Thursday, May 19, 2005

The Second Annual Running of the Manuscripts

It's that time of year again: the second annual Schenck running of the manuscripts.

Last year I wrote a manuscript in a week to enlist in the annual June 15 deadline for the Westminster John Knox Presidential Award, a 10,000 dollar award for a book contract. Last year I submitted Who Decides What the Bible Means? I've mentioned it before. I think it currently sits in some abandoned pile at Abingdon in a morphed form. I haven't forged any contacts there so I'm not hopeful. Frankly, for all I know the letter fell out of some plane at 30,000 feet and has been sitting in a swamp somewhere since late January.

In the meantime, it's time to try to spin out something again. I have some other pressing commitments that will probably keep me from making this year's deadline. Last year I overnighted the manuscript on special arrangement with the Marion Post Office at 5:30pm the day before the deadline :>) What was the hurry, alas!

I probably have too many commitments to get something done by the 15th, although four weeks is more than enough time to write a book :>) In any case, I'm not going to blog the whole thing anyway, just a few starter excerpts. At least that's the plan.

In the meantime, my usual blockhead commentary on things I know nothing about will continue. I probably won't get around to it, but I thought about an entry today on the women in the military issue in the news. Here's my suggestion: Let's let any individual woman do anything that individual woman can do and any individual man do anything that individual man can do. I know it's complex and a stretch, but that's my suggestion.

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