After months and months of not trying to get anything into print, I've finally quit my soulsucking, time-gorging job and am trying to get back in the swing of things. I want to submit a query to a magazine about writing a reportback about the Social Forum. Because it's a somewhat-timely article, I want to be able to ask another magazine fairly quickly if the first one isn't interested.

Is there a standard polite way to ask them to let me know ASAP if they are
*not* interested in my story? Or is there a given amount of time that I'm supposed to let elapse before sending them a follow-up saying, "i'm presuming that since I haven't heard from you that you're not interested/can't make space/whatever"?

Any advice would be greatly greatly greatly appreciated, esp. since I feel like I'm so late (the Social Forum was at the end of last month!) with this already.

Thanks!