Mama Mia! thoughts on magazines and motherhood

• October
• 29

3:48 pm Australian authors, Chit-chat, Magazines, Mums, Reading, Writing

I’ve just finished reading Mama Mia: a memoir of mistakes, magazines and motherhood by Aussie writer, blogger and former Cosmopolitan  editor Mia Freedman. 

Obviously, as a magazine junkie, editor, and mother myself, there was much I could relate to in its pages! I enjoyed the behind-the -scenes stories of Mia’s magazine career, from her days as lowly work experience girl at Cleo to Editor-in-Chief of Cosmo, Girlfriend and a couple of other titles. Nowadays, she has converted to the medium of the internet, with a blog which she says is ”exactly like producing my own magazine every single day, with no barrier between me and my audience”.

Her observations and experiences of the magazine industry not only inspired me, but I also learnt much. Here are just some quotes that particularly resonated with me:

“Edit for your readers, not for yourself.” (This was also a message that came through loud and clear at the editor’s conference I recently attended in Manila).

“My biggest challenge was finding a new way to tell old stories.” Seems I’m not alone when it comes to that … every year we need Christmas themed articles in Footprints and it is so hard to find something that has not been done to death!

“When there are too many drivers at the top, magazines quickly go off the rails and lose their voice. You can only have one vision if you want the magazine to be authentic. Editing by committee is a disaster.” Although we have a Team at Footprints that help with editorial, packaging and mailout, promotion, prayer etc, at the end of the day … there can be only one! (Now I sound like the Highlander!)

“An editor once told me ‘there’s no copyright on ideas’ and I’ve never forgotten that. Provided you did your own version, I saw nothing wrong with being ‘inspired’ by other sources …Editors get many of their best ideas from other magazines.” Too true!

But this book is so much more than just one woman’s climb up the career ladder. Mia shares from her heart, in particular her struggle to find that delicate balance between being a wife, mother, woman and worker.

Mia often talks on her blog about her “Smug” and “Crap” lists. Smug = the things you feel you have done well as a mother such as breastfeeding for twelve months or whatever; and Crap = the things you feel guilty for. In a perfect world, these two lists would balance each other out but the reality is that the crap usually far outweighs the smug!

In fact this week she asked what her readers are feeling smug and crap about right now – straight away I thought of how I roared at my kids a couple of nights ago. They came into my room and sat quietly beside me while I was trying to do some work on the computer, but before long they were arguing over the last chocolate chip cookie (I might add that they are 15 and 13 … do they ever grow out of this stage?!).  Although I asked them nicely to move on, it was only when I yelled and blew my top that they got the hint!

It was a lot harder to come up with something for the smug list … but I ended up realising that at least I ap0logised to them the next morning. As I lay in bed that night, I’d felt God convicting me that they had only wanted to be near me and have some of my attention (Footprints deadline? what deadline?!).

How about you? Care to share from your smug and crap list for this week?!