H. Eye Round Three: Is It a Magazine?

Yesterday we went through the remaining "maybe" pieces and hashed out an acceptance or rejection for each of them. Now we have officially, sorta, decided. The sorta comes in when we take a look at how many acceptances we have relative to what that means about the size of the magazine. We may go back and put a few "no"s in the acceptance pile, depending. Still, we've got through the main part (if not the whole part) of picking pieces.

Here's a funny thing - yesterday we also talked a bit about possible bias from seeing a given piece in workshop. Going through the pile, there were definitely a few I recognized, including one by a gal who I suspect has a hearty dislike for me. During our first workshop together, I apparently offended her with some of my criticisms. This information comes from a friend who knows the gal, it seems the conversation went something like this:

Gal: Ali's so mean.
My friend: Yeah, but was she right?
Gal: Well, yeah, but she's mean.

I wounded said gal's pride and I don't think she's forgiven me for it. She's come in the bar a couple of times and consistently left a crappy tip for me. To my face, she's perfectly friendly, but in a way I don't trust. In short, I don't see us being best friends any time soon, and to be frank, she gets on my nerves.

Now, getting back to my point - in the second workshop we had together, the class was poetry instead of prose and she found her voice. Poetry works for her. It's her key, as Deb would say. One of the poems she wrote for that class made it through the first round of decisions, then almost got canned during the second. The majority was against it, in fact, and the only reason it didn't go in the rejection pile right then and there was because I pulled my weight and vouched for it. My words, "I want to come back to this one. I'll fight for it." Yesterday, of the four of us, we were split: two for, two against. I made a case for it. It's going in the magazine.

When you get right down to it, the quality of the work was more important than the fact that the author and I have personalities that don't mesh so well. Of course, the best part is that this gal will never know that the only reason this poem was accepted was because I'm Head Editor. I'm sure as heck not going to mention it, though I wonder if she'd like me then?