On behalf of the membership: Thank you, Lisa, for sharing your thoughts and experience with us!

About Lisa

Lisa Wogan has an extensive background in magazine and newspaper publishing. She is currently editor-in-chief at Adventure Media, publishers of in-flight magazines for Frontier and Midway Airlines as well as Healthy Answers, an alternative-health publication for doctors.

Formerly Lisa was the managing editor for Seattle magazine and Tacoma City Paper. She moved to Seattle in 1995 to get her MFA, taught creative writing at UW for three years, and continues to teach nonfiction writing for the UW Extension.

Before she moved to Seattle, she lived in New York, where she was a founding editor of the now-defunct Westchester Magazine. Her first gig as an editor was for an Acorn Press community weekly in Westchester, New York. She went on to launch another weekly for Acorn. She also lived for two winters in Casco, Maine, where she was the ghostwriter of Teton Tales, a nonfiction book about the early years of climber/outdoor educator Paul Petzoldt.

Lisa's talk

Lisa noted that when a publication is in transition—i.e., has just been bought by a new owner—it’s a good time for a freelancer to try to get his/her foot in the door, as the new owners will want to bring on new people who haven’t been involved with the previous owner.

Noting the paucity of training programs for editors, Lisa said the UW is starting a three-quarter program in editing.

She said it’s important to know yourself as an editor—what kind of editing do you do best? The kind of editing she does is primarily story editing, which is a good fit for her because while a novel feels overwhelming, she feels she can say (or help a writer say) something in 2,000 words. Also because (she says of herself) she is a medium line editor, a so-so copyeditor, and a terrible proofreader/speller.

Lisa works a lot with less experienced writers, and most of her writers need heavy editing, so she is a writer-editor. She spends a lot of time helping them develop the idea/angle for the story, with the idea being that when it comes back as a full-fledged story, it will be in better shape and she won't have to spend much time on it on that end. She gives her writers one chance to rewrite the story if that is necessary; then she’ll rewrite if further work is needed. 

Lisa went to the NYU Publishing Institute but, even so, found it hard to break into the New York magazine publishing world. She worked at CARE instead, writing direct mail pieces and getting “my best pay for the next 10 years.” She said it's important to recognize that there are different kinds of writing, from direct mail to nonfiction for Cosmopolitan to a more literary style of nonfiction for Harper’s.

Lisa then worked at a local daily paper in a small town, and she praised the experience highly. It’s a great training ground, she said. You have to work quickly under tight deadlines. And nowhere else will people read and care about what you write so closely, and nowhere else will what you write affect people’s lives so much. And they will not hesitate to give you immediate feedback when you mess up (which is inevitable)!

She then studied fiction, which she said was helpful in breaking her of the clichés and conventions of newspaper writing. She recommended that editors take a break and do something different every so often…it freshens you and makes you a better editor.

In looking at a piece, Lisa said she tries to recognize the value of what the writer has done. She makes a choice to emphasize what’s positive or successful in the piece rather than what isn’t there.

Editors need to be good readers and to always be learning. Especially copyeditors—it’s wonderful when they can make creative suggestions. Here's what Lisa likes about her magazine's excellent copyeditor:

Lisa noted some challenges of magazine editing, especially in-flight magazines, which is what she works on:

She also noted what she likes about it:

Question-and-answer period

Are magazines a growth industry?

Lisa said there will always be new magazines as long as there is money around, as they are often vanity publications to some degree—but any specific magazine often doesn’t last long.

Where are there good openings for editors?

Lisa recommended regional small-town papers—there’s room for you to move up.

Are simultaneous queries a good idea?

If an editor accepts your story idea and then is left without a story because you’ve already sold the idea to another publication, s/he may be mad and not work with you again. (However, it’s unlikely the same story idea would be picked up by two different publications.) To avoid this faux pas, David Williams recommended that if a publication accepts your story idea, you immediately email the others to whom you’ve sent the idea, letting them know it’s no longer available.

What makes a good query letter?

Three paragraphs:

1. What would the lede be?
2. How would you tell the story, and who would you interview?
3. Why are you the right person to write it?

Make it short. Editors are really busy; don’t waste their time. If directions say don’t call, don’t call. (On the other hand, in real life, nice pestering by writers does pay off.)

 —Sherri Schultz, notetaker

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