I had a bit of a writer’s nightmare happen this week. I received a call from one of my editors.
That alone is enough to give a veteran writer pause. I work almost exclusively via email with my editors and other clients. The only time we need to talk on the phone is when something has gone horribly wrong.
There are exceptions. Some editors like to chat, but they’re the exceptions these days. Busy people often don’t have the time to schedule a time to talk much less actually block off the time to jaw for a bit.
In this case, I’ve been working for this editor for at least two years, and we’d never spoken before. When I got her call, I knew something terrible had happened.
Turns out that she’d been trying to email me for about a month, about some books I was working on under a tight deadline.
Whoops.
I went straight to my spam folder, and sure enough, the emails from her had wound up stacked up there.
So, now my deadline has now gone from tight to ridiculous, but at least now I know why I haven’t heard from her for a while. I’d foolishly assumed she was busy or that something else in the project was snagged. I was busy with other things (like I usually am) and didn’t follow up with her. Fortunately, she followed up with me.
The moral of the story? Don’t be too busy to check in with your editors when they go quiet. And when it happens, check your spam filter!
