My golf game is improving thanks to deadline. I work on articles at the kitchen table, then go out and hit golf balls at selected targets. I work some more, then hit more balls. I’ve got four targets: a water spigot 35 yards away on the other side of our small pond, a tree 50 yards up the hill, a white pole I put in the ground on a flat spot 65 yards up the hill, and a small cedar tree 80 yards down the hill on the other side of the yard. I’m getting good at all of them. My goal is to play bogey golf.

Molly rolled in something dead so the boys had to shampoo her and hose her off. At the same time, we’ve got a feral cat, a skunk, and a raccoon all sneaking in the barn and eating the cat food, then trying their best to get at our chickens. We also suspect a rat is stealing chicken eggs. Our chicken enclosure is like a high security prison, but other defensive measures we’re taking include putting the cat food container into the garage so the raccoon can’t unscrew its top with his prehensile hands, then feeding the cats twice a day with only what they can eat. We’re also gathering the chicken eggs several times a day, plus setting a trap for the rat inside the chicken house. With luck the rat will be caught, and the coon, feral cat, and skunk will leave when they can’t get any free food for a couple of days. If the skunk goes under the house to have a litter, I’ll throw in a few moth balls to drive her away.

If that doesn’t work, it’s war!

Deadline is going fairly well. Lenie’s computer crashed yesterday, but we worked around it as most of the files for this issue are on what we call the “deadline machine.” Lorraine, Lenie, and I selected placement for all ads, have page numbers for all the articles, and are dealing with Don for a few more pieces of art. Things go together rapidly these last few days because so much preparation work has been done, principally by Lisa, during the previous two months. It’s like a big puzzle now, with me primarily responsible for fitting the pieces together. I like this part a lot.

It will be Lenie’s, Lisa’s, and Rhoda’s jobs now to finish up the details as I write my Note from the Publisher and My View columns. Lenie will handle the technical jobs: flowing ads and articles, tweaking headline fonts, creating filler ads to sell BHM books, laying out the cover with bullets (BIG IMPORTANT TASK), and making sure the pages look attractive and clean. The real burden at this point falls on Lenie because she has the computer skills and artistic vision to make things look right. (Funny, she never touched a computer before I met her; now she knows more than me.)

Rhoda will finish up proofing articles for Lenie. She’s turning into an excellent proofer with good wordsmithing skills, and I plan on expanding her responsibilities. This is a critical area. Too many word snafus and the magazine appears amateurish. Lisa will take care of everything else, including typing up a “pagelist” of instruction for how the printer should handle the several hundred files we will FedEx him Thursday. She has her eye on the future and will be examining what articles I pulled and what ones will fit into next issue, or a future issue.

The issue is superb, and that’s what counts. It will keep us in business.

So here we are on deadline again for the 107th time in 18 years. Drop dead day, which is when we must Fed-Ex the issue to the printer, is July 19. From now til then will be hectic.

Lisa has done a lot of the layout prep work on the articles, and both she and I have talked to various writers as they prepared their articles. I spent all day yesterday going over them, deciding which one will lead the issue, and whether or not the “mix” of articles is okay. I make a lot of important decisions at this point on how to play stuff in the issue, which articles still need art by Don Childers, what needs beefing up or cutting back. I often make a quick scan of suggested headlines and change some of them, or change their font size. I edit the articles that need a tweak, but leave most of the proofing and grammar correction to others. I look for the important stuff; a minor error in grammar is not as important as omitting a necessary ingredient to an article.

I’m very good at all this and fit into a day what a run-of-the-mill editor would take a week to accomplish. Experience and knowing what I want gives me the speed. When an article does need a good edit, I’m careful to leave the writer’s voice intact. This is important so the whole magazine doesn’t read like it was written by one person. Too many editors have a heavy hand when it comes to editing writers. They think their personal view of writing and grammar is everything. This is a weakness in an editor’s ego, I believe, or they are simply not skilled. If you have a good writer who knows his or her subject, let that writer alone to the greatest extent possible. If you have a writer who is strong on knowledge but a bit weak with his words, still edit him or her with care. People have their own voice, and that voice does not have to reflect your college professor’s English.

If you have a writer who is weak on knowledge, then we made a mistake buying the article. I generally kill a weak article, even if I had previously requested it from a writer and have already paid for it. You never know until you actually have the article in hand whether or not is is good enough. There are times, however, I have had to cancel a good article simply because it was off target for BHM’s audience. I’ve done this with my best writers. Very often it is my mistake by failing to give the writer the direction I wanted taken. Other times the writer makes an erroneous assumption about what the readers need to hear. In the end, I use my best judgment and I don’t let a writer’s sometimes sensitive ego influence my decisions. Some people think I am stubborn, or downright dictatorial. But that’s okay. When it comes to editorial content, BHM is not a democracy. Committee decisions don’t exist in my editorial office.

That said, I have a strong cadre of writers, many of whom run their own successful businesses. They are as determined and as qualified in their businesses as I am in mine. And I have a very good staff. Lisa Nourse is my right hand gal. She coordinates nearly everything in the office, including the entire staff, writers, and articles. By the time I get to the articles, she has organized them, set (layed out) many of them, and made critical suggestions about whether or not they are strong enough. We are on the phone several times a day, and emailing back and forth. She also works closely with the writers and with my daughter, Annie, our editor-at-large who has the artistic skill to lay out the key articles. Every successful magazine needs a Lisa.

I have yet to go into the office since our Midwest trip. I like working out of my home. When I’m tired of doing magazine work, I go out on the deck and hit golf balls into the woods. Lenie goes into the office every day, thank goodness. That’s another story for a future blog. She’s gold for BHM. Good thing I took that walk on the pier.

Launching this blog has to be one of the most frustratingly difficult things I have done in my life. It is a perfect example of the chasm that now exists in American society between an older generation like me who is not comfortable on the internet and a younger generation, like most of you who are now reading this blog, who are comfortable with it.

This blog is intended to help bring BHM into the 21st century. At age 63, I may not feel at home on this instantaneous-feedback medium, but I can see it represents the future of magazines, while a paper magazine such as I now publish will probably join other print relics of history before my lifetime ends. It’s all happening so damn fast!

Near as I can tell, about one-third of Backwoods Home Magazine’s print issue subscribers do not do the internet, and they likely never will. I feel for them. I empathize with them. I publish my magazine for them, and I go only grudgingly into this new medium because two-thirds of BHM’s print issue readership is as comfortable here as they are with the print issue. I have no choice unless I want to be left behind.

I am a hybrid, with one foot in the old print world and the other stepping lightly into the internet. Next month the internet will be even more revolutionary than it is today. And next year it will be unimaginably newer. I doubt society has ever been transformed so quickly, and so frequently.

But I have seen the future for a long time. That’s why I’ve worked with BHM’s webmaster, Oliver Del Signore, this past decade developing our large and well organized website, www.backwoodshome.com. And now I’ll hop aboard in a more personal way and try and give you a publisher’s personal view of what it’s like to found and direct a print issue magazine for 18 years, then transition to the internet over maybe another 18. I have a lot of insight, I think, but obviously I have a lot to learn with this new technology.

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