No Respect?

I often wonder why I'm a writer/editor. My profession gets no respect. Even the people who claim to respect what I do often don't. I sat in a meeting this week where a group of professionals (not writers) bemoaned the fact that everyone thinks they can do what these professionals do, and how frustrating it is. When it came time in the meeting for us to discuss who we could get to write some feature articles for a magazine, they unanimously claimed that their collegues (none of whom are writers) could do it in a snap.

Did they not see the irony? Yes, many people can write. But writing a professional feature article is not the same thing as writing a blog entry. I know. I've done both.

Sigh.

Well, I feel better getting that off my chest. Now I have to figure out how to deal with the fact that I'm likely to have a bunch of amatuers writing for me, and how I'm going to handle the missed deadlines and off-topic stories. Maybe I'll deal with that tomorrow.