One of my first mentors in the editorial world (she was the first one to teach me proofreader marks), Megan McFarland, was nice enough to invite me to her office at Sideshow Media to show Pro Diligo what they do there. Sideshow Media is a full-service book producer that specializes in culture, art, and travel books (the good stuff). Megan lets us in on an editorial meeting for a travel guide, shows us some previous projects and lets us take a sneak peak into an unpublished title headed by Sideshow’s owner Dan Tucker. If you ever wanted to see how a book gets made, check out this video:

1. What is the first creative moment you remember?

I vividly remember making a “book” in 1st grade, a story about a mouse who went on some sort of adventure. The teacher liked it so much that she had it laminated and spiral-bound. I remember the moment she gave it to me, and thinking how amazing it felt to have made something “real” that other people liked!

2. Where did you grow up and how did you end up where you are now?

I grew up in Southern California, and most of the kids in my high school were either stoners or surfers. I felt like a total nerd, biding my time to get out of mini-mall land, go to college, and see other places (of course, now I miss California!). I did a lot of different things in my 20′s — worked in London and Madrid for my university, traveled in Europe, worked at the Getty Center in Los Angeles, went to grad school in English literature. At that point I knew I wanted to work in publishing, or a writing field. Out of the blue, I got a call from a friend who knew of an editorial job in New York with the architect Peter Eisenman. I got on a plane, got the job, and that led to a job as assistant architecture editor at Rizzoli, and then to a senior editor position at Phaidon Press. Now I’m working with my husband at his book packaging company, Sideshow Media. I’m the managing editor – basically air-traffic controller for books!

3. Which performance, song, play, movie, painting or other work of art had the biggest influence on you and why?

I can’t think of one work — there are many. As a teenager in the late 1970s, a lot of the new music at the time, like Devo, X (the Los Angeles punk band), the Clash, cracked open a shell for me in terms of new ways of thinking about the world. That music was so antithetical to mainstream pop and my everyday environment — it made me realize that it was okay, even inspirational, to be weird! I was also really moved by the first performance I ever saw of William Forsythe’s Frankfurt Ballet. It expanded my idea of what physicality and movement could be. Ed Ruscha’s early photo books were also very inspiring. Here’s someone who made incredible art out of the totally mundane: gas stations, palm trees, parking lots.

4. What is your ideal creative activity?

Ideally, it’s writing, though I don’t do much of that at all anymore. Cooking is now my most frequent creative activity — combining ingredients, being tactile.

5. How do you begin your day?

These days I normally get out of bed as soon as my four-year-old daughter bleats “Mommmmmyyyy” at around 7:30. But ideally, I start my day with a swim or a run as soon as I wake up. For me exercise is meditative and productive at the same time: I make my mental “to do” list and sweat out the day’s worries before they begin. And there are no phones, computers, email, or other distractions.

6. Have you ever had to make a choice between work and art? What did you choose, why, and what was the outcome?

More often throughout my working career I’ve chosen more creative jobs over more lucrative jobs. When I was about 21 I had to choose between taking a cub reporter job with the New York Times, and a job without much career potential but with much excitement — working for my university in London for 6 months. I chose the latter. I have no regrets. Expanding one’s world and continuing to be curious have always paid off. My feeling is that if something doesn’t work out, you can always do something else. Probably you won’t end up homeless.

7. When you work, do you love the process or the result?

I definitely love the process. If I’ve worked on a book solidly for a year or two, usually I can barely look at it once it’s published. Inevitably I find a typo on the first page or two I open!