I find his recommendation that a writer pick up the phone and bug
the editor the most wrongheaded of them all. I once had a writer
call to tell me that he'd written a story that had a scene set
inside a helicopter, only he'd never been inside a
helicopter, and he wanted to know if I minded if he left blanks in
the manuscript at that point. If I bought the story, he promised
that he would then go look at the inside of the helicopter
and get the correct information, but he didn't want to take the
trouble to do so without a guaranteed sale.
As you might anticipate, not only was I unable to convince this
writer that doing this was a bad idea, I couldn't convince him that
calling me about it was itself a bad idea either.
Perhaps this is just another example of Darwinism in action, so
that editors can compile lists of the those following such advice
when they call and anticipate the arrival of wretched manuscripts.
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