Our recent post on the potentially disheartening level of income most authors can expect to earn, spoke of the need for a long term outlook. Long term is important, but author John Shore is of the opinion most freelance writers give too little consideration to editors.

Writing is a creative process, right? Genuinely creative writing is a very small part of the total effort required to be successful. The rest is editing (lots of it), promotion, marketing, and - you cannot deny - plain old-fashioned, understanding your client’s needs and business.

Removing the ego from your writing is key, in Shore’s opinion, to having a mindset that offers a stronger potential for success.

Nobody cares about you as a writer. Magazines rip through writers like … well, like elephants rip through hay. You don’t want to even care about you as a writer. What you want to care about is the editor of whatever magazine you want to publish in

I find it hard to believe that writers who aim for the freelance magazine market - at least those who are serious and not simply looking for some extra cash - do not have a business-focused, professional motivation, even if they do get the implementation of that motivation a little off-centre. But Shore clearly has a contradictory experience.

Over at his blog, Shore offers his professional advice on how a freelance magazine writer can be successful. It all comes down to a clear and professional attitude towards your work and, most importantly, your client (the editor). In what reads more like a rant at inexperienced - or genuinely incapable - freelance writers, John wants a simpler life, calling for writers to give editors much more consideration and make their lives easier.

Your job — your goal, if you’re starting from the outside — is to make [the editor's] job easier. Because everything about an editor’s life is working against his job being easier.

Make their job easier? It is an odd way of looking at it, but the sentiment runs true: professionalism in freelance writing is in providing what was requested, in the correct format, by the required time. It is the same for any industry, surely.