Villain of the Day: Chip Slade
The first thing about this thick manilla envelope that struck me as odd was the return address. It was from Chip, who lives nearby and who I see fairly regularly. I was a little concerned at first, afraid to open it out of fear of what could be in there that he couldn't give me in person (and he'd already presented me with my birthday gift). Still, I didn't hesitate too long.
To explain the inch-thick stack of pages and cards, all on different letterhead, which I found inside, I'll just give you Chip's own words, excerpted from the topmost letter:
"...I haven't been keeping up with my end of the bargen (sic.) when it comes to encouraging you to keep writing. Well, here's my stack of rejection letters...Make a pile of your letters next to it, so anytime you get a rejection letter and it discourages you in the slightest, look at how much less rejection you've had than I have and accept my challenge to build a stack higher. So you will either become wildly successful and never get rejection letters, or you will beat me in an admittedly silly computation*."
*he left the spelling errors and erroneous spellcheck correction there on purpose and highlighted them, knowing I'd be amused.
A few years ago, Chip and I went from being acquaintances with a couple of mutual friends, to writing buddies, exchanging drafts of short stories and chapters of novels for proofreading, opinions, and guilt-tripping if we got lazy. Now, after really getting to know each other, I count him one of my closest friends, often seeming to know me better than I know myself. Of late, however, life has gotten in the way and the exchange of writing has slowed nearly to a stop on both sides, until now!
When I called him to accept his challenge, thank him for such an awesome gesture of encouragement, and inform him that I'd be blogging about it, he only had one thing to say:
"Make sure you tell them about the awesome stamps I used on the envelope."
