I am guilty of this. This most often occurs when I’m having an ideas day. Later, much later I wonder what fueled my initial enthusiasm and why it fizzled out. This was one of those days.

This morning I worked on my article that I am co-authoring with Skye, the Alaska Literacy Program math tutor. I wrote the first part of the article last night and added to it this morning. I felt good about the fact that I had something to share at my tutoring session. Then I had an ah ha moment – this was that I should check out Writing on the Edge’s website. I was surprised to see that the magazine is still in existence. It was my favorite academic publication thirty years ago because the focus was on process.

Reading their website of course brought back a lot of memories. And I noted that Peter Elbow, who was the guru of many process devotes, died in February. He was in his 90s, so this ought not have been a surprise. I thought, well, another one bites the dust. He was not a mentor of mine, but in terms of our ideas, we were close. Now Wendy Bishop, Donald Murray, and my MFA mentor, Frank Soos, are all decomposing.

I do not drink coffee. This is a good thing because then my ideas might be even more farfetched than they are. This one was somewhat farfetched. I decided to write the publication editor a query letter, suggesting that he publish Skye and my article. I wrote it fairly quickly and then sent it via email to the current editor.

I proofread what I wrote, then sent it on. I should have instead written a draft, gone over it a day or so, revised it, and then sent it on. But no, I sent this, my first draft.

I do not know what the editor will think. For sure, the subject, book overabundance, is a relevant topic. And it is being co-authored by a math and an English major, so it is in essence, an article that is multi-disciplinary.

I don’t know when I’ll get an aye or a nay response, if at all. But in the meantime, Skye and I are going to keep working on it.

Today we worked for an hour that was full of interruptions. Skye did focus on the math, graph, and equation aspects of this. He went so fast that I could not follow him, so I think it’s safe to say that I am not going to be getting any more formal math lessons.

I’m going to go down regretting not having applied myself math-wise when I had the opportunity, in high school. I really did scoot around the math curriculum, less so with the sciences.

Life is way too short. This is what I am concluding. I don’t feel as old as I am, but opportunity-related doors are now slamming shut behind me, to which I now often say, “Why didn’t I do this or that when I was younger?

Next: 137. 5/20/26: Not yet magical