What to Do When an Editor Rewrites Your Whole Article and Publishes It In Your Name
Start by finding out where they live.
Dear Editors,
May God bestoweth upon thee many money-s and happiness-es.
Except for those of you that changed the whole piece before hitting, ‘Publish’. May God bestoweth upon thee many loose bits of Legos around your house and a pebble in your shoe that you just can’t seem to get rid of.
May your Starbucks’ baristas accidentally always give you decaff.
May your boyfriends & girlfriends say to you, “you are the best in bed out of all your brothers/ sisters.”
May you be the one car that didn’t get to cross before the traffic light turned red.
May you fart at inconvenient meetings. May they know it was you.
May you remember that you had a membership/ subscription for something just after it runs out. May the same thing happen with all your vouchers and coupons.
May you say, “You too,” as a reply to, “Enjoy your stay,” while checking in with a receptionist at a hotel. May that same hotel locate you in a room with noises of traffic and people screaming.
May your cat begin to be fed by your neighbors leading to you discovering that it’s now their cat and they love her more and that it confessed to them that you were abusing it with crappy catfood — not Whiskas.
May your cat/dog only decide to play with you while you’re sleeping.
May your toddler decide to change its own nappies and write with them on the bathroom wall.
May somebody eat your yogurts at work.
May the toilet seat always be wet when you sit on it.
May you just about not be able to reach the remote control without getting out of bed. May you then find out it has no batteries. May you then find out you have no batteries in the whole house.
May you then buy batteries and find out you actually had batteries all along. Also, your TV’s broken.
That is what I wish of you if you change my whole goddamn piece when I submit it to your publication. This has, however, only happened once to me out of 80+ articles I’ve submitted to many publications (and the editor I’m referring to doesn’t edit for this one).
Hence, I’d like to thank all the editors for their great work and wish them good health and happy holidays! Thank you.