER RESEARCH will respond to it (I have published in both journals). Again, write for yourself.

One of the finest feature of BDSMlibrary is the random picks at the top of the site. If you write enough, eventually you will come to be appreciated. Treasure and savor those sketchs which you really like. With time as the number of hits on your articles climb, take satisfaction. The "real world" equivalent is Science Citation Index which records the number of times a given article of yours in "cited" or included in the references of another scientific article. No matter what the reviewers say, the "hits" don't lie.

By the way I get off on corporal punishment of females. The chastised ladies can range in age from about 13 to 55 and endomorphs are not discriminated against. However, I distain hand spanking, "floggers" (full of noise and fury and signifing nothing) and paddles (too much tissue damage).

Well, all of that was too long. Best wishes.