Thursday, September 2, 2010

I love the smell of an Expired in the morning.

I have two options for the articles that I edit online: edit and approve for publication, or edit and return to the writer with a detailed rewrite request.

If a writer receives a rewrite request, he has four days in which to comply. If the article isn't returned to my queue by the deadline, it has expired. I do, however, receive payment for having worked on it. The writer does not.

Every once in a while an article is so bad, and the rewrite request effectively asks the writer to start over, that he abandons it. This is often my hope; I simply don't want to spend another minute on an article that isn't likely to be much better the second time around.

I checked my queue and list of "Reviewed Work" this morning. My hope was realized: an Expired.