Illumination Publication
ILLUMINATION Editor Introduction: Timothy Key
A little enhanced perspective of me and my motivations
What does it mean to be an editor on Illumination? Good question, and one I occasionally ponder myself.
Mostly what it means is that I have agreed to pitch in and keep the wheels on the bus turning round and round. I publish drafts and previously released stories on the publication and do my best to constructively boost, add, support, bolster and rally in and around the publication.
From my perspective, my prime directive in the editor capacity to is to help you get your best work out in the world for the most people to see. An optimistic endeavor for all of us for sure; but Illumination is doing a great job of doing just that, and I am proud to be involved!
I am a firm believer in concepts along the lines of:
- You make your own luck.
- You get out what you put in.
- Things have a tendency to come around.
- Treat others the way you think they would wish to be treated.
So, what I do in and for Illumination is sort of an amalgam of those beliefs. It reflects my willingness to invest up front to receive collective gains down the road. As a happy form of serendipity, Illumination’s value set as a publication and the values of the participants here tend to echo and amplify my beliefs. So, I think it is an excellent fit for me.
My background in public service and leadership has helped cast me in an ancillary role behind the scenes of trying to create some simple policy to guide editorial decisions and facilitate effective communication among editors and writers on the publication.
I have done that in a series of articles about how to use images, image captions, links, article format, and a basic examination of what I look for as an editor. I also published articles on how writers and editors communicate outside the Medium platform and the basics of using Slack.
I tend to channel any issues I am experiencing into my writing as a way to address them internally (and externally), so it is a good bet if I have been exposed to rude internet interactions, a spate of caption-less images, or a weird prevalence of something like plagiarism I am sure to write about it. To wit:
Sometimes I have to modify them to make them more introspective and examine behavior on the whole (rather than pointing fingers), but typically once I write, self-edit for inflammatory stuff, and then publish I am pretty much over whatever the issue happens to be.
Writing for me has proven to be a very cathartic form of therapy.
I am also game for interaction and love the fact that Illumination offers so many great opportunities to respond to others’ writing and ideas. I have had the most fun just jumping into a story idea that someone else introduced, sometimes completely unknowingly.
Just recently I have had several of these opportunities and I can’t thank Holly Jahangiri, Kevin Buddaeus, Tree Langdon ♾️, Sherry McGuinn, Charles Roast, Julia E Hubbel and P.G. Barnett enough for not only sparking my creativity, but responding so favorably to my resultant (hopefully somewhat humorous) attempts to bring life to their ideas.
I am particularly susceptible to a playful prompt and will happily jump on writing an article about How to Make a Hot Dog Casserole, because I find that such things are simply too fun to ignore:
In between all that, I try to write some serious-ish stuff about business, leadership, management, finance and technology. I have also engaged in a few writer challenges; my current being not looking at my stats for the month of May.
It has been a little tough not to sneak a glimpse, but overall it is kind of a relief to not worry about my reads, views and fans. I know they are out there, now I just don’t count them 463 times a day. I may keep a modified version of “No Stat May” in effect for the foreseeable future. Or, I may bow to curiosity. We will see how it goes!
That is pretty much me as an editor for Illumination all tied in a nutshell for you. I discovered when I started writing this that there was a bunch of “making the sausage” detail stuff that would have been too much here, so I wrote a different story to lay that out for you, if you are interested.
Thanks for reading, please feel free to engage me at any time for any reason. I love the interactions I have here on Illumination; keep ’em coming!
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Timothy Key spent over 26 years in the fire service as a firefighter/paramedic and various fire chief management roles. He firmly believes that bad managers destroy more than companies, and good managers create a passion that is contagious. Compassion, grace and gratitude drive the world; or at least they should. Follow me on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter, and join the mail list.
