So much work goes into disposable writing

Often, on the last day or two before an issue of Mascara shipped to the printer, Liz found herself in extremely frequent contact with her editor: A sentence needed to be added to reflect that the actress Liz had profiled had just entered rehab, or that the member of the women's national soccer team was now pregnant; the addition sentence meant that an equivalent number of words elsewhere in the article needed to be cut. Either in person in the office of Mascara or by text, email, or phone, Liz and her editor would communicate constantly, in an increasingly exhausted and loopy shorthand. And though by the time the article closed, Liz felt utterly sick of whatever it was about—few readers, she believed, had any idea of the amount of work that went into the casual reading experience they enjoyed while riding the subway or taking a bath—when it was all finished, Liz rather missed her editor and their urgent and knowing exchanges.

Curis Sittenfeld, Eligible (New York: Random House, 2016), p. 267