Backstage at Horse & Rider

It's a regular work day at Horse & Rider magazine, with the intensity dial turned to High. Our May issue's in its final production throes, which means all staff members are at screen and keyboard, trying to help the process along.

I have no way of knowing what you picture in your mind's eye when you imagine us getting the magazine out, but I'll bet it doesn't match the reality.

A maybe-surprising fact: Two-thirds of our staff members aren't in the same room--no, make that the same state--more than once or twice a year. Instead, all but a couple of us work from home offices that are in Texas, Colorado, California, and Idaho. We report to someone in Maryland. And cooperate with other colleagues in Pennsylvania. We operate on an e-mail lifeline, and a be-at-work timeline that's not quite 24/7, but close.

Office hours...what are those? Two of us West Coasters, for instance, are regularly up and e-mailing one another by 4:30 or 5 a.m. That's how we get ready to meet the needs of co-workers in two later time zones. (The tradeoff: By 2 p.m., one of us is ready for her daily nap, and the other one is usually out saddling up her horse--who's visible all day long from the kitchen window.)

Right now, I'm standing by to receive digital layouts for proofing. It's my first chance to see how the words I sat here to write a couple of weeks ago will look in the published magazine itself. Once upon a time, I walked across the room or down a hall to get that first look at what an art director did with my words.

Now I just count on my high-speed Internet connection.

Not something I could have imagined in 1975, when I first got the notion to go into the nag-mag business!