Disappointment

Every Wednesday I excitedly rush down the street to buy an Exeter Sun newspaper (officially it's the Foothill Sun-Gazette, but we all still call it by it's old name). And every week I am slightly disappointed in what has been done to my stories. Sometimes it's not much, a word added or a paragraph out of order but it's disconcerting, to say the least. When I write on baseball, I put the preceeding weeks 2 games in one article. The paper likes the story to read with the victory first, if one of the games was a loss. I write my stories chronologically because there is a sense of 'going into the game, the Monarchs......' I just feel the games should be described in the order they were played. When the editor does this he sometimes replaces my well-thought out, much fretted over, opening sentence with some rushed drivel...ok it's not always that bad, it's just not MY words. This week it was.... "The Monarchs first game of the week started off well, but didn't end that well' ....UGH!!! My goodness, a fifth grader could have come up with something better! I agonize over every sentence and try to make my stories readable...to someone besides the kids' parents. And I repeat....MY name is on this....and I don't appreciate looking like a simpleton.

This week though, was the biggest slap of all; 2 of my 4 stories were cut, one of them the league swim meet. I worked very hard on these stories. For the swim meet I got quotes from the coaches (ok, one of them is my son but it was still a good quote) spent time on the internet to get results and info on the upcoming division II meet and had taken some good pics to accompany the story. We have an All-American swimmer on the Exeter team; she set a league record at the meet and I got a photo of her swimming in that race....and it's the backstroke so you can even see her face. Why was that story cut and all 5 (count 'em 5) of the other temporary guys stuff (ALL Softball stories) left in? Now, this gentleman is not a bad writer, a bit wordy, but he's not a great writer either...not by a long shot. And it doesn't help that the guy looks like an auto mechanic....and by that I mean he shows up looking like he just crawled out from underneath a car....he's a bit of a slob....nice guy, but a slob. (yeah, I know, that's just mean...sorry)
I guess maybe the 'writing is on the wall', excuse my pun. Maybe it's their not-so-subtle way of telling me that he will be the one to get the job if they end up hiring another writer. It's frustrating, disappointing, and not very good for my fragile ego....seriously. I never started out wanting to write, they approached me, so what wonderful lesson am I supposed to learn here? What was the point?


.....maybe tomorrow I will have wisdom, today I'm just going to whine.