Wake up every day and scour the internet

Military stories are the 1%. Literally. The 1%. That’s it. No matter how many times you look at the numbers, you don’t have anything else to run with. This means, that during my tenure as Editor of “The Official Magazine of Veterans,” I’m going to alienate a large percentage of those who served with my solicitous emails asking for stories and photos. This also means that I spend an embarrassing amount of my day scouring Reddit, RallyPoint, Facebook and Twitter for people who fit in one of two categories, or hopefully both:

1. Did something really cool in the military

2. Did something really cool after the military

Now here’s where the backlash will come. “We all did something cool in the military. After all, we were in the military.” Yes! We all did! But let’s think about how interesting an editorial piece would be on someone who saw a tank once or worked a desk job, versus someone who was a machine gunner or a nuclear specialist that worked on ordinance. The public would rather hear from the second option. It’s sad, but true.

When the deadline is near, you’ll also find me sending ridiculous follow-up emails to interview subjects or story submitting writers pleading with them to please submit on time and fill out the associated release. In real panic, sometimes I also comb the internet for back-up stories should one fall through. This is no cakewalk. People get annoyed when you ask them a lot of questions.

Look for good submissions

After I’m done irritating the community, I spend a lot of time rejecting grammatically horrible submissions with blurry photos. PR agents, readers, writers, storytellers, lawyers, teachers, historians, authors, businessmen, poets, photographers, etc. No profession is exempt, really.

I get submissions, sometimes a hundred a week via different social media channels, verbal propositions, and email. Some of them are totally irrelevant to what we write about. Some include photos that are just not suited for print in any media source (gore, nudity, not in focus, not relevant, pixelated, low resolution, bad lighting, etc). Some are just so terribly misspelled and inconclusive that they sound like those emails Nigerian Princes send you when your long lost Aunt has died. I sift through them all looking for a gem, and I often find one. It’s just the weeding and tossing of seemingly great pitches from hired PR help that cause drama when it’s time for the deadline.

Run with it, and freak out inside

After I’ve made a timeline, which, at the end of the cycle looks like a high school girl’s notebook, I partner up with the Art Director to make things visual. He spends all week ripping his hair out and trying to lay out the designs while I throw out suggestions and we take turns picking lunch places. I then figure out that even though I’ve read the same article for spelling and grammar like 20 times, it still has a typo in it and I’m grouchy about the headline.

At this point, there’s always that one straggling contributor that hasn’t submitted their piece and I begin shamelessly complaining about it in my head. The last day is the two of us trying to figure out how the last working page should look and neither of us is artistically pleased because we’re both really hard on ourselves. The magazine goes to print, and I immediately begin brainstorming the next issue.

Breathe

Someone wise told me to “stop looking up, and pause to look around.” Well okay, it was my Mom. She’s wise beyond her years. I spend too much time internally panicking over tiny details and I don’t take enough time to look around and appreciate that I am 25 years old and I’m running my own magazine. It’s a process; which is sometimes very stressful. Even now, I’m wondering if my Writing Professor, Mr. Harrell, is reading this. And if he hates all my commas and semicolons and is rewriting this in his head. Hi Prof! I’m not changing any of it.

At the end of the day, although the process is daunting and I’m asking people to tell their stories, I remember that it’s a blessing to be a part of it. Then I hope there isn’t too much fact checking involved. :)