Compare and contrast.

At this time of the year it used to be customary to wish “Merry Christmas” to all. But in these days of political correctness, the bland “Happy Holidays” has become the greeting of choice. However, I remain steadfastly old hat and stick to a rousing “Merry Christmas!” Whether this would make any difference to your mood is open to question, as the gloom of recession, inflicted by the bankers’ curse sits heavily on the shoulder. What makes the curse even more unbearable is the fact that those responsible for unraveling the world’s economy are happily back at it again, pocketing huge bonuses and laughing all the way, dare I say it, to the bank.

I have not blogged for several weeks now because I have been preoccupied with some personal issues that took me away from my desk, and when I returned, I had to write an article on a medical subject for submission to a medical journal. This got me into thinking about the similarities and differences between writing a science article and doing one for a general or literary magazine. The thought brought to mind those essays we were made to write when we were young: “Compare and contrast this and that.” The subjects could have been anything from rail and road transport, to farming in the prairies and the paddy fields of South –East Asia; the Shakespearean tragedies Hamlet and Macbeth or the mating habits of spirogyra and hydra, or whatever.

Well, compare and contrast science writing and creative writing, which, by the way, covers a multitude of sins, which I will refrain from enumerating just now. The writing part is basically the same for both genres. Where the difference lies is in the murky world of the editorial office, where you send your stuff after you have labored and sweated over the keyboard for God knows how long. The science or medical article goes through a fairly straightforward process: You choose your journal, access their website and follow the links to their submission page. There you create a username and password and in a few clicks you have a PDF version of your article which you can review and then upload for the editor(s) to look at. They even ask you if you have a preference for reviewers to review your piece or reviewers who they shouldn’t send it to. This generally ensures that the paper gets sent to your friends (sympathetic, you hope) and not to your enemies or competitors who are more likely to stamp all over your paper. It is all done anonymously of course, but any piece has fairly obvious clues as to its provenance, so all this cloak and dagger stuff may just be theatrics. Anyway, nowadays, you know that you are going to be hearing from the editor in a fairly short time, electronically of course. You go to the journal’s website, put in your username and PW and see what the editor has decided, based on the comments of the reviewers. Usually, it’s a 2-1 decision that guides the editor as to whether to accept the paper, “as is” (highly unusual), or, with modifications and appropriate responses to queries. However, if the reviewers’ comments are terminal, your authorship ambitions with that particular encounter are brought to a screeching halt. When you regain your composure, you march off to seek your fortune elsewhere. And ,just like in the days before online submission, you listen to what the reviewers said and re-write the piece and send it off again. In the old days when you did it by post you pop it into the nearest postbox, again and again. An old prof of mine used to say that you can always publish an article if you have enough stamps. But he was a cynical one. Anyway, back to modern times, you modify the article and find another journal’s website and go through the process again, hoping that, this time, the piece stays out of the hands of your worst detractors.

            Now contrast this brisk business-like process to sending a piece to a literary or general interest magazine. We won’t go through the preamble that you go through when you send a query about an idea you have for a piece. Anyway, you send a polite enquiry about whether the magazine might like an idea that you have for a piece. After a couple of weeks you might get a reply saying yea or nay. If it is yea, you knuckle under and work toward a deadline you (and they) have set. You do the piece and send it in, hardcopy or electronically, with a cover letter that drips with sweet words to soothe the breasts (I almost said beasts, but that’s not the way to get published) of the editor and wait. And wait. And wait.

So after about six weeks to two months, you send a reminder, again coated in the sweetest terms you can manage (under the circumstances) and in a week or so you get a reply explaining that times have been tough and that they’ve been out of the office, etc, etc. Sometimes you actually feel sorry for them and have to resist the urge to send them an email apologizing for disturbing them in their labours. Anyway, they promise to read your piece and get back to you as soon as possible. Then you wait.

 I am still waiting.

More reason why I am not inclined to wish “Happy Holidays,” but you can be sure that I wish you the merriest of Christmases, and when the New Year rolls in, the best for 2011.

Tell Fren Tru