I could use some more work to do.

The winter holiday season is the only time we tend to receive as few letters to the editor as are coming in right now. It’s normal for the early summer months to see a drought like this, but normal doesn’t always mean pleasant, for me or for hard-core readers who still pay attention to the news as the beautiful and mild outdoors beckons.

When I started this job in late September 2006, I measured success by how close I came to fitting our pending e-mails list (by which medium we receive the lion’s share of letters) in its entirety on my 19-inch work computer screen. Now I realize how nervous my co-workers must have been about a new hire jumping into the opinion waters at that moment, because leading up to the general election is the customary flood season for letters.

Thus, for the first six weeks on this job, I felt like an out-of-towner would have felt visiting the Spokane Falls about three weeks ago: overwhelmed in a good way. After the first Tuesday of November, the workload ebbed to a moderate steadiness. Now, the flow is a bit like the river in late July.

Of course, my job satisfaction is less important than how these conditions affect readers. I’m sure regular readers can tell that these days we rarely need to open up the whole Roundtable page to letters in order to accommodate the number we receive. More interesting than space and layout differences, though, are the qualitative differences in the letters section when there are fewer for us to choose from.

First, there may be an imbalance of topics. Many writers, possibly thwarted in their summer vacation plans, now busy themselves writing letters blaming Democrats, Republicans, environmentalists, oil companies, China, India and God for the price of gas. While I respect this topic as relevant and important to readers right now, if there were more letters on other topics available, oil letters probably wouldn’t make up the large proportion of published letters they seem to comprise now.

Also, more letters that fall into the gray borderlands of our letters policy guidelines may show up. For example, we generally avoid running thank-you notes, private event or organization plugs resembling advertisements, requests for donations, letters addressing emotional and controversial issues without express relevance to current events, and “open letters” to the president, Congress, that guy who cut you off in traffic yesterday, etc.

But if these decisions were always clear-cut, a computer would be doing my job. Daily, we receive letters that require an editorial judgment call on whether they are beyond the subjective pales of public interest and relevance we’ve established. When space is extremely limited, these questionable letters are usually the first to be eliminated, but our judgment is tested when deadlines are fast approaching and there’s a letter space to fill.

Finally, when there’s a low letters flow I have a heightened level of involvement in preparing the letters for publication. Since I have more time and less material to work with, I’m more likely to ask writers of letters that fall into the above gray areas for revisions to make their letters acceptable for publication. The rare editor’s note, of which we saw an example yesterday, might also appear to explain something a letter didn’t make clear.

To help you survive and thrive in these summer letters-page conditions, I’ve compiled a short quiz to test your summer letters savvy. Answers appear below.

1. The best thing you can do to prevent the letters section from saying the same things over and over is:

(A) Write a letter explaining why the topic is unworthy of letter-writing.

(B) Write a letter upbraiding the S-R for the clear bias shown in printing such drivel.

(C) Write a well-written letter about a topic that is more important than the hackneyed topic.

2. You just read a letter that you think is 200 words (or fewer) of tripe. You should respond by:

(A) Finding the writer in the phone book and sending him/her an anonymous note or voicemail rife with sarcasm.

(B) Writing a letter to the S-R calling the first writer an idiotic pawn of the devil or his partisan subordinates.

(C) Writing a letter explaining the evidence that the first letter is incorrect or poorly reasoned, including your source references within the text and/or in an appendix.

3. If you don’t get any response to your letter within a couple of business days, you should:

(A) E-mail it to all your friends, explaining that the S-R refused to print your letter for ideological reasons.

(B) Do nothing. The S-R wouldn’t want to print anything you’d have to say anyway.

(C) Review the letters policy to ensure your letter meets basic guidelines; if so, call 459-5428 to inquire whether it was received.

If you answered C to all of the above, you’re a pro. Have a good vacation; then, please, get back to work so I can do the same.