Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters Another-- "Scuds"

In Fly Fisherman, May 1983.
No bad similes.

I do remember that one.

Dunno if the bad similes in the willow trout piece were mine. One lesson I've learned more than once over the decades is the smaller the magazine, the more likely the editor will rewrite (not just edit) the story, because small-magazine editors are often frustrated writers. Which is one reason, aside from pay, that I was very happy to quit writing for smaller magazines!

Really?!?!! They'd do that much to a writer's piece?

Some do. Once wrote an article for a local magazine about hunting mature mule deer bucks, and the editor (who I don't believe had ever killed a mule deer buck bigger than a forkhorn) inserted a sentence saying a "good" buck's antlers have an INSIDE spread of 30 inches. Very few Boone and Crockett bucks have an inside spread of 30", and I don't believe I've ever seen a live Montana buck with that much inside spread. They exist, but if you hold out for one, you're not going to take many bucks--and you'll be passing up some very good ones.

But as I noted, that tendency is far more common among editors of smaller magazines. Editors of larger magazines have usually dedicated their careers to being professional editors, rather than settling for an editing job while waiting to become a successful writer.

Since I started making my entire living writing 35 years ago, have rarely had editors of large-circulation magazines make more than minor changes to my copy--which were almost always needed, primarily due to typos. (As one truly professional editor once commented: "Even editors need editors.") In the late 1990's I did an article for NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC on the Missouri Breaks, and the head editor didn't change a thing. Same deal with GRAY'S SPORTING JOURNAL, back when I did a lot of writing for them.

Sometimes junior editors of small magazines will change stuff that doesn't need to be changed, to make the head editor think they're really working. Have seen that a number of times as well.

In general, really professional editors prefer running articles from writers whose work doesn't need much editing. I've edited three magazines over the years, and when I took over quickly weeded out the writers who obviously didn't really lean into the job, because they think that's the editor's job. One was a guy who regularly sent in articles twice as long as he was assigned, and late as well. An editor has enough to do without having to spend time finishing up what should be part of the writer's job, especially at the last minute.