get promoted

A book of Spanish—> English poetry translation that I edited a year or two ago won an international prize. It’s well deserved, as the translator did a beautiful job. Here’s his response to my congratulatory note:

Thanks! More to the point, thanks for your superb work on and very cogent contributions to the book. I feel incredibly fortunate to have ended up in the hands of such a sensitive and skilled manuscript editor and terrific publishing team. It’s your recognition too!

My supervisor was very pleased when I shared this with her; it has doubtless gone into my file. Yay!

In our meeting just now, my supervisor told me she needed to apologize for a mistake that had awakened her in the middle of the night – putting down the wrong job title & classification for me. She explained that she’d gotten mixed up because the spreadsheet she had been sent didn’t include classifications, just salaries, & she had set my salary at a senior level back when I was hired. She is still working on getting me a promotion – this is a project of hers, not just mine. And she had nothing but praise for the quality of my work.

So I’m slightly disappointed but not at all surprised. I do feel appreciated/valued, & hopefully next year, as the economy improves, there will be a promotion & a bit of a raise as well!

My supervisor just gave me my annual evaluation form, & on my job title she has added “senior”! Does this mean that at my meeting with her tomorrow she’ll be letting me know that I’m being promoted??! Or did she do this absent-mindedly because a number of the other editors she supervises (who have been here much longer than I) are senior & she was filling out all our forms at once?

I won’t bring it up with her till tomorrow, but I’ll post here so my 43T pals can be on tenterhooks with me! :-)

Soon I’ll be starting the editing of my assigned sections of the 16th ed. of the big orange editors’ bible, our top-selling classic publication. I get to edit the mongo chapter on grammar, because I’m “the only one of us who likes grammar.” (I also have punctuation, which I love, & copyrights/permissions, which it will be good to learn more about.) This assignment feels like a promotion in itself – it’s fun to think back on my first editing job, where I became familiar with the orange tome, & to imagine how proud I would have felt if I’d been told that one day I would be one of its editors!

Actual job-title change or supervisor error? Tune in tomorrow to find out! Heh.

this is on hold for the time being. Our company isn’t suffering quite as much from the economic crisis as others are – or perhaps it’s simply that we’re buffered by the larger institution. For the time being, though, our belt-tightening includes a hiring & wage freeze. If my supervisor did find some way to justify promoting me, I’m sure it would not involve a pay raise!

I am working to reduce expenses associated with my own work, & in the last week I avoided FedEx charges by sending material to authors electronically – a departure from normal practice here. Just now I had a chance to tell my supervisor about it, & she is enthusiastic about recommending this to other editors in the department. So I’m doing my bit.

The main point right now is to be indispensable so that I don’t LOSE my job.

Dear Ruth,

I wonder if you can appreciate how wonderful it is to experience the hand of a master on my book! Thanks, and thanks again. My words here do not communicate adequately!

All best and deepest gratitude!
Author

His words communicate adequately enough to make my supervisor & me very happy. Heh.

Sometime in early July, take time to review communications from authors, find appreciative comments about my work, and send them to my boss. She will not just put them in my file but also circulate them to the director & the editorial directors. At my annual review she encouraged me to do this. It will help make the case for my irreplaceability :-) & for promoting me. And more broadly, such evidences of happy author-editor relationships are used in the process of courting desirable new authors: “These are the kinds of things other authors have said about our editors.”

I’ve never gotten a better appreciation than this one I cherish from years ago: “You make me sound more like myself.”

But I do have some recent ones that are worth passing on. I’m putting a reminder about this on my electronic calendar.

(well, at my first annual review, 6 mos. after I started working here), I brought this up with my supervisor. I asked what I would need to do to qualify for “senior editor” status. She said I was on track & it requires full familiarity with the way things are done here.

This year at my review (in April), she brought it up, saying that I do have the expertise, as she has been able to entrust some very complicated projects to me. She explained that the larger institution’s rules require managers to be able to thoroughly justify promotions, especially when they don’t involve a job that is publicly posted. She made no promises but gave me to understand that she was considering when best to make the case.

Today in our dept. meeting it was announced that my colleague who was most recently promoted will be departing from us, as her husband has been offered a tenure-track position in another state. She will instantly rise to the top of our freelancer list! I’m sad for our dept.; it’s always a challenge to find truly competent editors, even though 150 may apply for a job that is posted publicly for just a week or two. But I’m happy for her family.

And I’m pretty sure that this bodes well for my prospects.