verbatim: Crushing Blow

I've just suffered a huge professional disappointment! I sort of suspected it might be coming, but it still smarts.

Back in March, I got an e-mail out of the blue from a woman who had come across Verbatim and learned that I'm a copyeditor and a foodie. She is the editor-in-chief of a new food magazine and asked whether I had ever worked on recipes. I said I hadn't but that I had experience with such a wide variety of editorial projects of all kinds and with reading and using recipes that I felt certain I could do the job. She expressed some initial concern that I'm not on the West Coast where they are but felt it could be worked around.

She then passed me along to someone on the "food team" who asked me to do sample edits of a recipe, a food article, and a little Q&A section. I worked my butt off on these! I knew I aced it, so I wasn't surprised when I heard back that they loved everything I'd done and wanted to start sending me some work in the next few weeks (which would be early April).

I waited and waited, then sent an e-mail and learned that they'd just been bought out be a Big Famous Company and were going through a huge transition, including personnel changes and moving their physical offices. I was passed along to an interim managing editor, who saw my sample edits and loved everything; she's also a Wes alum, which always helps! She said they were still going through this big transition but were aiming to get me going in August.

So I just sent out yet another feeler and heard back that they won't be able to use me after all, because they need to have someone on the West Coast who can be in their network and even come to the office now and again. I am crushed. This was like a dream come true: to get paid to copyedit recipes! Phooey. If they had even hired me to do one paying gig, I could have at least been able to add it to my resume so that I would never again have to say that I had no experience copyediting recipes or working on a food magazine.

I don't feel that they handled anything unprofessionally, or even that they misled me, just that their needs turned out to be different from what they thought at the beginning. Still sucks, though.