Advice from the EIC

An hour ago, I started a post that was going to address the LitG thing on a point-by-point basis... what we should take away from each of the notes and whether it would be worth acting on them and whatever. But since I had to take the dog for a walk anyway, I set the post aside and was able to really put some thought into things without any real distractions.

And I think I have a semblance of a game-plan for next week. I'll start work on it tonight, but probably won't finish it until tomorrow morning.

Until then, I'll just hit this overview of the LitG. He only has one "green" (i.e. reasonably confirmed) story: BigMoney. And we already knew about that from Tom. Everything else is amber (i.e. "the likelihood isn't set") or red (i.e. "I can't quite bring myself to believe it"). I'll also repost part of his introduction from every LitG to help put things in perspective: "Lying In The Gutters is for your entertainment. Neither Fair Nor Balanced."

So, a call to Weinberg may be in order, but don't grovel about it. Say you're sorry, and you're happy to let him write the stories. Everything else is essentially just a distraction.

This evening's been great for me because I've been able to step back for the first time to see where we're at. I'll admit that I was concerned this morning when I saw the numbers Tom posted (in part because I looked at the total and forgot that Amazing didn't ship). But looking at things from a 20,000 foot view, it looks to me like we're on the right path. Not that it's going to be easy, mind you, but I think there's a decent chance that we can just about nail that 504,000 mark. We just need to concentrate and keep our focus.

Okay, that's my pep talk for the week. Check back tomorrow for our master plan.