In which i write to Oprah

The other day as I was pondering how to get my readership up from about 60 to one million, I realized that I needed to start submitting my work to newspapers and magazines. I realized that this might involve a little “work” with is usually anathema to me but I was in a relatively good mood so I thought, “what the hell, why not?” I started thinking about the forums that would be good for me and I realized that the Mighty Opes aka Oprah was the perfect starting place. Although I’ve never been on her web site before, I started checking it out. I eventually found a page that said they were looking for people to appear on their show in some different categories, one of which I jumped all over. Here’s what it said:



Have You Had an Aha! Moment?


Have you ever had an aha! Moment (a moment of clarity that gives you the wisdom to make a change in your life)? Whether it was a sudden flash of understanding or an event that helped you find insight and meaning in your life--we want to hear from you! Please be specific. Describe the actual moment: What were you doing or observing when you had your moment? How did it come to pass? And, of course, what impact did it have on your life? How did your thinking and actions change after your aha! moment?






Oh my god! There it was, the answer to all my problems. Had I ever had an “Aha” moment? Hell yes (actually, more than one) I had an “Aha” moment and I had already written about it in a post entitled I'm not even worried about it. This was perfect. I was just going to copy and paste my “Aha” moment into the little box, send it off to the Oprah peeps and voila, they would love me of course, put me on their little show and Oprah and I would become really good buds (sorry Gayle, you can hang with us too).






Excellent, I had a plan. I looked at the little box and it only had room for 2000 characters. I went over to my article and it has 4259 characters and 3394 characters not counting spaces. “No problem” I thought to myself, “I’ll just do a little editing.” So I began editing the story, taking out points that don’t seem salient to the plot, removing some of my funny interjections, you get the picture. I checked my word count. Still too high. “Wow this is a pain in the ass” I’m thinking. “All these parts seem to be pretty important to the story but I guess I’ll just try to stick to the basic epiphany part of the story,” so I cut some more. I was still over 2000 characters.






I was starting to get annoyed. I had written a perfectly lovely little blog post about how I wasn’t really worried about it and it was TOO DAMN LONG. So I cut some words … and some more words … and some more words and FINALLY, I got the damn thing below 2000 characters without spaces. I copied and pasted it in and guess what? THE DAMN COMPUTER SAYS THAT IT’S TOO MANY CHARACTERS! What the fuck? I was getting really pissed now. So I started cutting again until I was below 2000 characters including spaces. It’s my humble opinion that my brilliant writing had now been chopped to death and I could feel my piece screaming like it was butchered by Freddy in Nightmare on Elm Street.






Undeterred, I copied and pasted it in and that’s right, it was still TOO MANY GODDAMN CHARACTERS!! Was I pissed? That would be a massive understatement. I’d already spent about a half an hour trying to reduce the best “Aha” moment in the history of all “Aha” moments to a 2000 character synopsis but was that good enough for the big O (no folks, not an Orgasm, the magazine … get your heads on straight)? NO. Here I was, on the brink of superstardom and the stupid computer had math issues. I was a math major (or I was before I went stupid but that’s a story for another day) and I KNEW that 1997 characters is less than 2000 but apparently, the form and I were at odds.






It was time to take matters into my own hands to I decided to compose a little letter to the Oprah people.






Dear People in charge of this website and form: I have been submitting and resubmitting my “Aha” moment for OVER a half an hour and I am constantly getting rejected. Suffice it to say that I have the best “Aha” moment ever and if your damn form would quit screwing with my head, you would have been reading it by now. If you are curious about what I have to say, then I suggest you go over to my BLOG and read it YOURSELF, Here’s the link: I'm not even worried about






Would I be a great guest for Oprah? I would and you’re about to miss out on this unique opportunity due to the fact that your website can’t count! I would recommend that you do something about that or else millions of people will end up in an insane asylum due to submission anxiety. I’m not even sure that this stupid comment will work but I’m giving it the old college try. Feel free to contact me so I can tell you my story in person. Thanks A LOT! Lynn MacDonald






So yeah, I submitted it. I haven’t heard anything back from Oprah and I don’t actually expect to. They’ll probably just put some crappy little feel good story on instead but hey, I tried. So, I’m apparently going to have to get some followers the old fashioned way, I’ll have to EARN them. But if any of you guys know Oprah, let her know that she missed out because “I’m not even worried about it!”