The first story I ever prepared for submission anywhere was intended to go to F&SF. I was eight. I lost my nerve and never mailed it.

The first story I ever did submit anywhere went to F&SF and got rejected. I was seventeen.

F&SF was always the magazine I most wanted to sell to because it was the magazine I most enjoyed reading. I loved it -- when Boucher was editing it especially, but under its various other editors, too.

But even when I started selling my fiction elsewhere, even when pretty much all the stories I sent out eventually found a home, I couldn't sell them anything.

Until finally, they bought "Spirit Dump."

And that, to be honest, is practically all I remember about the story's origins. Why I wrote it, where I got the idea -- who cares? All I cared about was that it was the story that finally got me into F&SF, thirty years after I lost my nerve and didn't mail that first one.

I have some vague recollection that I was trying to do something with New Age ideas of visualization, and maybe the title came from somewhere and I wrote the story to fit it, but other than that, I forget.

But it sold to F&SF!

That's it; here's your list of handy exits:

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