Journal contents

[Susan Kline]

At 07:44 AM 6/6/2002 -0400, Clyde wrote:
>but if I were asked
>to write an article for the Journal I would think long and hard before
>saying yes.  It would appear like a mountain to me.


It appeared like a mountain to me, but luckily after writing to pianotech
for a few months, I realized that scaling mountains was within my
reach. Steve Brady was an angel, asking me to write for the Journal.
Still, the only way I could do it was to think to myself, "what do
I know enough about that I can talk about it for 4,000 tuners and
feel any likelihood of being right?" I ended up with some very
strange topics, things like making bench covers and the uses of ginger
tea, because they were what I had actually done. Steve was very
excited when I sent him about a dozen of these weird ideas -- "a lot
of this stuff has never been in the Journal before!"

If one applies this "have I done it, and am I sure of my facts?"
litmus test to topics (not to mention, "is it useful?" and "has
it been in the Journal over and over already?"), the number of
people who are available to write sadly lessens. Then one must
consider that many people are not born writers, and that some
of the most knowledgeable are also the busiest. We're lucky to
end up with 10 or 15 good writers, let alone 400!

The kind of articles which we all (I believe) crave, the ones
full of practical everyday ways of doing things which we didn't
know how to do before, can only be written by people with a
knack for discovery and improvisation. My two-glue trick is an
example. It's my best discovery. I would love to come up with
a couple of dozen other neat things which no one else has noticed
or used before, but it's not all that easy to do, especially if
one applies the "first, do no harm" test to it. One must consider
what all the readers will make of a technique, and what damage might
result if they jump to erroneous conclusions.

Personally, I love the articles I've been seeing in the Journal,
and I know they don't grow on trees, just waiting to be picked
by the bushel. Like a television station, a magazine is an endless
gaping maw, with an unending hunger for material.

Not that I mind Clair bringing up the matter. Maybe we can find
some other information-mines, and maybe talking about the Journal
will bring forward a few more people ready to write. If someone
has something which they really want to say, but has trouble
with the mechanics of writing, I'm a pretty decent pre-copy-editor,
and am willing to offer my observations by email.

Susan