Of course I know that intelligent, repectable writers do not wear themselves out waiting for news of a submission. 

‘Send it out the door, then forget about it.’

‘Make sure you’ve put your story in order than submit, and move on to the next piece.’

‘When a submission has been postmarked, put it out of your mind.  Go back to your corner and write write write!’

Theses quotes are hypothetical, but they’re a good sampling of the attitude new writers are told to take on submissions–unfortunately, I don’t seem to be able to follow it.

I submitted my Feora story (all in a dragon’s pov, no people around) on June 30th to the Writers of the Future contest and got to work writing, just as I’ve been told.  And I promised myself I’d not go near the mailbox until at least October.  That would give the contest judges the full three months these gods of fortune seem to need if acceptance is a possibility.

Then a week ago I started casually checking the mail.  Asking my husband “if anything came today” while I staged a yawn of indifference.  Just happening to pause on my way out the door to see what he’d picked up from the mailbox . . .

The truly silly thing is I don’t want any news – not yet.  I know that my chances of being at least a semifinalist in the contest are greatly increased if they hang on to my submission at least one more week . . .

but still I haunt the mailbox.