I’m fascinated by magazines. I love the glossy pages, all the ads and pictures, and the words! Oh the words! But you want to know what I really love?
What it takes to go to press!
Or at least my perception of it. I fully admit that I am limited in my perception by how the media portrays publishing…more specifically fashion publishing. My two major sources are The Devil Wear’s Prada and Ugly Betty. We’re in the middle of a publishing “crisis” and most of us have extreme examples of magazine publishing in our heads.*
No wonder people say we don’t have a grip on reality.
A few weeks ago I got a little tour of the Mansueto publishing offices in NYC. Fast Company and Inc. are housed there, with large open spaces, glass meeting rooms, and lots of writers sitting in pretty rows. They were in the final stages of getting issues to press, so I would have assumed that it would be a chaotic atmosphere with papers flying, stilettos running, and people yelling, “Get this to layout!”
It was dead quiet.
I actually was afraid to speak. I was glad that the shoes I wore were not clackers. You could feel the air was filled with concentration and focus. Not in a stressed-out-the-boss-is-here-don’t-look-up way, but in a we’re-bursting-with-creativity-and-channeling-it-to-awesomeness way.
This could have been an anomaly. Maybe on every other day it’s crazy, and I just happened to stop in when it was unusually quiet. What I noticed, though, was that emergencies seemed to be handled calmly. No one was screaming down the hall. There were no fires for the sake of fires.
Pages were lined up on tables, and you could see the planning and preparation that had gone into the issue. Even if there was a last minute addition, you knew that someone would get the copy, adjust the layout, and it would all be ok.
If this is publishing Zen, where can I get some?
As bloggers, journalists, or writers, we’d all love some Zen to the creative process. Sure, fire and passion get us going, but did you ever notice when you’re really “on” that the world disappears? It’s you and the clicking of the keys (or scratching of the pen).
This is something that I think all of us are looking for. You don’t need to be a magazine exec to find it. And that’s the beauty of publishing Zen.
Do you find Zen when you’re producing content? What are other perceptions of the publishing world? Where else to you find Zen in your work life?
Photo credit (and not the actual Mansueto offices).
*I say “crisis” because every time someone says that, I just think of the song “Video Killed the Radio Star.” It’s not about dying but adapting.
I LOVE getting into a good writing zen! I’ve been a managing editor, copy editor, writer, etc., etc. during my career and really enjoy all of it. The best part is when you look back over what you have written and say, ” I wrote that?! Cool! Where did that come from???” almost like you were having an out-of-body experience.
Best advice I can give is that if you have to force the words to come, you haven’t found the right topic or angle. Once you get on the right track, the words should just flow 🙂
Niki, I know what you mean about wearing all the hats. I love to be in charge of making things happen, so my fav was always being the managing editor. I’ve also been doing a lot of thinking about when, where, how, and why I get inspired. If I know a bit more, then I can help adjust myself when inspiration won’t come. Like last night, I grabbed a bite to eat somewhere, and while I was waiting, I just pulled out the laptop. Hammered out three different posts, and I have ideas for more. Why this one spot was inspiring, I have no idea. But it could have been the simplicity of having my computer and no internet connection. It forced focus. Thanks!
I’m not sure I can help with finding workplace zen (I procrastinate an awful lot = no zen), but I work in publishing and I can tell you in our office when we’re about to go to press, it IS deadly quiet! It’s stressful too – for me anyway, and I can be more stressed than most – but I’ve learned that if there is a constant in publishing, it’s that there will be another issue next week/next month/next quarter. The machine doesn’t stop no matter what happens, so you just do your best, get it to the printer, and move on to the next thing.
Which is a sort of zen in and of itself I suppose.
Thanks Meg, it’s neat to hear that the quiet is something that’s not totally unusual. And the constant you mentioned about always being another issue is so true. That’s how I felt in sales: you work so hard one month only to turn around and do it again, over and over. While I prefer slightly longer-term thinking, I also know that seeing the fruits of your labors so regularly is nice.
Knowing the constants and what you can and cannot change is important to keeping some kind of sanity. You don’t spend mental energy on it and can move on. Thanks for the comment!
My job is in an open, newsroom-like, environment and I expected it to be noisy but it’s actually not. I bet my office resembled the publishing room your walked through.
.-= Dmbosstone´s last blog ..My First Networking Event (Or I How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Talk To Strangers) =-.
Our offices are really quiet too, and sometimes it seems as if no one is there. On the other hand, we’re a sales and delivery company: you don’t want people to be at their desks, you want them at client sites. Sometimes we need quiet, and I think, even if there’s noise around, as much as I can do to get focused I appreciate.
writing is talent,writing within morale is skills and enjoyable for reader
The experience you are describing has also been studied and written about extensively under the term ‘flow’. Initially described by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, it is the way we get immersed into some activity and loose sense of time and place, often as we find ourselves experiencing heightened sense of creativity and engagement. Google his name and the word ‘flow’, and you’ll be able to learn a lot about this psychological state.
Academics aside, I often find myself dividing my blogging activity between ‘incubation’ and ‘structural completion’, each with some elements of which you write — ‘incubation’ can extend over days or weeks as I mull over a topic, play with ideas, let the creativity and curiosity take me wherever it goes. Emotional and intellectual pull usually governs this. ‘Structural completion’ is the sometimes the work of assembling the blog, rewriting it when it doesn’t flow on paper, and on. The only Zen elements of this, for me at least, is the moment when I can see the whole thing come together, images, key messages, punctuation and white space. It’s like that moment when you realize you have said what you have to say and you are ready to move on from writing to dialogue.
.-= marc sokol´s last blog ..Why you aren’t hearing what your customers are trying to tell you: 3 actions you can begin today =-.
You know what? I once visited Reuters in London (one of the biggest news publishers in the world) and it, too, was quiet. Wait, that’s an understatement. Dead silent.
I was totally freaked out.
Who were these placid writers? Where was the productive chaos, the face-flushing passion, the sense of urgency? I mean, you’re breaking WORLD NEWS, aren’t you supposed to be a tiny bit excited?
Were these humans, or automatons?
I personally need a little chaos to work. In college, when i settled down to write a paper, I always made a furious mess– notes scattered at my feet, books tossed askew, my hair all disheveled — it actually made me enter what I perceive as the “zen mode”– when you delve so deeply in your work that the world melts away and time evaporates.
Publishers are so weird.
.-= Lauren McCabe´s last blog ..5 Must-Haves For a Recent Graduate’s Online Resume =-.
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