cellini's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Working Frustrations My book editor, who was really great, is now a complete pain in the ass. She has this new round of revisions that are just pointless. Just fucking pointless. Like here is a perfectly good introductory paragraph to a chapter -- in fact its a really good intro paragraph. And she gives these vague instructions to 'recast it.' Why? What the fuck? There is nothing wrong with the paragraph. It is the perfect fucking introduction to the topic. All of these new revisions are like that. I pretty much just want to give her the finger now. She is wasting my time for no good reason. Not that I'm a prima dona here. I've been wholeheartedly supportive of most of the changes up until this point. I labor under no impression that my manuscript was or is a perfect jewel. Editing has improved it. But now its done. Its time to move it along and send it over to illustration. I have this goose event this evening and I'm not pleased with that, either. The regional Sl0w Food chapter has dropped the ball in a big way. What it comes down to is that they haven't done jack shit to plan or prepare for this and suddenly they are asking me to bring the plates and utensils and shit. Also, I can see them maneuvering to stick me with the bill for the wine. What the fuck? I'm the goddamned keynote speaker who spent day after day after day driving all around the county and hunting to obtain the main ingredient. And they're having me chase down plates and pay for the wine? What the fuck do they think that their role is here, anyway? It gets worse. I was on the phone with a board member earlier today and he said "actually, I should clarify that this isn't exactly a completely official Sl0w Food event..." Oh really, asshole? Maybe you should have mentioned that at some point in the last few weeks while I was busting my ass to put this on for you people? Maybe you should have mentioned this sometime before, say, THE FUCKING DAY OF THE EVENT. And yes, this bit about the event not being 'official' came up right when the winery owner's question about covering the wine expense was brought up. These backstabbing assholes. I did all of this work AT THEIR REQUEST. And now they are taking a step back and pretending that it isn't their event and that they aren't responsible for the few expenses that will arise. Guess why they can't pay for the wine and stuff? We had a meeting last week to discuss how many people to aim for and how much to charge for tickets. I suggested that we get lists of ingredients from all of the chefs right away and add that up along with any other costs and divide that by the number of people that we expect, and there would be the ticket price, payable to Sl0w Food. Nah, they didn't want to do that. They decided to give the tickets away for free. Ok, hell its their organization. I'm not an employee and I'm not on the board. If they want to give away the tickets then that's not my problem. Except that now suddenly it is, because they are also walking away from all of the expenses. I am very tempted to cancel the event because of this this shit. However, I have the largest regional daily newspaper coming out to cover this for their Sunday edition with photos and everything and if I call it off now then it will make me look bad. Next time I tell them that I have a story for them, they are going to take it with a grain of salt if they think I won't deliver at the last minute. So pretty much I'm going to have to swallow whatever this costs, financially. Even though it will basically come out of my budget for gas, groceries and heating oil. And then I will never have anything to do with this Sl0w Food chapter again. I'm supposed to be bringing ingredients and a presentation for Terr@ Madre next week. That is probably off, unless they really turn their shit around tonight. Sl0w Food NYC has still always been a pleasure to work with and I expect to keep doing things with them. The local guys here just don't have their shit together the way that the NYC people do. 2:55 p.m. - 2010-12-01 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
||||||
|
||||||