Kasey Coholan's blog

Dear Sneaky Dee's,

We went to Nirvana instead and it was better, way better. Your loss. Peace.

Sincerely,

the triumvirate that is Taddle Creek

In the not so distant past Jen and I spent an afternoon with Gavin Babstock at Magazines Canada.  We learned about distribution. Exciting? Perhaps not but relevant to our task of completing the best, most creative and informative protege program ever! (With the sun shining a little less, it being a little damper and more chilly than temperant I figured Conan could use the pick me up.)

Ahem.  But it was on this unassuming Friday afternoon that I discovered one of the craziest things I had ever seen.

As I sat listening to Jen and Gavin discuss magazine sell through rates I noticed something on the top shelf of a white bookcase behind Gavin.  I mean I was paying attention, sort of, but I was thoroughly engaged with all that was around me.  I tilted my head the right, squinted, raised an eyebrow and slowly let my head pass through centre and ended with it tilted to the left.  What the hell is that?  It couldn't be.   I loved Pee-wee Herman.

"Excuse me, umm, is that a elastic ball?" I interrupted all intrigue and reverance.

"What?" Gavin responded, I suppose I caught him off guard.

I pointed again, "That, is that an elastic ball, can I touch it?"

It was indeed an elastic ball.  I held it and turned it over in my hand, it was majestic in a cheap coloured plastic kind of way.  It was beautiful. It felt like the world, it felt like a brain, I couldn't help but ponder its existence, its tiny origin, as I continued to paw it.  I thought if I tried to bounce it might shatter as if it were liquid nitrogen.  It was heavy and I loved it.  

"Heck, the magazine about magazines isn't even in print anymore."

                                                                                               - Doug Bennet

Magazines cost money to make. The majority of it wrapped up by the three P's: paper, print, and postage.  With ad revenue way down for most mags they are reaching a divisive fork in the road--go online or die. But are there any that are going to make it? Which ones would you put your money on to still be in print five years from now?  What magazine, despite today's epochal environment, will you still carry around with you, folded, crinkled and dog-earred?  What will be the last magazine(s) standing?

The list according to Doug Bennet, publisher of North Island Publishing.

1) Fashion mags and high-quality glossies.  In short, things that are pretty (Vogue, sweet Vogue).

2) Lit mags (what up TC!). 

3) Mags centred on long-form journalism (holla for the Walrus).

What (or who) are you betting on?

Or what is otherwise known as production. Unless you've actually been apart of a magazine's 'production week' or if it happens to be a weekly 'production day', its intensity will certainly be lost on you. Fortunately (or perhaps unfortunately) I have experienced many of these first hand.

This is where the other side of magazines rears its ugly head. Or rather where everyone working on producing a mag of literary, political, entertaining, beautiful genius realizes that their mag is nothing without ads. In production all of the copy and the delicately designed pages come crashing into advertising space and printing deadlines. Sattie and Rookiya at Rogers run tight ships. There is absolutely no leeway when it comes to making a magazine's scheduled on-sale date.

Having previously interned at the Walrus none of this was entirely new information to me.  But in the end I did come away with one eyebrow raising fact.  As Sattie sat us down and modestly mentioned Rogers produces about 70 magazines (mostly consumer and trade).  She told us the breakdown of ad space to actual content in these magazines is roughly a 45/55 split. WHAT?  That's a shitty shitty deal.  Not exactly a surprise but a harsh reality to hear.

Let me start off by saying I'm on a role, I do believe this makes two entries in less than twenty-four hours. Also, the lack of consistent entries is not entirely my fault.  There were vacations, people who are apparently email adverse, the sessions have been mixed-up and bumped around, one week with three sessions and three weeks with nothing at all. 

Our meet with Christina Palassio of Coach House Press happened awhile back and it was nothing short of cool.  A hertiage printing house that has been running its machines for nearly forty years.  It's not something to read about, it's something that must be seen.  I do suggest taking a self-guided tour of the place.  On par with such coolness it was during this session that I discovered my co-protegé Jen makes her own paper. Very cool, Jen, very cool.

Let me finish by saying my 'imagined world' also now includes me working the midnight collating shift at Coach House.  This might be the most romantic thing I think of. 

Well maybe not exactly. I didn't say I would unwittingly fade into blogging abyss, that I would find every non-excuse to avoid putting in an entry. It wasn't even that. I really did plan to keep it up. The word BLOG is written all over my weekly planner but the thing is, the word is there I just never got around to crossing it off.

Where I can say I told you so is the part about me not really diggin' the whole blogging thing in the first place.  I pointed out their ridiculous nature and how the overwhelming majority of them are bound for failure.  What can I say? I'm no better the ninety-five per cent.  I knew I wasn't going to be. 

And so I wanted to say, I told you so and I also wanted to say, I'm back.*

*This is by no means an eternal promise of me never dropping the ball again.  It will more than likely happen but hey, let's enjoy the entries while they last.

If Hippocrates is good enough for doctors he is even better for artists. The first two lines of one of his ancient aphorisms, 'Ars longa, vita brevis' translates quite simply to 'Life is short, art is long'. Amen, brother.

Magazines are more than cheeky amalgamations of heads, deks and meaty text. They are meticulously planned out tributes to design and visual culture. John Montgomery of Toronto Life and Taddle Creek recently gave Jen and I a peek into the world of art direction.  This is no small world, it includes everything from illustration, photography, graphic design, copy fitting, something called page saturation, and much more.  Beauty takes time, a lot of time but thanks to Hippocrates there is comfort in the fact that it can also be transcendent.

If you don't think the pages of a glossy have the capabilities of illicting such a feeling, think again. Next time you open a magazine take an extra moment or two and actually take in the type, the archictecture of the page, the amount of negative space, choice of colour - I could list about dozen more elements to be considered but I'll leave it at that. If it's done well it's nothing short of mind-blowing.

I was hoping to upload an image to add an aesthetic element to this particular post but alas I have no idea what I am doing so no picture for you. If I can ever figure it out I'll be sure to add it with the hope that reminds you of editorial's often over-looked partner.

Contrary to the cop out title(s) chosen for this blog entry I will be attempting to marry fact and fiction. That is to say, this is a cheap and easy way for me to write about two TC sessions at once - what it's like to write fiction, compliments of Andrew Daley and what it's like to fact-check with a nod to Patricia Treble.

A sort-of hero of mine is Thomas King, an English professor at the University of Guelph. I say sort of not because I am in doubt about Mr. King's beautiful mind because there is no doubt in my mind that his is in fact beautiful. The 'sort of' stems from my understanding of what a hero is. I don't think I know anyone personally or through their life's work enough to say, "Hey you, you are the best-friggin-thing-this-crazy-world-has-ever-seen-and-not-only-do-I-have-a-probably-unhealthy-fascination-with-you-but-I-want-to-emulate-you-in-every-way-that-I-can-Hoo-rah." No, I have no full-on heroes, only sort-ofs and that I think is all we should ask of anyone or ourselves. ANYWAY...Thomas King is cool and he said this, "The truth about stories is that that's all we are."

I don't know if I can think of something better to say about anything or everything for that matter. As much as I believe this it presents a minor cosmological problem for how I make a living in the aforementioned crazy world. A protégé by day and a fact-checker by night (although it is often the reverse.) If we are only stories then there can be no true, objective, facts. Foiled yet again! Or not, I do believe in truth regimes in the Foucauldian sense, therefore I do believe there are things to be 'verified' within our current power-knowledge. Have I lost you yet?

On the day's agenda was Tara Quinn and Brick. A tall, lithe knockout and a literary journal.  With the temperature hovering around 28 degrees and an unlimited ceiling this Friday afternoon was looking good.

Brick is run out of the top floor of the George Brown house on Beverly Street in Toronto.  I only mention this because I am completely jealous that Tara and her fellow Brickers get to call this place 'the office'.  By showing it to you, you will undoubtedly join me in my envy and perhaps together the intangibility of this mutual desire will one day manifest into something of actual use. Hmmm.  Failing that I say we stage a coup and takeover the entire 'house' and by house I mean small country.

Between Jen, a recently retired lawyer, Tara, a student of Internatioal Relations, and myself, a student of political and social theory, we were a motley crew to be talking about the literary world.  In the end we spent much of our time talking about how to (or in Tara's case how she did) move from the places we were coming from to the places we wanted to be.  It was a fight to the death; my ideal world vs. the real world. And so, in my ideal world...

Some things are best stated without nuance, without excess verbiage, without me getting in the way. On that note I have just one thing to say—much love to Bill for allowing me to glean these nuggets of editing wisdom from him.

Editing is a grind.

Have enough confidence in your writing to be edited.

Say it once. Say it right. Move on.

Structure is hard to win, easy to lose.

Always better to work with your editor than against.

Always better to work with your writer than against.

Books on, by, or about de Sade and/or Duchamp should have a place on any bookshelf. Bill didn't speak to this, but his bookshelf has both and I liked that.

Note: Again no business-card business to be had. Why do I have these things again? Perhaps it's not the card but the cardholder. Damn.