I've spent most my writing career telling people that what I'm doing is an accident. It's true too. I never meant to be a writer. Especially not a service magazine health writer. Quippy, ever-cheerful, and pert are not my normal set of traits. I was supposed to be a veterinarian, a forest ranger, a farmer, an actor, a psychologist - a lot of things, maybe even some sort of angst-driven creative writer, but not this.
And don't get me wrong - as far as jobs go - it's great. Young people all over NY kill to be the sort of indentured slave I fell into being.
It's not the writing or describing things that I despise, it's the twisting of facts. To clarify: The magazines I write for go to their utmost (for the most part) to make sure that the t's are crossed and all that, but they are still experts (lawyers sort of) of bending and warping words to shine light on a sexier part of a study, shall we say, than was meant to be shone.
A common phrase from my editors is: "if it doesn't have a big body payoff don't even bother." 10 pounds in 3 weeks, drop a size in one month, etc. etc. I've come to believe that this is wrong. I used to think - hey, whatever gets you to start the article is fine as long as I make sure that the article really will benefit you. But what I'm really doing - as are many of these articles - is setting up unrealistic expectations. More on that later...
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