the winning ticket

I checked my email this morning from a sense of duty. I didn't expect the email I received today to come for many more days. And I didn't expect it to be good news.

In speculating which three shoulders I could tap to write my letters of recommendation, I decided for one, to try a former professor of mine who is quite the hotshot at Columbia College. Basically he's the hardest working writer I've ever met, cranking out book after book, having his plays produced, publishing short stories all over, you name it, the guy's done it and most likely recently. I wanted to ask him last year, but he took a sabbatical from school and I didn't have his personal email. I suppose I could have found it, but I think part of me was a little afraid to even bother asking him.

This year, as I was discussing this with my writing partner, who is enthusiastic (she's still young and largely unsullied by the world at large) and pushy, she encouraged me to email him. She even forced me to sit down with her and write the email and send the email in her presence.

I found out that this was the last week of the semester (which is the pretty much the worst time to email someone with this request), but I did it anyway. And I figured, if this is the last week, I won't hear from him until maybe next week or the week after.

And when he emailed today, just a mere four days later, he actually apologized for not getting to me sooner! I was astonished. And then to further read that he was actually willing to do the letter, I was just thrilled. It was like winning the lottery.

And for the first time in this process, where I've been dragging my feet, toying with the idea of not applying at all this year (and supposedly definitely going to apply next year), I actually feel like it's really happening. This is it. It's my time.

I'm going to send them two short stories and an excerpt from a novel I'm working on. I'm fairly confident about my material. I'm fairly hopeful about the whole thing. And I've got three weeks and three days to get it there.