Asking the Serious Questions

Every bit of life I had infused into an article was just effectively sucked out of it by our editor.

Why am I even writing here? If everything I write is going to be 'edited' (read: rewritten), then why do I even bother writing it? Why not just hand my outline over to the editor and let her write it the way she wants it? It would certainly save a lot of time and effort.

A favourite phrase here is "don't reinvent the wheel" - if we've done something similar in the past, use it. However, even if I take text directly from a press release we've done before or from another document - it STILL gets edited!!

I can't win. Writing mindless, lifeless corporate vomit makes my brain turn to pudding. But writing something good - really *writing* - and having it ripped to pieces and transformed into something that would taste like cardboard is worse. It's not even a 'lesser of the evils' thing. No matter what I do, it gets changed to the point that it's unrecognizable as being created by Daphne.

If this isn't the right place for me, tell me: where should I be?

Now I'm off to a meeting with my editor to learn, three months too late, what they actually expect of us in the way of writing style, tips, and audience. Great idea. Let's let the newbies fumble through for three months writing what we consider crap, and THEN tell them what we want from them. That will give us a great opportunity to pick at them and grind them down into corporate drones before we finally give them some pointers. That's much more fun.