That's what I officially am, a hack, now that one of my official tasks is writing the official company newsletter. So I suppose I'm not a blockhead as I was before, at least in Samuel Johnson's estimation. Of the two, however, I much prefer writing for free if it means I don't have to go through the approval process of a corporate entity. That's what I get for volunteering for this job on a one-time basis in the first place. No good deed goes unpunished.
See, I just switched jobs a while ago, from mindless but fairly lucrative work in the publications department (which is a glorified way of saying I did copy editing and layout and word processing) to the marketing department. (BTW, I think the main reason the Word Processing department was renamed "Publications" was because it now consists largely of men. When it was mostly women, it was fine to call it Word Processing. And it's funny because the guys now do less technical editing than we ever did. To be fair, it also now includes the editorial department, too. But that's neither here nor there now that I work for Marketing.) And when I switched jobs, I brought the newsletter with me, because my boss, bless her heart, wants to turn it into a real industry magazine. Some of the upper management have not yet grasped this change and are making more of a fuss about the text than they need to.
It's among the most innocuous, unassuming, unoffensive, uncontroversial, unincendiary homogenized pap I've ever produced. The project manager whom I interviewed seems to think I've made it all up, and keeps telling me to read the project description in the EIS, which helps me not at all, because it's not what I'm writing about. There are no corporate secrets in it, no criticisms of anybody, only slightly sycophantic praise and descriptions of the projects being coordinated. And of course, everybody wants their project mentioned more prominently when what I'm trying to do is give an overview.
It's testing my diplomatic skills. I know when I've done a good job and when I've screwed up. This is one of the former times. It's good writing, well-researched, though the article itself is a puff piece. But then, at this point, all of it's nothing but puff because that's all we can do. We'll have to make a cleaner break from the company if this is going to turn into a true industry magazine. They can publish it, but it can't just be a company mouthpiece.
But this is exactly what I didn't like about writing the newsletter for AIP, either. I don't mind editors at all, and working for Cece there was a joy. But having the corporate types dissect your prose is torture, because it's usually more about their ego than it is about the writing. It's driving me to drink.
Is it worth it? I dunno yet. We'll see what my bonus and raise look like. In the meanwhile, I have my lovely magazine client for whom I edit and copy edit. He thinks I'm a genius. And he pays promptly, too, bless him.
Anyway, I'm going back to my damn novel. It's more fun.
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