The Secret to Great Writing and Editing – From a Southerner, No Less

I learned the secret to great writing and editing during a visit to Mississippi this week; and I feel compelled to share.

I was attending a two-day event staged by friend Samir Husni – known by thousands of people around the world as Mr. Magazine – on the future of magazine publishing. Samir is a professor at the University of Mississippi in Oxford. He is beloved by his students, his former students and by magazine professionals around the world.

I’m not making this up. Samir, who is from Lebanon, has spent his entire life studying magazines. It would be more accurate to say he has spent his entire life breathing, eating and otherwise  consuming nearly every modern magazine that’s ever been published. In addition to teaching, he consults for some of the biggest magazine publishers in the world, including Morris Communications.

At the opening reception and dinner Wednesday night, Sid Evans, group editor for Time Inc., keynoted: What Southerners can Teach the World about Media.

There was no way I was going to miss that. What in the world could southerners teach the rest of us that would be different from what the rest of us could teach the rest of us about media? That’s what I was thinking on the plane on the way out to Oxford.

Sid, who chiefly edits Southern Living magazine out of Birmingham, presented 7 things every magazine should do to be great. His list was simple, elegant and somewhat unexpected. His presentation was in perfect pitch. He was riveting. Soulful. I have memorized his list, and as a sometimes writer, I don’t think I will forget it.

You may not be a magazine editor, but as a writer, or editor of whatever, I think Sid’s list would nonetheless apply. Here it is – finally:

1. Create a sense of place. A proud place. The context for No. 1 goes back to the 60s, Sid said. The South didn’t feel good about itself, back then. Race riots, water cannons, George Wallace, TV cameras making the entire region look bad. That’s when Southern Living was born. Its purpose was to help people in the South feel better about themselves. It worked. Southern Living is the 7th largest mag in the country.

2. Put food everywhere in your magazine (or writing). Eating is something we all do and love to do. It’s immersive in every way. Celebrate it unceasingly with photos, stories, delicious writing.

3. Nostalgia. People rarely live in the present. Nostalgia drives so many moments in our lives. Find a way to be nostalgic with your readers. Make the nostalgia powerful, painful, poignant, personal. Make it joyful. Tie it to hope. Hope drives everything in our lives.

4. “Have a drink with your readers.” The quotations are intentional. It’s the phrase Sid used and I can’t make it better. In Southern Living, you will frequently find rich photos of people at an event holding up their wine or bourbon glasses in celebration of something. Sid paused on the bourbon. It’s the only American spirit, he said. Why wouldn’t you celebrate it? Southerners do all the time. There was loud whoop in the back of the room. Must have been a bourbon lover. Okay, it was me!

5. Never underestimate the power of a good story. He said story. I think he meant yarn. This one seemed obvious to me. So I won’t dwell on it.

6. Find the right heroes. And celebrate them all the time. People need heroes. They need hope. They need to identify with heroes. You don’t need to be a magazine editor to get this. It should be staple for every writer and editor. Heroes make us cry. They make us yearn. We are nothing without them.

7. Celebrate your readers. Bring them into the action. Again, you might think this applies only to magazine editors. It doesn’t. Imagine you are writing a novel. Now think about the people who are reading it. How can you bring them in? Well, you can think about the fact that they need heroes. Populate your pages with them. You must know they love food and drink. Lavish your pages with them. You know they identify with their homes. Make them feel a good home in a good place.

Those are the Seven. Sid dropped in an 8th for measure:

“Be soulful,” he said.

Later, at the conference, editors talked about the soulfulness thing a lot. It brought sadness. The editors complained that it was hard in this economic environment to be soulful. Couldn’t do it anymore. Job losses; pay cuts, fewer pages; no more research assistants. Even worse.

I argued: “No matter, go to work everyday and be soulful, regardless of the challenge. You will make up for all the pain and losses with your soul. You will inspire your remaining employees and coworkers to be soulful themselves. The pain will be much easier to tolerate.” Easy for me to say, right?

(Kim and I went to the gym this morning. Afterwards, we walked through a festival in downtown North Augusta. This fabulous little town puts on a festival for any occasion (I think this one had to do with Halloween). We had lunch on a sidewalk. Think perfect pork ribs, homemade barbeque beans and slaw. The ribs were done in a beast of a smoker, fired by old gnarled oak. Imagine the pork smoke blowing through the festival on a cool and shiny fall day. Heaven!)

BTW, that was me trying to do the food and place thing in my writing.