The Program: Reading, Writing, and Running the Show

We continue to work through the Taddle Creek program, with sessions in the main stream on magazine managing with Jared Bland of The Walrus (Kasey and I met with Jared separately, since Kasey already knows everything about The Walrus and her session was therefore really a fake session), and sessions in the literary stream on submissions with the editor and with Tara Quinn of Brick magazine, and on writing with the author and Taddle Creek associate editor Andrew Daley.

My meeting with Jared was at the Walrus offices, and was my first exposure to anything approximating the kind of magazine offices depicted on television. The Walrus offices came complete with a big open room full of desks, people calling back and forth across them, good-natured jibes among co-workers, and a constant stream of interruptions on urgent matters.

Jared and I talked about how he ensures things get done. The answer is that he has systems—various lists and schedules that make good use of abbreviations and colour-coding—and that he tracks many things in his head. I would tell you more, but I wasn’t allowed to keep the schedules we looked at, because they were Top Secret. I enjoyed this session a lot, not only because I like systems, but also because I managed to direct the conversation to myself and get some good advice from Jared, and because Stacey May Fowles brought us some cherries to eat.

Our session with Tara Quinn was held in the Brick offices, which are smaller and less bustling than the Walrus offices, but more charming. Although the official topic of the session was submissions, Tara indulged us and we talked about much more than that. Topics included Brick’s unique content (it prints mainly non-fiction by established authors, many of whom are not Canadian), and its various revenue streams, including grant funding. We also discussed the challenges in working for a literary magazine (read: a magazine that can pay you almost nothing), and the different ways to make it work (read: jobs you can do on the side to pay the bills).

Then we met with Andrew Daley for a beer on a patio to discuss writing. Writing is a big subject, and our discussion meandered a fair amount. Handy lessons I took away from the session include the following:

• Write a first draft before revising. Don’t revise the first few chapters seventeen times and never finish. Give yourself the satisfaction of writing it through once, and then edit it as many times as you need to.

• But do edit. Edit again and again. Many of the submissions that come into literary magazines do not appear to have been edited. Not even once.

• Let it sit for a while—weeks or months—before editing and between edits. This gives you the mental space to really see what you’ve written.

• Consider taking a nap while writing. This is the micro-version of “let it sit.”

Andrew also reminded us that writers are lonely, lonely people, and that one shouldn't write for any reason other than just because. If “just because” doesn’t mean anything to you, you are probably not destined to be a writer. I am paraphrasing here.