The magazine is out!
I haven't blogged about editing much lately. It is largely because I haven't done much of editing recently :D
Last night was the Pangea Press feminist magazine launch party! Omg, I felt like I have graduated something, especially when the founder gave us (the 3 people team) each a rose, a copy of the mag, and a little boob vase. (There might be pics later.) I hadn't felt this lost and pleased at the same time for a while. But it also felt like the 6 months of back an forth, working with writers, chasing them down, looking up words, debating Oxford commas, etc. actually meant something. All of it suddenly has value. An outcome. A printed stack of paper with so many stories, emotions, analytical pieces, poems, it is no longer just something arbitrary that I spent time on. It is real.
When I heard the writers reading out their pieces, I kept smiling like a crazy person, because I still have all of those pieces in my head. I knew which parts we worked on together, which sentences we argued about, the progresses made and agreements reached. I remember the discussions about titles, and reasoning why certain things should be different. Not that I don't smile like a crazy person on other occasions, but this one got me differently.
I had never before held in my hands, and heard with my ears the pieces that I had been a part of. Someone else's stories that I had taken apart, prodded, and most of all - cared for.
The first issue is out. I can exhale and start making notes on how to do the next one better :D
Be brave, who knows what will happen :)