How I Learned to Keep My Writing From the Editor’s Wastebasket

I was just trying to expand my horizons.

At the daily newspaper I worked at when I was 19, my beat was high school sports, where I both covered the games and shot pictures.

The entire editorial staff was crammed into one big room with 40 metal desks crammed against each other, no partitions, phones ringing, teletype machines clacking, and—of course—in 1969, 90 percent of the people smoking.

I slipped away from the little sports department corner and suggested to the features editor a piece on a wife who liked to go hunting with her husband and three other men (rare for a woman in those days).

The editor, stogie in mouth, said, “Sure, put it in my in-basket when it’s ready.”

I tagged along on a hunt, shot pictures, interviewed the woman, wrote it up, and stuck everything in the features editor’s wire in-basket.

While I was doing my sports stuff from about ten feet away, I kept peeking over to see if he’d get to it. He finally picked up the pictures. “Wow,” he said, showing them to another editor. “Nice shots, eh?”

Then I saw him reading my pages, scowling, and shaking his head.

He scribbled something on the first page and tossed the piece in his out-basket.

I was dying to go look at it, but that was forbidden.

About half an hour later a copyboy delivered the pages to my desk.

On the first the editor had written, “Great pictures. Bad story.”

I mustered my courage and timidly approached. He was busy editing but finally looked up like I was a cold draft.

“Can you tell me what’s wrong with it so I can fix it?”

“Sure, Jenkins,” he said, leaning back in his chair. I thought I detected a smile.

“It’s sh–.” He turned back to his work.

I staggered back to my desk. My boss, the sports editor, could tell I was shaken, so I told her everything and said, “I was open to any input.”

She said, “Had you had any misgivings about it?”

“Well, yeah, I wondered if I should have asked more about how the woman felt the first time, and how she overcame the teasing. And I suppose I could have spent more time talking with her husband and the other guys about how they felt about including her then, and how things are now.”

“There you go. Anything you think you should have done is what you ought to do.”

And so I got on the phone and finished the job, then rewrote the piece and turned it in again the next day. The features editor edited it and tossed it in his outbox. But since it didn’t come back to me that meant it had gone to typesetting.

So I timidly ventured over again.

“I take it you liked it this time?”

The features editor gave me that same look. “I don’t like stuff, Jenkins. I either print it or I don’t. Page one, section two tomorrow. Forty bucks.”

The memory still chokes me up.

The lesson should be obvious. I’ve never since submitted anything to an editor until I was wholly happy with it.

What lessons have you learned that have stuck with you for years? I’d love to hear them in the comments section.

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