(no subject)

[molly_o]

So, I am an editor. I don't mean by occupation, I mean by temperament.

One thing about editors, is a lot of us got this way because we really like to *read* -- and we're not just reading for the gist, we're paying attention to all the details; we love to be immersed in the printed word. We've pretty much been introverts since day one.

Freelance writers also like to read, but freelance writers tend to be more extroverted, because freelance writing usually involves some reporting -- calling people up and engaging them in conversation and getting information from them.

This is a good thing, a thing that is very valuable and needs to be done -- but it is not a thing you could pay me to do. Oh, I've written a few articles, and I can put together a fine paragraph -- finer than many -- with minimum effort and maximum satisfaction, but the calling-people-up-and-talking-to-them part? That would be torture. The phone is an invention of the devil. (Not that I think Alexander Graham Bell is really the devil, but you know what I mean. Hate the phone, hate it. Half the time at home I just let the machine pick it up and e-mail whoever it is the next day because I. Hate. The. Phone. Even when I love the people calling me, I hate the phone.)

So one of the suckiest parts of my job is taking calls from freelance writers. We have guidelines posted on the web, and when writers call, the nice people in the call center refer them to those guidelines, but every once in a while we get one who somehow has never figured out that editors are introverts, and thinks hir chances of getting published would be greatly improved if s/he could only talk to me and schmooze me. And schmoozing? Is on my list of the ten things I would *least* like to do in my life, somewhere between having dental surgery and appearing on Fear Factor.

I want to interrupt them and say, "Look, I understand you really really want us to publish your article, but you just have to trust me when I tell you that keeping me on the phone against my will does *nothing* to increase your chances." I am pretty successful at saying, in a very friendly and helpful way, that we have writer's guidelines, and they really tell you everything you need to know, and we prefer to receive specific queries, and your best bet is to study our back issues (posted on the web) to get a sense of what kind of articles we publish, and then come up with three or four ideas that seem appropriate and e-mail them to us. But sometimes you can say that many times and they STILL want to chat.

And then, basically, I just sit there counting the minutes that are being shaved off my life -- not just the minutes I'm spending on the phone, but the *extra* minutes I'm losing to the heart disease I am surely acquiring as a result of internalizing my profound irritation.

(I really hope there are no typos here, because after all my blah blah about reading for details and fine paragraphs, that would be humongously embarrassing.)