Seventeen magazine, where I never had an office and rarely visited, was the site of my apprenticeship; I learned how to write an essay there, just as I had learned how to write fiction at Sarah Lawrence College and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Whereas fiction was singularly mine —I would never have changed a short story to reflect an editor’s experience— nonfiction was collectively ours. I readjusted the slant of an article to satisfy the vision of various editors, or spiced up the action to meet the attention span of the readers. I saw my best paragraphs cut after everything was finished and agreed upon because the art department wanted more space for their illustration. I sliced a piece in half because an ad was suddenly dropped, and fewer advertising dollars meant fewer editorial pages. I was learning how to work for a magazine by shaping my writing, yes, but I was also shaping myself: it was my aim to be flexible and fast, the go-to girl.
— Ann Patchett, This Is the Story of a Happy Marriage