Tuesday, November 23, 2010

how to edit a magazine...

from The Atlantic's Twelve timeless rules for making a good publication... (in honor of their 153rd birthday) With technology, web, media revolutions all around us, some things don't change...

3. Don't over-edit.You will often estrange an author by too elaborate revision, and furthermore, take away from the magazine the variety of style that keeps it fresh

7. A sound editor never has a three-months' full supply in his cupboard. When you over-buy, you narrow your future choice...

11. Humor is precious and correspondingly hard to find. Most humor that reaches us is merely jocularity, and it is well to be jocular only when really funny.

Love number 3 (and if you are fortunate you have brilliant editors you trust who edit within an inch of the manuscript's life and make you look great as a result)

And number 7: true of writing... if you hoard your best material to use another time rather than at once, in this book, the one you're writing now, you end up with less. If you spend everything, use it all up, mysteriously the pantry fills up again...

Number 11: I think I like but it's giving me a little bit of a math headache because on the other hand I kind of don't know what it means

Posted via email from s@lly l-j

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