Something from Nothing

“Give me something to work with — even something raw and messy — and I can make it shine,” one of our top editors often says. “Just don’t ask me to create something from nothing.”

If you were to map out the process that creates this magazine, most of the map would encompass tasks where that “something” already exists. There might be a continent for the people who polish text or trim it to fit a word count. Another continent would house the people checking spelling and grammar, verifying dates, or putting words in italics. Then you’d have the colorful continent where creative artists add in images and graphic motifs, and figure out just the right typography for the title. A very neat and organized land mass would be reserved for the people assigning page numbers to articles or verifying closed files with the printer.

But beyond those clearly demarcated tasks, there’s the yawning blue deep — a section of the map that looms both mysterious and terrifying. It’s the territory of “yesh mei’ayin,” creating something from nothing. Unlike the other tasks — which utilize considerable skill and talent to process existing material — this one utilizes humility and desperation to admit the limits of our talent and skill.

Creating something from nothing means sitting around a table or in front of a screen, knowing you have to fill so many pages of a magazine, and trying to figure out how to do that without repeating last week’s or last year’s (or the year before that’s) content. It can be thrilling, but more often it’s very intimidating.