Given a quick turn on a revision? Take heart!

When a writer recently complained of having to do a quick turn on revisions for a freelance magazine piece that was written as queried, here was my response:

Article due: Feb. 15

Article publishes: May 1

Editor gets back to you and demands rewrite/fix/whatever in a matter of days: April 15

This happens fairly often. You just have to build it in. Also, even if the editor likes your query, he may assume that when it fleshes out in an article it falls within a fairly narrow set of article guidelines of what their articles of that nature read and feel like.

The key is -- learn to suit your editor. That's the bottom line of who you have to please. If the editor ain't happy, ain't nobody happy. If you don't think you can, move on. But be warned: they're all different, they all have their things, and there's no getting away from that.

I had an editor liked my query, took the story, over-reacted with strong, irritated language, I tweaked two small things that WERE NOT EARTH-SHAKING, she's happy as a lamb. Which made me think her problem may just have been her manic/depressive meds got out of whack. Whatever. I catered, I kowtowed, I got the check, got the byline -- and got the next assignment.

One of the things that I think I've noticed on one occasion: I've seen an editor overreact and realized that she herself shrinks from fixing copy because she doesn't like to write and doesn't have time to figure out what the story is so that she could fix it.

Whereas when she explained it to me, who did the research, the fix was simple. So if you have a panicky edit, instead of panicking yourself, just work calmly to fix it to spec. Could be easier than you think, especially if you're experienced.

Pop Quiz: What do you do??

Pop Quiz: Your editor sends your 550-word piece back to you. It's now 410 words, and in your view, considerably "mangled." Instead of being better for the edit, it has new rough edges that weren't there before. What do you do?

Shaving off word count is not something writers always get to be the ones to do. If there are true rough spots, I point them out. "It appears to need a comma HERE" and "It looks like the 'and' that got edited out may need to stay in." I have done this a couple times because busy editors doing the trimming may themselves leave "rough spots."

However, if it's something fairly arbitrary or just based on your preference (say you like the word 'huge' better than the word 'large') get over it -- it's the editor's discretion, and they're writing for their ears, not yours.

With a little luck, you will learn to write with that editor's ear in mind and have a long and fruitful relationship. To get there, calling into question their general judgment won't help. I wrote for a nursing publication, and regretted what had to be done to my copy to make it conform to their style. C'est la vie. They were fabulous otherwise. This has happened a couple times -- welcome to ze big leagues.

If you withdraw an edited piece prior to publication, it should be because it's really horrible and will completely embarrass you as a writer.

As another writer pointed out recently, once you've done enough work (for this publication and others) you won't mind the loss of the clip and can leave it out of your portfolio if it really sticks in your craw.

Catch 22: No gigs, no experience -- and no experience, no gigs

There's a bit of a Catch-22 when it comes to the early days of getting published. I see it all the time on the forums at http://mediabistro.com/bbs/ -- newer writers looking to get a foot in the door.

Here's the deal -- a variation of the traditional jobseeker's dilemma: You can't get gigs unless you have experience. You can't get experience unless you have gigs.

The recent explosion of websites offering to publish your work for free -- and the opportunity to blog at the drop of a hat -- have provided a way for those who want to write to their words out there.

Every Tom, Dick and Harriett (and every subject you can think of) has a blog. A blog chum recently suggested I do a Mother-of-the-Groom blog, since there are so many weddings and she hadn't seen one devoted to the MOG, and I have a grown son getting married. (My response to this is that my son would rather have dental surgery than be stalked by his mother so I'm trying to leave The Happy Couple in relative peace. Get it? Relative?)

Here's the thing: this digital newbiehaven can help you get online and loosen up your knuckles at the keyboard, but it can't do one thing that paid writers at paying magazines get.

Edited.

I know -- e-d-i-t is a four-letter word. There's a clever joke about it by Granite Girl on mediabistro, and it goes like this: Lost in the desert, a writer and an editor are lost in the desert. The writer wanders in one direction, the editor in the other, both desperate for water. The writer finds an oasis with a pool of clean, cool water and calls out to the editor. The editor, joining him, promptly starts to pee in the pool. "What are you doing?!" the writer cries. The editor explains, "I'm making it better."

There's no substitute for getting edited, as painful as that sounds. A good editor will knock the rough edges off, and a good writer will learn something with every edit. Don't put an extra space between sentences. Here's where you put the hyphen. Most great writers stand on the shoulders of giants. I can name six editors who have helped to form the stylebook in my head.

Another risk with tossing stuff online is the possibility that it will still be out there in cyberspace, waiting for some prospective editor to Google you, long after you've learned better how to dot your I's and cross your T's.

Fixes? If you've just gotta write, consider writing under a pseudonym while you're experimenting.

And read, read, read.

Check out searchwarp.com as a forum for your work. See my articles here: http://searchwarp.com/Author129511.htm