Apr 23
Watch Civility Devolve (rather quickly, in fact)
Posted by editor at 7:58 am in workplace notes

Devolution of a Literary Correspondence

Added: I do have a rather complicated relationship with all of this (though not a personal relationship, mind you) as a writer and editor and person who has heard the stupid and ugly insults far too often. But, man, it did devolve.

Via Maud

Watch Civility Devolve (rather quickly, in fact) has 6 Comments

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  1. Scott Wells wrote:
    April 23rd, 2008 at 8:10 am

    I’m left with a poor impression of Fence and its editor by trying to make hay of this nasty spat. Doubt that was her intent.

  2. Ms. Theologian wrote:
    April 23rd, 2008 at 8:19 am

    I have only rejection letters from Fence, and I’m tempted not to submit again. When I worked on a literary journal, I tried to avoid pissing matches of this nature…just restate that the copy was sent to NJ. Period. I don’t think anyone can win….

  3. Chalicechick wrote:
    April 23rd, 2008 at 8:22 am

    Yeah, the contributer wasn’t nice, but damn, that editor sucks. If she’d sent an extra copy of the magazine to the address in New York upon recepit of the first letter, the spat wouldn’t have happened at all.

  4. h sofia wrote:
    April 23rd, 2008 at 9:17 am

    Sounds like the editor was in a bad mood - One more sentence from her could have cooled this off: something along the lines of, “A copy was sent to NJ; I will resend a copy to your NY address.” Responding to a question with another question doesn’t leave the asker feeling satisfied.

    The contributor could have just asked more questions instead of taking to personal attacks. Wow. Just wow. Maybe neither of them is civil in the first place.

  5. Robin Edgar wrote:
    April 23rd, 2008 at 10:01 am

    I guess that makes this devolution of correspondence look tame by comparison. ;-)

  6. GhostGirl wrote:
    April 23rd, 2008 at 3:14 pm

    That editor never ONCE made clear that she was sending a copy there. She just asked if the person used to live there. There seemed to be no response back saying “okay, confirming that I am sending a copy to xxx NJ” and she actually never even said “yes we do provide contributor copies.” It was like a bizarre one-sided conversation where half of her responses were in her head and then she got mad because the person didn’t hear her.

    Granted, the contributor was a bit of a douche, too, but I can see where the frustration of a non-responsive response came in.

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