Going to Things

Switching careers can be a bit overwhelming. Each industry has its own landscape and its own vocabulary. Names of people and organizations and events are tossed around with ease by the seasoned, while we novices exhaust ourselves trying to keep up. We may appear to be casually engaged in conversation, but much of our energy is focused on memorizing names and acronyms to Google when we get home.

So when I decided to get into publishing, I knew I would have lots of catching up to do. I decided that the best way to do this by going to things.

I started by going to readings, specifically Rower’s Pub, Pivot, and the Art Bar series. Going to readings is easy: all you have to do is buy a beer and sit at the bar. Occasionally you will hear something you really like. It's also a good way to put names to faces, and occasionally to chat with an author whose work you have read and enjoyed. (Note: For the most part, I had not read the work of the authors I saw. I didn’t go up to those authors and talk to them just because they’re authors. That's silly. If you’re thinking of doing that, you should instead go to law school, where inventing a transparent excuse to talk to the instructor after class in encouraged. Also, while it is possible that some authors might like to have their egos stroked, they are also uniquely positioned to detect bullshit, since they do it constantly while editing their own work.)

I also helped to justify the City of Toronto’s generous expenditures on the arts by being the only non-student and non-retiree to attend more than a half-dozen Lit City events, including various readings. This was a good month for me, since I am somewhat fetishistic about Toronto-based fiction. Highlights included the T.O. reading list (which I am working through), Glen Downie’s broadsheets exhibit, and Claudia Dey’s reading of Stunt at the Toronto Reference Library. The last one is a good example of why readings are worthwhile. I probably wouldn’t otherwise have picked up Stunt, but I was entranced by the reading and had to have it. It’s a delicious combination of magical realism anchored by believable characters, and the writing is both lyrical and hard. Also, one of the characters lives on a houseboat, which is super cool.

Now that I’m interning at Taddle Creek, going to things is even better, since I’ve met enough people now that I usually don't have to sit at the bar alone. Though I do like to imagine that sitting at the bar alone gave me an air of mystery, maybe just a little.