W

e have a funny rule in our office, a kind of Murphy’s law: the first Yom Tov piece to be submitted is the first piece to be bumped when we make a final grid.

It was a production manager who first noticed the pattern and put it into words, but over the years the humorous quip has often and regretfully been proven true.

We start planning our Yom Tov magazines months in advance (we’ve already started compiling our ideas list for Succos 5780!) and some of our more industrious and/or organized writers get moving on their assignments deep in the winter. There are always those one or two pieces that are submitted sometime in Shevat, get edited and approved, and sent into graphics before anyone starts thinking about a shalach manos theme.

But as we get closer to Pesach, and we go through our lists and charts, the rhythm gets faster and the urgency more intense. And suddenly all those advance plans get new scrutiny. Is the balance right? Do we have enough heavyweight pieces? What about the light, fun, entertaining material — is there enough of that? What about something visual; readers like beautiful photos. What about something current?

Against that newly urgent scrutiny, seemingly solid plans get revamped. Inevitably, there are last-minute assignments — new leads either materialize or are dug up from the recesses of memories or notes of long-ago brainstorming sessions. Pitted against a ticking clock and looming deadline, writers who thought they wouldn’t be contributing suddenly find new motivation to write for the Yom Tov magazine.

Then, once all the material — new and old — is ready, the final page count is determined. And since we live in an earthly world of limitations, painful choices have to be made: Which pieces will make it into the final roundup, and which will have to wait for a different week?

Sometimes it’s easy to make the decision. Two pieces have similar themes or tones and each will shine a lot more without the competition. Or a piece that seemed special three months ago just doesn’t stand out against the new, improved lineup. But often it’s agonizing. Especially when you consider the human aspect behind each feature — the writer who pushed so hard despite everything going on in his or her family, the interviewee who expressly asked to be included in a Yom Tov edition, the photographer who did exceptionally creative work on the photo shoot.

But at the end of the day, there are only so many pages available, and there’s always the week after, or the week after that, when people will be once again hungry for reading material.

So why is it that time after time, that first piece to be ready is the first one to be bumped?

I think about this a lot in the context of another question: Why is it that no matter how organized we try to be, most of our best Yom Tov material doesn’t come in until the pressure is on? And I think the answer has to do with a dynamic that our logistics teams — those on the production and planning ends — find hard to understand. It’s the reality that creative people need to be “in the season” to produce. They need to see the budding trees, the ads for matzah and wine, the spring colors, to get pumping with pre-Pesach urgency.

On the logistics end, it’s hard to understand why a top writer can’t write a perfect Pesach piece when there are latkes frying in the kitchen. Who cares? You’re a professional, do your thing. But those on the creative end understand that along with all the professional knowledge of craft, part of really good writing is also art — and “feeling it” is part of the secret formula too.

By the time you read this, the tough decisions will have been made. Hopefully, they’ll give you a Pesach magazine pulsing with character and color, professionalism and charm, craft and art. And because that’s the way this business works, they’ll probably also leave you with some super-invested features that were submitted promptly, back in early winter — but will still be waiting another week or two until they get sent to print.

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 756)