Sent a new column to The American Spectator Online last night. I’d thought the piece a lost effort, an orphan, but it was saved, oddly enough, by a prominent Democrat.

I’d written this timely column in response to a news story with Christian implications which raised a fair stink last month. But by the time I got it into something resembling a publishable form, the editor (and with him the world) had moved on to new and better things.

That’s why I don’t generally do topical columns. I have the greatest respect for those people who can watch a new story developing on CNN, do quick research on the net, and have a polished opinion ready the following morning.

Me, I generally don’t even know what I think for the first couple days. And if I come up with some kind of encephalogram worth transcribing, I’ve got to

A) Compose a first draft.

B) Revise and cut.

C) Revise and cut some more.

D) Put the thing away for a month to get some emotional distance on it.

E) Forget all about it.

F) Discover it while looking for something else on my hard drive.

G) Read it over, appreciating once again how really bush league my prose is.

H) Give it another revision.

I) Put it away again.

J) Remember it once more, when I notice how low my checkbook balance has fallen.

K) Revise it again. Realize it’s hopeless.

L) Send it off anyway, on the assumption that, since I thought it was good in the first place, I must be no judge of quality.

M) Wait for publication, or rejection, whichever comes first.

N) Overeat.

That’s why I prefer to do leisurely, trivial columns on subjects like “Why the End of Analog TV Portends the Demise of Civilization as We Know It.”

In any case, the Democrat (who I’m not going to name here, since I want it to be a surprise when and if the thing gets published) raised the same issue (or an issue close enough to enable me to add it in, like an Almost-Invisible Hair Weave) the other day. I re-wrote the article and sent it off.

Now, time to overeat.