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Four stories accepted in two days is pretty good, I think. Today I’ve broken 80 acceptances, and I feel certain that I will hit 100 stories by the end of the year.

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Today, while waiting for the faculty elevator after lunch, the thought passed through my mind: “These are the good years.”

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I went to the beach, taking along two hitchhiking gay high school students who were nice but whom I could not really relate to. In Riis Park these days, men and women are totally nude.

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Being a writer is terrific: in what other profession can you have an absolutely delightful day enjoying yourself and then come home at 11 PM to find that you have sold a short story?

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I opened it quickly, scanning the first line – “I’m glad to say that Robert Steiner, fiction editor, and I are accepting ‘Summoning Alice Keppel’. . .” – noticed a check for $20, and screamed, “Mom!”