How Come You Don’t Write?
People in media get lots of emails. They just don’t answer them.
There was a time, not so long ago, when I believed I could send an email to just about anyone in my corner of the publishing industry and expect an answer.
Call that overconfidence and you’d probably be right. I’m sure Graydon Carter or Anna Wintour would have let my notes decay in their inboxes. (This is a joke, of course. If either one of them has directly used a computer in the last decade, may lightning strike…someone I don’t particularly like.)
But within reason, I felt that I’d reached a stage in my career that if I had a reasonable thing to correspond with a reasonable person about, I could reasonably expect a reply within a reasonable amount of time.
Now, two months into a spell of freelance writing while I search for a new editing position, I realize how stupid that belief was.
I have spent the last 15 years working as an editor at national publications. I’ve been a writer during that time, too, publishing in lots of magazines and websites, and writing a book about weird Jews.
As an editor, I grew accustomed to getting answers to my queries. But I had advantages. For example, I often emailed people to offer them money:
