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Most of Franz Kafka's stories and all but seven of Emily Dickinson's poems were published posthumously. I am not as patient as those masters. And so, with the aim of pushing my work into print before my body is lowered into the grave, I've developed a different kind of patience. I send my work out, and send it out again, and again, and again.

Of the 250-plus stories and essays I've published so far, only a few were taken on the first try. The others are rejection survivors.

No writer can banish those demons, Resentment and Envy, who greet us with, "Does not meet our current needs."

Let them perch on our shoulders, cawing meanly into our ears; at least our hands are free to retype the crumpled first page of the returned manuscript, and adorn the cover letter with a new salutation, and put a proper address on a fresh envelope, and mail the whole thing out before the sun goes down. Now it's the Post Office's worry. We can continue working on the piece at hand and forget about the one that just went out. It will probably come back.

But a worthy story or essay will Some Day find Some Periodical to print it, though Some Day may not be a date in the current decade and Some Periodical may not be the rag of choice.

Still, there are certain happy facts about mastheads, editors, and genre. Mastheads change, and so a piece can return to a formerly inhospitable magazine and find a warmer reception.

Editors are human, and often take a friendly interest in authors who, without complaining, refuse to give up. Genres are flexible: a rejected travel article can be peddled as a back page essay, an unwanted humor piece can be peddled as fiction, a failed short story can be repackaged as a reminiscence, and the above rules are reversible.

If you keep sending your work, and keep creating new work at the same time, you'll eventually have a small army of knightly manuscripts on the road, bearing your standard into the offices of editors, and every so often returning much thinner than when they set out, clad not in manila but in the slim envelope of acceptance.