Want to read about what I'd like to experience for the first time again?

Today I speak with the co-editor of the blog Postcards From Yo Momma, which has just been recently published as the book Love, Mom: Poignant, Goofy, Brilliant Messages from Home (get it for Mother's Day!) She is currently a senior editor at The New York Observer and a former editor at Gawker.com, and has contributed to Slate, among other publications.

What was the hardest part about turning the blog into a book?
Getting permission for every single on of the entries. We had to send permission forms to the kids (because they were the ones who'd sent in the emails/chats/texts) and ask (beg) them to send the form to their mom, who then needed to sign it and return it to us via email, fax or U.S. mail. (A remarkably large number of forms got returned via U.S. mail...) It was a bit of a nerve-wracking experience because if no one had returned the forms, there would've been no book. That would've been mildly embarrassing.

How did the title of the book come about? It's got a different tone than "Postcards from Yo Momma."
Our publisher wasn't too keen on using "Postcards From Yo Momma" as the title of the book and, frankly, neither were we. We came up with the "Love, Mom" bit pretty quickly--we realized that moms view email and even chats and texts more formally than their kids do, and often sign off "Love, Mom" even if it's just a one-line note. It seemed both sweet and a little cheeky, kind of like the book. The subtitle was a little more complicated--there was a lot of back-and-forth with our publisher about what it should be. (They felt pretty strongly about using "messages"; we'd originally had "emails," etc. These are the picayune details you never think about when you're writing a book!)

How did you decide what to include in the book?
First we came up with the chapters, and then we divvied up the work--Jessica took the odd-numbered chapters and I took the even-numbered ones. Then it was just a matter of going through the emails we had already gotten at that point and choosing the best ones. When we got the book deal, we started setting aside emails that we knew we wanted to save for the book--we knew we wanted to make the book have almost all new content. Then the trick was finding messages that had some combination of funny/sweet/clueless/random. We chose around 450, and around 250 of those moms sent back their permission forms.

Which are some of your favorite entries, from the book and the blog?
From the book:
p. 33:
Subject: hi
i want grandchildren.

p. 17:
Please cleanup your facebook. Sex, drugs, lesbian stuff, no religion. People look at that before they hire you - Pres. Bush gets reports about this stuff, too. Listen to your mother -- have a little common sense for goodness sake. Have some Christian values!
Your mother
[Ed: Doree sent me a ton of hilarious ones for this answer and I'm going to save the rest of them for a future post].

What do you think you'd do differently the next time you work on a book?
Next time I'd go after some of the delinquent permission slips more aggressively--and it would probably help to have a little more time to put it together also.

In your Postcards From Yo Momma, work, did you do much Postcards From Yo Daddy related fieldwork? How would you say communications between dads and kids are different from those between moms and kids?
We've toyed with the idea of starting a Postcards From Yo Daddy, and probably will at some point. People do send us in funny emails from their dads, but their tone and often subject matter is usually different. Dads--and I include my dad in this characterization--are, generally, more curt in their correspondence; their emails are usually all business, whereas moms are, generally, more communicative. We've heard criticism that the site perpetuates gender stereotypes, and to that I would say: you can't argue with the evidence. There will always be exceptions, but at least for this generation of parents, there are pretty clear differences between the communication styles of moms and those of dads. I'm curious to see whether our generation interacts with their kids differently--I bet we will.

Tell me about Tumblr and why everyone seems to be on it. I feel left out but I don't think I can deal with one more platform on which to report my comings and goings.
I put my personal blog on Tumblr in December '07, when I was working on a story about its founder, David Karp, for The New York Observer. (I figured I should have some experience on the thing.) I like Tumblr because it's incredibly easy (even a mom could use it! har) and I also like the social networking aspect of it--I choose whom I want to follow, and there's this whole Tumblr universe that exists on a sort of back-end. The blog you see if you just go to my blog at doree.tumblr.com is a different experience than reading it through the Tumblr dashboard, which is more like Twitter in format.

How do yo find your writing/blogging habits have changed over the last few years? (I personally feel like my personal blog has suffered as my professional writing has thrived but that's not necessarily a bad thing).
Except for a short-lived attempt a few years ago, I didn't have a personal blog until I started my Tumblr. And I've found that having the blog often helps me crystallize my thinking about topics I'm considering writing about professionally. I will say that my blogging has suffered since I got more into Twitter--it's often more tempting to just dash off a quick 140 characters about something than write a whole blog post, which suddenly seems really long. (Even though, duh, it's not.) But in general I try to maintain an equilibrium among Twittering, Tumblring, Momma-ing and my day job.

What are some of your proudest moments from working at Gawker?
I had a lot of fun doing the Most Annoying Liberal Arts College series of polls, maybe because it annoyed so many liberal arts college students. (The student newspaper at Wesleyan wrote a sort of indignant article about it, which I thought was pretty hilarious.) Some of my other favorites: a report from a book party for Christopher Buckley, a report from a New York Times shareholder meeting, a report from the Time 100 party where I sat next to Whit Stillman, a report from a book party for a dating book, and a report from The New York Observer party at the Four Seasons, which weirdly did not preclude my getting a job there a few months later.

Did you feel, once you left Gawker, less of an obligation to be in the New York media social scene, or does that just come with the territory if you work in media in the city?
I never really felt an obligation to be in the New York media social scene. It was more that after I started at Gawker, I met people who were in the "New York media social scene" and became friends with some of them, and since leaving Gawker have continued to be friends with them.

What would you say to a person who said to you "Professional blogging? That sounds like the easiest job in the world!"
BWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA HA HA

What dogs are you obsessed with?
I'm pretty much exclusively obsessed with my dog Lee, who is the best uber-neurotic 12-year-old pit bull mix in the entire world.

How's your week of veganism going?
It's going well, thanks! So far I've successfully resisted the urge to blog more than once about it because I don't want to be That Annoying Girl Who Became Vegan for a Week. But since you asked, it's now day six and I'm not really craving meat (but I'd love some ice cream). Btw, after I posted I was going to be vegan for a week, I got a frantic IM from my sister who advised me that being a vegetarian was okay, but being a vegan was "insane." (Also: I'm watching Man vs. Food as I write this, which probably isn't the best thing for a temporary vegan to be watching, but whatever!) All that being said... I want the first piece of meat I eat to be one of these.

How does it feel to be the 228th person interviewed for Zulkey.com?
Like I just gave birth! It's a sense of euphoria I never knew I was capable of. Now I know how moms feel!