Not taking “no” for an answer

A freelancer persisted through multiple rejections and 17 edits to land an article in a favorite magazine

I’ve been both accepted and rejected by Nature Magazine.

For the same submission.

It all started when I met a bumblebee veterinarian at the UPOD Writer’s Conference this past January.

Some people keep a bucket list.  I keep a publishing bucket list.

Nature had been on my publishing bucket list for pretty much forever. I had no real business being in Nature. I write a lot of personal, usually humorous essays for places like HuffPost and Newsweek; quirky, in-depth, forgotten-by-time pieces I call history-mysteries; culture/trend stories, including book reviews; and occasionally a health story, though not much in the sciences, and Nature is the creme de la creme of science publications.

But I had gotten smug of late, which I blame on my incongruous acceptance a month earlier of a lengthy, history-mystery piece in Smithsonian Magazine, another magazine in which I have no real business appearing.  And I was an avid, almost fanatical reader, of Nature.  I was particularly enamored of their short “Where I Work” pieces on the last page, which feature an interview with a scientist in a particularly unusual, sometimes bizarre, job, written in the first person. Truth to tell, I also loved it because it was the only part of the magazine I could consistently understand.)

So when we went around the room and did introductions at the writing conference, and Elizabeth Hilborn introduced herself as a veterinarian for honeybees, I immediately flashed to Nature Magazine. In my voracious readings of the “Where I Work’ column, I’d never read about a bee veterinarian or anything similar. It seemed a perfect fit.

To read the full article on niemanstoryboard.org, click here