Dear Prudence,
I applied for a job as a contributing writer for a website and ended up getting it—but on a volunteer basis. My relationship with my editor went well at first. Then one day I pitched her an idea, she accepted it, and I turned in a completed article. She said she’d respond with notes “hopefully” within a week. She responded two weeks later (which was actually fine) asking me to change the framing, which would mean starting over from scratch. I was frustrated and wish she’d said as much when I pitched the idea in the first place. I also don’t want to put in extra work when I’m not even getting paid for it. I have a separate day job and work for this site on nights and weekends. Later I saw they published an article with a similar framing but from another writer. I’d have felt fine if my editor had said my writing wasn’t meeting their standards, or asked me to pitch something else because another writer was already covering it. But she sent my piece back with a few comments, as if she were only recommending little tweaks, instead of asking me to rewrite the whole thing. I think she could have handled it better. Or am I overreacting?
—A Volunteer’s Worth