An interesting thought occured to me today whilst answering an email. What happens if an Editor completely misses the point with a piece? If it gets criticised not necessarily because it is a bad ending, but because the Editor misses the point of what the final paragraph is saying? Now you may say that if the Editor doesn’t get it then are the general readers likely to get it either? That would be a fair point, but in this case I’m not so sure. I did explain in my reply what the last bit was actually meaning, and it did cross my mind that maybe it was glaringly obvious to me because I had worked in the particular business the story was about for over ten years. Does this knowledge and experience blind me?

On the other hand, I probably ought to add that as the Editor had taken a long time to respond, I had sent the story out to a website that publishes short story. And they liked it a lot. So it is in print because a different Editor did get it. It only goes to show just how subjective writing actually is. It reminds me of a documentary where they interviewed some of the time wasters literary agents who rejected the “Harry Potter” books. Why did they miss out on a licence to print money? My favourite is because they just did not read the manuscript when she sent it to them. Well, their loss. Did they learn? No.