Dear Readers:

Posted by Kate A. in Editors.

I’m one of those people who doesn’t know when to stop. I’m in dissertation territory of my master’s degree now, and about two months ago, faced with the prospect of having some free time when the semester was over, I decided, ‘Hey, starting a magazine sounds like a good plan!’

Well, it was. But MAN, no one ever tells you how hard it is to start a magazine. I imagine that’s because not many people are certifiably out of their minds. But seriously. I knew this would be a challenge, I just had no idea of the scope of it. New things that need attention pop up literally every five minutes. I’m an organized person, but I’m finding that even my usually very tidy brain can’t keep up.

This has been an exercise in patience with myself. I have to keep reminding myself that things don’t have to be perfect to work. Not at first, anyway. And I’ve got some seriously awesome people working on Lucy with me. If it wasn’t for Sara, this magazine wouldn’t even have a name, let alone content. And Lindsay has been my second set of eyes on the design front. All the other writers, contributors and editors have really stepped up and done a lot of work for free, just because they wanted to. This is nothing short of amazing to me. I never imagined so many people would be interested in starting a little magazine.

I figure a letter from the editor is supposed to be some sort of insight into life or writing or something like that, but that’s not what you’re going to get here. Maybe next month. At this point, I’m furiously pounding this out right before emailing everyone to say we’ve officially gone live. I’ve spent the past 48 hours doing bug fixes, editing photos, and inputting various codes and snippets of text to get this thing ready for the public. I want this to look good. Not just for me, but for the people who gave up their time to write and edit.

When I started thinking about this project, I figured it would be a great way for me to stay in touch with my friends back home, and it has been. I live in Scotland now because it’s where I love to be, but I’m awful at keeping up on emails and correspondence in general. Lucy has made me pay attention to my inbox like never before. I’ve had Skype conferences and Google chat conversations that have been almost ongoing. And it’s fantastic.

Moving to another country so soon after leaving college was what I wanted, but it was a big strain on my personal relationships. Being so far away from people can be extremely alienating, regardless of the technology that connects us all. With Lucy, I found something that excited the people I wanted to stay in touch with most. My hope is that it will excite readers just as much. There aren’t enough honest voices in women’s publications, and there’s no excuse for us to be stuck with magazines that are a bit of fluff when we have the internet to do and say whatever we want for free.

I hope you’ll enjoy Lucy as much as I’ve enjoyed creating it with all of these excellent people, and I hope you’ll tell us what you like about it and what we can add or make better.

Thanks for reading,

Kate

Editors |