Stupid Fight. Dumb Mistake. Good News

Sometimes, life is just weird.

Happy Friday…

I wish I could pour you a coffee and say sit, I’ma talk your ear right off.
With pie. Coffee and pie.

What a week.

First of all, this week I was invited to be an editor at Illumination, one of the fastest growing publications on Medium. How fast? 20,000 followers in 4 months.

Wow, fast learning curve, being an editor.

Let me paint you a picture. I log into the submissions page. Click on a story and read it. I’m looking to be sure images are credited, no glaring errors or typos. Good quality, not a rambling mess. You know, the stuff editors do that we don’t think about.

I hit publish. Clap and leave a comment - cause it’s nice when the editor does that.

Go back to the submissions screen and there’s 10 new submissions in the time I edited one. Yikes. Good thing there’s 30 editors.

I open another one. Oops. Need to private message the writer for a photo credit.

A Stupid Fight

The writer is mad. Capital letters MAD. Because I asked for an image credit. No one ever asked for that before. 7 private messages in a row challenging me.

I have published here before.
No one ever asked for that.
You gonna publish it?
Blah, blah, blah.

*sigh*

I put the piece back in the queue. Unpublished. Shrug.
Not my circus, not my monkey.

Here’s the thing.

I know how mad I’d be if someone took my writing and used it for commercial purposes and didn’t even credit me. “story from Medium” — with no link.

Why is it that we all understand it’s not okay to steal writing, but think it’s okay to do that to artists and photographers?

Nope. Not on my watch.

Here’s what people often don’t understand. “Crediting” an image doesn’t mean saying where you got it. It means confirming we have the legal right to use it.

I read about an artist whose prints went viral on Insta and Pinterest. Then she discovered she has to pay a lawyer to pursue people who are using the image without permission or she’ll lose the right to claim copyright.

On her own work.

She was in tears. Just when she thought she “made it” she’s spending so much of her profit on legal fees. To protect her own work from piracy. Someone was even selling it on t-shirts at one of those shirt sites. That’s not okay.

The dumb fight?

It wasn’t about the image.
That’s pesky mosquito stuff.
Back in the queue you go.

The dumb fight was fighting to keep the bar low. The most exacting editors are the ones that help us grow.

The ones who let everything slide? They do no one any favors.

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A dumb mistake and good news

I published an article Thursday and forgot to add it to a publication first. Usually I post my writing articles in The Partnered Pen. Lots of writers there. But I messed up and forgot. So it went into the wild with no publication.

And then The Startup messaged to say they added me as a writer. Asked if they could publish that waif. I’d never submitted to them. So big. 600K readers. It was a bit intimidating, even for me. So now I’m a writer there. Go figure.

(you can read it here — free, no paywall)

We just never know when a dumb mistake will become dumb luck, right?
Sometimes, life is just weird.

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Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work. —Thomas Edison

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New writing: I think you’ll be surprised where the first one goes…

• The Best Time of Day to Write, According to 12 Wildly Successful Writers.

• An Open Letter To Writers Who Don’t Reply to Comments

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If you’re reading this in email, click the title and you’ll be able to leave a comment.

As always, click the heart if you enjoyed. They’re like claps on Medium. Your hearts tell me what to write more about and what to stop talking about.

Thanks for reading and have a great weekend.

:)
Linda