Warning… Lots of Whining Ahead

My boss either thinks I’m very capable or she hasn’t noticed I only have a pair of hands, one brain and one body. She wants me to do three interviews, on top of writing the majority of the articles for our two magazines to be published this month, coordinating with the advertisers and freelance writers, and dealing with all the administrative stuff — all within two weeks, because that is when we will have to send the magazines for colour-proofing.

It is no problem for me to write all the articles. It is no problem for me to do three interviews, but my problem is the coordinating part. Arranging interviews with groups of people is tricky, more so if they are kids who come from different schools and whose parents have different schedules. Oh yes, did I mention that one of the interviews involves eight kids? And chasing all the advertisers for the images and text they want to put into their ads? No walk in the park. Oh. I just can’t wait for the touching-up part. The back-and-forth with all the advertisers. How fun.

Maybe if she gave me a timeline of one month, it would be reasonable for her to expect me to be able to finish all the work, but two weeks? Maybe I shouldn’t be surprised because I am dealing with a person who apparently has no brains here.

She is on a bid to liven the magazines up. Not that this is wrong, in fact it is normal and the goal of every magazine, although why she didn’t try to liven things up before I came but insists on torturing me with it, I don’t know. She keeps telling me that I have to come up with more CREATIVE topics and more CREATIVE titles and write more — you guessed it — CREATIVELY. Yes, I admit I am lacking in the creativity department, but some of it is because I don’t know what her definition of “CREATIVE” is. 

Case in point: I just finished an article on herbal cures for stress and sent it to her this morning. She called me into her office and said, surprise surprise, “Tina, you have to write more creatively.” To which I must have given a puzzled look, because she continued, “I give you an example. For example, you write about herbal cures for stress, you can give more interesting titles like, ‘Are you feeling stressed? Try our … …’” Firstly, tell me what about this sentence or title is remotely creative? I must have misunderstood the meaning of “creative”, because her supposed “creative title” is what I define as infinitely boring and completely common. Secondly, that is not really a title. And thirdly, hellooo woman, you are not writing ad copy.

I’d be the first to admit I have lousy boring ideas for topics, but I honestly don’t know what her idea of creative is, and that makes it harder for me to produce ideas or work that will fit her definition. She finds my graphic designer very creative, but I find him lame. So I suppose lame is what she wants?