"There is a certain mathematics in dealing with editors. If you give an editor one idea for an article, he is going to reject it. If you give him ten ideas, he is going to be so overwhelmed by the bounty that he is going to reject all ten. But if you give him three ideas he is going to turn down two and accept one." — Rex Lardner, writing in the Saturday Review in 1971. Presumably the idea for that article was one of three he'd submitted to Norman Cousins or another editor there.
Lardner was a longtime author and magazine freelancer with a specialty in golf and other sports. His 1998 New York Times obituary noted that, "A man for whom writing came easy, Mr. Lardner worked out an agreeable regimen for himself. Getting up early to work out with weights in his basement (he believed in preparation), he would then play tennis, come home to type for a while before lunch and, perhaps after a nap, play some more tennis followed by more typing, dinner and still more typing."
He was also a nephew of the writer Ring Lardner, who once offered this advice for dealing with editors.