I’M NOT THE BAD GUY

“Every editor should have a pimp for a brother, so he could have someone in the family to look up to.” That’s a quote attributed to Gene Fowler—early 1900s journalist, author and screenwriter—and it pretty accurately, I think, sums up the long-contentious relationship between writers and editors.

For freelancers, editors are fickle gatekeepers. They’re the ones who can accept your article and usher it through to publication, or seemingly dismiss your brilliant pitch with the flick of a form email. Even if your idea is accepted, the turbulence doesn’t end there. Rounds of revision may be in store, or a heavy-handed editor might take on the rewrite themselves, sapping your voice from the piece entirely. Ask any well-published writer and they’re sure to have an anecdote about a hellion editor who sliced and diced their work into an unrecognizable mélange.

Simply, the fact is that it’s not difficult to paint us red-pen-wielders as villains. While we may cut words, sentences and entire paragraphs with the icy indifference of Shredder from the , our intentions are not nearly so nefarious. What many writers perceive as a personal slight is likely to have more reasoned logic behind it than you realize, none of it an indictment of your ideas or abilities.