Eulogy for the Magazine Rack

Remember those?

Granville Street, Vancouver, BC., where I live. (With typical rain!) Home of the amazing Commodore Ballroom. And underneath, now gone, home to Granville Books — Photo by Matt Hanns Schroeter on Unsplash

This post is a digression

These last few days I’ve received a DELUGE of Substack emails with everyone—everyone—inviting me to join their new “Chat” capability.

For one thing, it makes me think that you, too—any of you who have subscriptions to multiple Substack publications—are also in the deluge. Maybe you’re okay with this, maybe you even welcome such connections.

But I tend to think of the ‘Stack as being a wondrous magazine rack of old, filled with both monthly familiar and exploration. When I spend time with the ‘Stack-rack, I come away knowing something I did not before, and something to take away.

In this past month of October, for reasons I’m unsure of, I’ve had as many unsubscribes or subscribers not renewing as I have had new subscribes, and I’m trying to untangle the “why” of that. One person said there are too many “prompts.” But that doesn’t make sense because there is one prompt per month. But maybe that’s too many. (Oh, go ahead—leave thoughts in the comments!) It is causing me to think about what I offer and what you-s need. (WHY doesn’t English have second person plural?)

This marketing thing is something I’m not so good at. Not here, and not with my writing. (Many writers feel the same.) I’ve never been a flirt, and I’m terrible—terrible!—at job interviews. And I see those as related skills. At my last job interview—and it probably is my last—when they asked that miserable question about, “Where do you see yourself in five years?” I burst into hysterical laughter. “Are you kidding? Five years ago, I had no idea I’d be here.” They gave the position to someone else.

Marketing is so not my thing. Yet in all the Substack programs to help us launch ourselves (where is the fuse and lighter??) we are told we must articulate exactly who our reader is. This is tough when I see the thoughts of new readers and what they’re finding here, and some people think they’re coming for one thing, and find another. And that often works out for the best.

If you know the ending of a story, and exactly how everyone in the story arrives there, what is the point in writing it? As a kid in school, writing “reports,” I felt the same way: if I didn’t make some discovery in the act of writing, it felt like an exercise akin to shopping for socks and cotton underwear, or milk and cereal. Big Whoop, as my MIL used to say.

There is the reality in the statistics of how many first, second, and third year uni students change their major… especially at the end of year three. This happens as your world opens.

Often when pondering this Unschool thing, and me and my marketing thing, Granville Books, a store long gone, pops into my mind, along with its wall of magazine wonder. And the hours I spent in that place.

It was there that I picked up my monthly copy of The Writer Magazine, out of Boston for over 100 years now. I was just turned eighteen and knew I wanted to write more than anything. Every month there’d be a collection of disparate articles in the mag. Some I’d read while standing at the rack, before I paid, and I knew I’d be reading again, underlining, making notes. Always there’d be another piece that might sit for several weeks before I got to it—it might be a piece that seemed to have nothing to do with where I was at as a writer. I’d read it on a day when I felt ready. And wonder at why I hadn’t earlier. Or I’d read and glean nothing more than one skinny piece of knowledge. But that piece would prove critical months later.

At the rack, I’d find magazines I’d never heard of, and magazines to send work to. Small press literary journals that are no longer available on racks… or anywhere. And niche topics, much like some Substack newsletters, things that would never occur to me to look for, or to know that others look for. While many of them had no real interest for me, I would look at them, pick them up, flip through, and for just those minutes I’d envision another person—a character—looking through. Who would read this? And just like that, a character would be born in my mind. Because this is how writers think. And grow.

Photo by Rita Morais on Unsplash

And an aside to the digression…

Over the bookstore was the Commodore Ballroom, still my favourite music venue, and the favourite of many musicians, world-over. It was built in 1929. Forgive my city-brag, but it has been voted the most influential club of Canada, and one of the top 10 in North America. But that didn’t matter to me in the 80s when the sprung floor popped with the thrash n’ crash of punk music. Start jumping, and the floor would keep you going. We were there to see Skinny Puppy, Guns N’ Roses, 54-40. Once, Marianne Faithfull.

That old floor doesn’t move quite like that anymore (even though it could!) The 80s are over. I still show up every couple of months or so, and some bands are reminiscent. Some are new to us. Music makes me curious. We’re the old ones now in the crowd. The Commodore is still with us, but the Granville Street bookstore is long gone.

On the evenings when I wasn’t upstairs, I was often downstairs browsing. And the thudding and bass from upstairs would resound. No one was bothered by the noise. Most of us were nodding our heads in time as we flipped pages. We could read while the rest of the world went on. It was sustaining really, to feel the world moving around us.

New culture, but carrying threads of the best of the old, is an idea that has come home to me over the past while… as I ponder the effort of attempting to glean as we go on. Respecting old, growing new, connecting these.

The Unschool is a pot pourri of multi-genres, an eclectic mix that mirrors what goes into writing and writing life. But I’d like most for it to dance around and into the act of writing and the creating of literature, whether for young readers or old, and the sharing of literature. If there was one aspect I did appreciate about the MFA program I worked within for years, it was the multi-genre nature of it. It included more than a dozen genres. I do think that the program benefited from this approach. Every student had to work within a minimum of three of those genres. It fostered versatility and openness, as well as respect: each student had strengths and challenges, and each workshop had both experienced writers as well as those who were new and opening. Vulnerability is useful in an artist’s life. Humility is necessary. And so is knowing your strengths.

My fear with “chat” options and Zoom meetings and such is that it will lose the central point of written word, and the joy in sitting to do that. (Or writing on the top of your fridge. Can anyone recall who was known for that preference?? Must have been someone tall or who lived where they have short fridges…)

We’ll lose the wonder of the rack.

Posts can be read and re-read. Some new readers work their way through older posts; all can ask questions, explore the comments. I respond to all comments whenever posted, even months or years after I’ve posted the piece. And I write new posts to update ideas from earlier information and thoughts. There is written record of all that takes place here.

I feel the number of emails you are receiving is enough. The writing interruptions are enough.

I have a deep love for the written word. It’s the piece that brought me to being a writer, and it’s the touchstone I need to feel frequently.

Writing doesn’t have to be silent—we can have a booming bass overheard reminding us that time moves on, and that somewhere people are dancing. We can even go upstairs ourselves, dance, do a little mosh action, get that floor going! But most of writing will always be about the quiet, the search, the work. If you are to find the flow of the work, it is an inner space. I hope this Unschool space inspires that space.

Here’s to the magazine rack, eclecticism, and claiming space devoted to writing and the written word—