It happens. It sucks, but it happens.
The Editor of the section that carries my column in the Toronto Sun simply ran out of room this week. So my column won’t run. Does it matter to a writer when this happens? Sure it does! It’s a twist on that old, if a tree falls, cliche. If a writer writes a column but it doesn’t get read, is it really a column?
My Editor is wonderful, though. She gave me a heads-up that it wasn’t going to make it into this edition. I didn’t always get that kind of courtesy so I really appreciate it now. I even once had an editor completely rewrite an article of mine (and do it very badly!) and leave my name on it. I will never forget a phrase she inserted that I would never have used if I had sat with a million monkeys at a million typewriters for a thousand years: “riffle through the piffle”. I get a shiver just thinking about it.
So House Proud will be back sometime. Maybe next week, maybe on schedule, the week after. Meantime, I’ll keep pecking them out in hopes they’ll become actual columns some day!