Pick Your Battles

It was bound to happen sooner or later...

Recently, I was promoted to the position of reviews editor for Weave Magazine. It's an incredible honor that looks great on my resume and portfolio. (And no, it's not paid let. I'll enthusiastically let everyone know when I get a paid writing job again.) Laura gave me some goals to work toward in four weeks, which apparently were satisfied in a couple days (for assignments), and a bunch to work toward. I'm still in the introductions and coordinating stage. Basically, it amounts to at least one review from me per month, one review from someone else that only had to be assigned, and a chapbook roundup review. I've already satisfied the first earlier this week, the second was assigned a couple days ago, and the third is in the process of being edited. Ta-da. So this month we'll post two reviews, and next month will be three, and so on.

What was bound to happen was a clash between generations. I need to learn as much as possible about my reviewing writers. One of them (who does the chapbook roundup assignments) is a woman who played the experience card with me the other day and reminded me that she's been reviewing for 30 years. She has her own review journal, teaches a writing class (I think), writes a bunch of reviews all the time, etc. She's daunting to work with, and I feel like a greenhorn compared with her. What makes it more complicated is the fact that she reviews poetry, whereas my forte is fiction. So already, she's in a teaching position for, basically, her editor.

I won't get into details about the clash. It came down to style. We are being civil and nice toward each other. We are communicating and making promises with appropriate follow-through. We are building a beneficial foundation for future work and have mutually stated that we look forward to working with each other. And, as far as I know, it's all genuine. It's just an odd situation, and probably an introduction to something I'll encounter many more times in my career: The generational clash. The "I've been writing this way for a long time."

This conflict, however brief and polite, was my introduction to the concept of picking your battles within publishing. I'm still technically the noobie, and it's wasted energy to say, "Okay, but we're trying it this way now." I also don't want to lose a writer who has been consistent and reliable.

I knew this was coming before being officially appointed as editor. I hope that everything was handled professionally and appropriately, and that this incident won't establish an expectation that I'll cave at the first sign of opposition. It'll be interesting to see if I let this writer do her own thing from now on and just roll with it, or if the conflict will appear again. I don't yet know.