Magazine Plans – No Joking Allowed (It Seems)

My headshot from early 2005, just months before I joined the Popular Woodworking staff and before I had to explain myself to readers. Note the relative lack of wrinkles and the naturally red hair…

I’ve received a handful (a double handful, actually) of panicky e-mails in the last two days from folks who read the post on Christopher Schwarz’s personal blog about my “plans” for the magazine as we move forward. Yes, that is all a joke. Yes, I was in on it. Yes, I laughed. No, I was not offended. Yes, I will continue to be mirthful and sesquipedalian (can’t help either of those, nor do I wish to). No, we are not adding heart cut-outs to every project (and I should perhaps stipulate that we won’t be adding heart cut-outs to any project. I hate heart cut-outs. I altogether dislike decorative hearts in any form – and there’s no doubt a self-deprecating a joke in there somewhere to be made, but I won’t make it; I might be taken seriously).

So for those of you who want to know what’s really going on, the short answer is this: I have no plans (evil or otherwise) to make the magazine into something radically different. We will continue to offer solid, interesting and engaging woodworking information (from names both old and new), techniques, tools and projects, and we will continue – as we have since at least 2005 – to champion hybrid woodworking (that is, both hand tools and power tools).

Can the magazine be better? Of course it can; there is room for improvement in any publication (and, I would argue, in all things). Do I know yet what I might do to make it so? I do not. But I hope that when you get the June issue (the first on which my name will be on the masthead as editor), you won’t be able to pinpoint any changes. My goal is that you’ll read it and just think, “Wow – this is a really good magazine” – without noticing the differences that have perhaps made it better.

If you want to read and hear more, Kari Hultman has an interview with me on her blog, The Village Carpenter, and last week, I chatted with the Modern Woodworkers Association.

And to the far more of you who sent me congratulatory notes, “I can no other answer make but thanks, And thanks, and ever thanks.”*

— Megan Fitzpatrick
@1snugthejoiner

* And no, you won’t see an uptick in Shakespeare in our pages…other than my plan to present all articles in iambic pentameter (but really, that form belongs to Marlowe).