Words and More Words (Edward Southerland)

I have worked on this magazine since Dan Acree started it about three years ago. It was a nights-and-weekends thing shoehorned in between eight hours a day at the Herald Democrat and whatever else was going on, until last month. With the increased publication schedule—with this issue Texoma Living! is now a bimonthly—that allotment of time was not feasible.

I learned a lot in those three years, and I expect the education will continue now that I come to work each morning to a different office and a different environment. At the newspaper, I worked alone in a crowd. There were a dozen other writers and editors in the newsroom, with people coming and going, talking, laughing and sometimes arguing all the time, and the screeching static of the police scanner was a constant undertone to everything. In a lot of ways, the experience replicated the obligatory set of a newspaper in a black-and-white movie, except that none of the reporters kept a bottle of bourbon in the bottom drawer. Or at least if they did, they never offered me a drink.

Because I wrote features and columns, I was not particularly concerned with the breaking news or the ins and out of the ins and outs struggling for position in local governments and businesses. Much of the time, I sat in front of the computer with my back to the door, so I didn’t even see who came in.

Most mornings, I would fire up the Mac and disappear into the ether of the Internet and the billions of words flying around the world on a wave of electrons. That last part may be more poetic than accurate, but I never was that tech savvy. Since I did not write many news-driven stories, I had to come up with the ideas for the pieces I did and the columns I wrote. I liked that. Early on, after spending what seemed like a week or so at a two-hour session of a small-town city council meeting, I decided that I would rather make it up than report it.

The Internet was the source of many of those ideas, and so was getting out and looking. Tom Peters, the 90s management guru who had several bestselling books, championed managing by “walking around,” getting out of the office and finding out what was happening on the factory floor. Adopting his ideas to my situation, I sometimes practiced writing by “driving around.” I would get in the car and ride around Sherman and Denison, looking for ideas and inspiration. They are out there, and sometimes you find them and sometimes they find you.

When I would start to translate the ideas into words on a page, I would slip into that focus that shuts out the distractions with a wrapping of mental insulation. Sometimes the words flowed; sometimes they had to be dragged out, although usually, if you could get the piece started, it would get easier as you went along. When I was finished, and the story marked “to be edited,” I would move on.

Things have changed. Now there is always something else to do, rework a story from a writer who missed the “pronouns and their antecedents” day in English class, send an e-mail asking why a story that was due two days ago hasn’t arrived, or try to find a photographer to shoot a woman on a horse at a castle. That last one is real. You’ll probably see the results in July.

Now, instead of working alone in a crowd, I am working with a crowd, and the alone parts seem few indeed. I think it will get easier as we try new procedures, see them come up wanting and then try another one.

Three years ago, when Dan asked me if I’d like to take on editing this magazine, I had the good sense to say, “Sure. When do I get paid?” rather than the more realistic, “I don’t know how to do that.” Bravado overcame reality, but in truth, I didn’t know how to do it.

I went home, pulled a book entitled Genius in Disguise: Harold Ross of the New Yorker, by Thomas Kunkel, off the shelf, and read about the man who founded and edited “the best magazine in the world, maybe the best magazine ever,” for the first three decades of its existence. Before I moved into my office at Texoma Living! I found a photograph of Ross and put it in a frame, and now it hangs on the wall above my desk. Hey, we might as well shoot for the top.