So, I have spent a lot of time over the summer thinking about what I am going to talk about in the blog this year. Last year I wrote as we were going through things so you might notice a sort of progression of the ideas. This year there may be a progression in the end, but I actually worked on a list of topics for the year. They may or may not follow the year’s progression. I hope to get these posts out around the time that you might need them.
I also want to encourage you, the reader, to interact with the blog. I look forward to seeing comments posted from readers. I had one person, who I have never met, post comments and start a discussion in the blog. I can’t even describe how exciting it was. It really encouraged me to keep up with this project. I want more encouragement. Won’t you please help me out.
So on that note I am going to ask you to contribute to the first official post of the year.
In one of the first posts to this blog dealt with the organization of a literary magazine staff (http://litmagcreation.blogspot.com/2007/09/organization.html). Boy, when I look back over it I see that there isn’t a lot there. So it’s a good thing that I start with this again. The organization of your staff may be the most helpful thing for a successful magazine. If no one knows what anyone else is doing then nothing gets done. The question that I have been wrestling with is, “Is there such a thing as too much organization?”
We all know that there is definitely such a thing as not enough organization. A lot of us deal with this in our everyday lives. Little or no organization leads to so many problems that it is often enough to bring down an organization, group, or even a publication. Nothing gets done and things are rushed. The details that refine a magazine are lost in the mix. This is a sure way to turn out a mediocre publication. My concern is that I, personally, may fixate too much on the organization of the staff and not on what the magazine needs. This stems from the fact that I can spend hours developing a staff organization, but that certainly doesn’t guarantee that the jobs will be performed to expectation. As an adviser, I should be concerned with keeping the structure there, but I have found that by the end of the publication cycle for the year, the staff miraculously dwindles to a handful doing the work. This makes me think that we should whittle the staff down to the core of people that we are left with at the end of the year. This is where the idea of “too much organization“ comes from. I hate to see members get positions in on the staff, but not take initiative to get their part of the job done.
This is the dilemma that I am going to pose to my co-adviser as well as the editor-in-chief for the coming year. How can we more effectively run the magazine? This is where you, the reader, comes in. I would like to know how you organize your staff? How do you get people to do what they sign on for?
