Thursday, May 11, 2006

Turns out I'm an inadvertent fraud.

I'm more upset about this than I should be. I'm rewriting horoscopes for someone; that is, I'm given raw content, and then I re-voice it for my client. I just found out that they're publishing these on days other than the original raw content specified. Presumably (and I'm not sure why I'm using words like "presumably," but I'm feeling a little stressed out), someone did the actual celestial research that I'm writing it from, and now it's going into random days. So basically, the advice I'm giving is random, like a fortune cookie.

This upsets me.

Why? Do I believe in astrology? No, but what if?

The same thing was done at the women's magazine where I worked. If the actual research wasn't sexy enough, the horoscopes were just rewritten to be sexier, and all that boring stuff about missed communications was edited out.

On the other hand, I had an editor, years ago, who delayed sending me a contract for a week because the company astrologer, who was kept on retainer, said it was a bad time to make decisions, or something. Maybe that branded the whole astrology thing onto my editorial brain.

I just feel bad and guilty and messed up about the whole thing. Which is probably just a tactic to keep me from actually working on the horoscopes, which are fork-stabbingly boring to do.

When the mooooon is in the seventh houuuuuse...

No comments: