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Copyright © 2010 Andrea Langworthy
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My house is full of magazines. Baskets, shelves, and tables overflow with back issues I plan to read some day. Yoga magazines with articles about simplification and meditation. Literary magazines with short stories I bought for inspiration. Weeklies with gossip gone stale.
Why I don’t read them right away is a mystery. Why wait? For the snowstorm when the electricity fails so I can recapture my youth reading under the covers with a flashlight? Or the day I come down with the crud and want something to flip through? If so, there’s a stack of magazines on the nightstand, even one that rates our state’s top docs.
Do you remember Mad about You, the television comedy about a young married couple living in New York City? In one hilarious episode, they decided to do something abut the magazines taking over their apartment. Every scene, no matter what else they were doing, their heads were buried in magazines. Mine should be, too.
I’ve tried to put copies in the recycling bin or have my husband spread them around the customer area of his workplace. I remove them from their holding places only to have each one’s cover scream, “Read this article! It will change your life!” Back they go to be read on a future day. But now that I am writing a magazine article myself, the unread editions gathered around my house have begun to nag me.
I took a free-lance writing course nearly two years ago. The instructor invited an editor from a local magazine to address the group. Since then, a member of the class, a woman I’ve stayed in contact with, has written several articles for that same publication. For some reason, I wanted to get into the game and sent a letter to the editor with a story idea. When I didn’t hear from her, I bugged her. More than once.
When I received a contract from her, she included some ideas for resources. Just the word, “Resources,” gave it more importance than I had originally imagined. What I had pictured as a heart-warming little story written off the top of my head, became something that needed resources—facts, figures, quotes, documentation—all requiring a deeper level of thinking than I’m used to. I had three months to get my stuff together.
A deadline is a deadline, though, and it hangs over your head whether it’s tomorrow or 90 days in the future. Maybe it’s the first part of the word: dead. With that in mind, I conducted interviews, read studies, made phone calls, and emailed experts. With so much time and hard work invested in this article, I’ve started to look at my masses of magazines with a more appreciative eye. Now that I know what goes into writing a feature, I can no longer walk past these publications without feeling respectful. And guilty. I hang my head and whisper a promise to return and read each and every word between their covers—as soon as I meet my deadline.
I’ve been so stressed about the article, trying to get it just right, that I may be coming down with some sort of bug. Hopefully, it won’t hit me until I’ve pressed the “Send” button on the computer and my article is safely in the editor’s hands. Once I’ve met my deadline, I can justify taking it easy. I’ll make good on my pledge to read each and every magazine from cover to cover, starting with articles about pampering myself. A pot of tea, a blankie, lots of chocolate…guilt can be a good thing.