There is no editor for the Tearoom of Despair, it's all just me. Nobody ever reads any of these words before I publish in the world, which should explain some of the more egregious typos and grammatical eras. I bash them out, I give them a single read over, (and sometimes I leave the typos in because they are funny), and I publish and be damned.
But I have worked with editors who have reigned in all my unauthorized narcissism, and helped make me stop getting high on my own supply. Unfortunately, some of the best lessons I've learned about writing as a working journalist were taught to me by the very worst people, actual sociopaths who showed me the best way to break up sentences, while also treating their staff like total dogshit.
This was not, fortunately, the case with the best editor I ever had - the wonderful Chloe Maveal, who edited some nonsenses I wrote for the Gutter Review, (although I stand by all that nonsense, and still insist that Mean Machine Angel really is just deeply misunderstood).
After pitching a few articles, I sent off things, and Chloe - who you can currently hear doing some super hot podcasts for the official 2000ad website here - would come back with incredibly perceptive comments and suggestions, and I would be fucking destroyed.
It was hard. So fucking hard! I would spend an inordinate amount of time feeling sorry for myself, refusing to even think about the changes she'd suggested, and wondering what the fuck I was doing, thinking anybody would be interested. I'm mope around the house and inwardly moan at the great injustice of it all.
And then I just went and did the work and ground it out, and really had to put some proper fucking thought into it. Sometimes I'd have to substantially redo the whole thing and it was hard and painful and when it was done I felt like the king of the fucking world.
That's what the AI hype merchants never understand, what they always miss - the harder it is to do something, the better it is for everybody.
It's a message little children understand - there is, of course, a very good Bluey episode about this subject - but people with billions of dollars to burn don't ever seem to stop and consider that maybe we like to push ourselves, to actually work for the results, and can stand by those results with more pride than anything else you've done, not least the mad ramblings on a blog
It's not worth anything if you don't try, and it's good because it's hard.