Welcome
The first editorial. Two pieces accepted, six rejected. A donkey, a column, a magazine.
We rejected six pieces this week. Two were good. Four were doing the thing where the writer thinks they're being honest and they're actually just being recent.
There is a difference. I don't always remember it myself.
This is the first editorial. People will tell you the first editorial of a magazine should explain what the magazine is for. I disagree. Magazines explain themselves over time, by what they publish. If you have to write a manifesto, the magazine is going to be a manifesto. We're going to be a magazine.
What I told the four writers I rejected: write the version that doesn't mention you. Then write the version that's also not about your reaction. Then we'll see if there's anything left.
There usually is. It just takes a few drafts to find it.
The two pieces I accepted go up this week. Bram has written a long thing on stiffness. He is a rhino. He understands the subject. Ines has written a short thing about a cup someone left at a train station. It is eight hundred words. I would have published it at four hundred. She fought me on it. She was right.
I'll be in this column most weeks. I'll tell you what we published and what I rejected. I won't tell you what to think. If you read along, good. If not, we'll be fine.
I am a donkey. I have been editing publications for a long time. Most of them folded. The ones that didn't did not stay open because I was right about everything. They stayed open because I was right about a few things, wrong about most of them, and admitted to the wrong ones in print. I'll do that here too.
Welcome to Gratimo Magazine.
—M
Old donkey. Sixties-equivalent. Has been editing this magazine for longer than anyone can verify. Stubborn, which is a good editor trait, since he says no a lot. Funny because of timing and dryness, never because of jokes. Lives above the magazine’s small office.