The importance of being on time

Recently I had cause to reflect on the reasons for strict deadlines for article submission to a magazine. It surprised me how many reasons I came up with from an editor's perspective:

• In order to pursue excellence, we need time to work, when work is rushed is when we are more likely to make errors.
• To help manage my workload as an editor who is also a mum, wife, and someone with a number of other roles.
• So I can look after my team members, especially my designer. If articles are submitted late, that puts extra stress on the editorial team to get everything done in a timely fashion.
• To be fair to writers 
• so that everyone has the same amount of time to do their work (like assignments for school or uni)
• so that editors can give sufficient time to each article and enable editors to interact with the authors over anything that needs clarifying or changing

There are probably other reasons that I'm not remembering right now, but to me, sticking to deadlines for submissions is a matter of respect. As one writers put it, "I just presume the deadline is there for a good reason, so I stick to it."

Packing magazines today.

Today I held the 2012 Spring issue of Japan Harvest in my hands for the first time. I think it looks pretty good, which is always a relief, after the hours of work that goes into each issue! I think we did a fairly good job of working to deadlines, though we still have improvements we could make. But I'm happy with the progress we're making.

The final step of a magazine production process is getting it sent out. The interesting part of a small magazine for an editor is that you are often involved in almost every step of the journey of the magazine, so sending it out at the end is exciting as well as a bit scary! It is great to hold it in your hands and a little nerve wrecking as others look it over, wondering what they'll think. 

But for now, the deadlines for the summer issue are coming up fast. And that in itself is an odd thing, because people will see the Spring issue this week for the first time and maybe even say something to me about it—however in my mind this issue is done and gone. Even old. How many times have I read each article? Too many. I've already moved onto the next issue!