This is from a homework sheet from Jachin’s Language Arts homework packet last week. When I read it, I almost peed myself.

Write one of each kind of sentence. Don’t forget the correct punctuation mark.

Declarative: Jachin Gale is awesome.

Interrogative: Is Jachin Gale awesome?

Exclamatory: Jachin Gale is awesome!

Imperative: Treat Jachin Gale like he’s awesome.

When he got home from school yesterday I said, “I read this sheet. It’s hilarious. It’s going on the fridge.”

To which he responded, “I was just rather surprised that Mrs. Whitehead accepted those sentences.”

Why would she not have? They’re the truth.

Deacon loves music. Any kind, really. He likes it in the car, he likes it blaring from the speakers in the house when I play my Pandora stations while I sweep and dust. He loves Lady Gaga the same as Michael Buble. He loves Earth, Wind, and Fire the same as Paul Oakenfold. He doesn’t care the genre or the lyrics.

When the kids are practicing piano, he crawls to the piano room and sits behind their bench while they play. During the day when they’re gone, he crawls in there (the kid can really crawl now) and pulls himself up to the piano, playing his own tunes.

He waits for Jon to get home at night so he can listen to daddy play the guitar. And when Jon isn’t here, he crawls to the guitar — which is always propped against the wall — and strums it until I put it down flat on the floor for him.

The kid just loves music.

Here is daddy playing (notice Deacon’s hot dance moves)

(Jon’s singing is awesome… even without all the words.)

And here is Deacon playing

Here he is plunking the ivories

My little music man.

Someday he may be famous.

Once upon a time, I submitted a number of stories and poems to children’s magazines. None of my stuff was ever accepted by anyone, but every rejection letter meant that I was trying. It meant that I was finishing something and putting it out there to be judged and scrutinized by total strangers. My first rejection letter almost killed me… not really, but that’s how it felt. I thought my writing career (can I call it a career when I’ve never, ever been paid a dime for anything?) was over because my first story wasn’t picked up by the first person who read it. (In retrospect, my first story was a horrible piece of writing. Generic, lame, and boring. I know this now. But at the time, I thought for sure it was gold.) That first rejection letter stung. The second stung a little less, but not by much. After a while, though, I came to expect those irksome rejection letters. They were the norm. If ever I would have gotten one of those elusive “yes letters”, it would have just been a pleasant surprise.

It’s been several years since I’ve submitted anything to anyone. But this past week I wrote something and decided to submit it. I will now take you through the process, should you ever want to receive your own rejection letter.

Step one:

Write a story.

This sounds like the easy part, but it’s actually the hardest part. You have to write something… start to finish. It has to have a beginning, middle, and end. In that order. Magazines prefer for these stories to not suck, but if you are truly trying to get a rejection letter, a sucky story will actually help your cause.

Step two:

Pull out old course material that goes through how to properly format your manuscript.

This course material — if you are anything like me — is probably located in the same dusty binder where you keep your old info on successfully training for a marathon.

(When I was a little younger, I used to think I could do hardish stuff, like marathons.)

Step three:

Read through outdated catalog of children’s magazine markets, finding a suitable magazine for your story.

Then, since the info is outdated, Google the magazine to find out if the editor has changed in the last few years. It would be much easier just to buy a current catalog of children’s magazine markets, but you like doing things the hard, complicated way… right?

Step four:

Fold up your manuscript and inset into envelope. Apply stamp. (You are partial to Bob Hope stamps… well, not really, but you were too embarrassed to ask the guy at the post office for the Bart Simpson ones.)

Lick envelope, paper-cutting your tongue. This bad luck is an omen of something, you are sure.

Step five:

Insert envelope into mailbox and put up the little flag, signaling to the world that you have once again put yourself out there for judgment and scrutiny.

Try not to imagine the editor sitting around drinking glasses of wine with her girlfriends, laughing mockingly at your manuscript until she falls off of her leather couch.

Step six:

Go back into your house and have some dark chocolate, reassuring yourself that your story isn’t total garbage.

Wait six to twelve weeks for a rejection letter. (Try not to obsess about your manuscript for those six to twelve weeks… it may help to periodically eat more chocolate.)

(Side note: there is also another option for submissions; it’s this newfangled thing called “email”. Some magazines let you email your submission via your high-tech computer, bypassing the need for any Bob Hope stamps or tongue paper cuts.)

The one thing that makes me feel warm and fuzzy about getting back out there is that Zoe is now old enough to see what I’m doing. She has decided that she, too, wants to write and submit stories to magazines. She has decided to write a story for Hopscotch magazine because it states in the children’s market catalog that Hopscotch pays writers 5 cents a word. To which Zoe looked at me with eyes bulging out of her cute little head and exclaimed “I’m gonna be rich! “

Yep, a rich writer… just like her mom.