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Episode 263: Michelle Weber and Catherine Cusick Break Out the Pipe Wrench
160 Plays3 years ago
Michelle Weber (@michelleinchief) and Catherine Cusick (@cusickcatherine) come by to talk about their exciting venture Pipe Wrench Magazine.
Social: @CNFPod
Patreon: patreon.com/cnfpod
Show notes: brendanomeara.com
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Transcript
Introduction and Origins of Pipe Wrench Magazine
00:00:00
Speaker
Dude, we should start a magazine. We totally should start a magazine. Wait, how do you start a magazine? Who cares? Let's do it. Let's just do it, man. And what should we call it? It's gotta be something useful. Something that can get you out of a jam, take things apart, maybe put things back together. I got it! What? Pipe wrench?
00:00:24
Speaker
That is literally, though not really, the transcript between Michelle Weber, editor-in-chief of Pipe Wrench Magazine, and Catherine Cusick, the human Pipe Wrench, if you will. Did she bind insurance policies? I don't know. And they're both co-founders of Pipe Wrench Magazine, pipewrenchmag.com. Michelle might even say something like this. All people at the end were just roiling balls of feelings, floating on an even bigger sea of feelings.
00:00:58
Speaker
This is the Creative Nonfiction Podcast, a show where I speak to badass people about the art and craft of tilling. True stories. Today's jam is with two peas in a pod, the frog in Toad of Journalism, Michelle Weber and Catherine Cusick. They saw something broken in magazines.
00:01:16
Speaker
in publishing and got out their collective toolbox and sought to fix it. A contractor might think of or suggest a different tool than a pipe wrench, but I'd argue that a pipe wrench is the perfect tool. It's adjustable. It's heavy. It can be used as a weapon in a pinch.
Podcast Sponsorship and Audience Engagement
00:01:34
Speaker
Basically, if you're holding a pipe wrench, nobody's going to fuck with you. And so I dare you, I dare you to fuck with Michelle and Catherine. Support for the Creative Nonfiction Podcast is brought to you by
00:01:45
Speaker
West Virginia Wesleyan College's low residency MFA in creative writing. Now in his 10th year, this affordable program boasts a low student to faculty ratio and a strong sense of community. Recent CNF faculty include Brandon Billings Noble, Jeremy Jones, and CNF POD alum Sarah Einstein. There's also fiction and poetry tracks. Recent faculty there include Ashley Bryant Phillips and Jacinda Townsend, as well as Diane Gilliam and Savannah Sipple.
00:02:14
Speaker
No matter your discipline, if you're looking to up your craft or learn a new one, consider West Virginia Wesleyan right in the heart of Appalachia. Visit mfa.wvwc.edu for more information and dates of enrollment.
00:02:33
Speaker
As always, keep the conversation going on social media at cnfpod. And if you're feeling kind, leaving reviews for the podcast on Apple goes a long way towards validating this here enterprise in its ninth freaking year.
00:02:48
Speaker
Yeah, for that wayward CNF-er. The Instagram page is still in the underage court of appeals. I know. I don't know what to say about that. So we're doing our promotion at Brendan O'Mara on Instagram and Twitter. Twitter's also at CNF Pod. So there you go.
00:03:04
Speaker
And my goodness CNFers, oh my goodness, issue two of the audio magazine is done. And it goes out to the Patreon community on the first day of summer. Why? It's a summer themed issue, man. June 20th, 2021, it is going to go right into the Patreon.
Submission Announcements and Writing Support
00:03:27
Speaker
Basically a blog post is just gonna be an MP3 file I just put there and you can pluck it and download it and listen to it.
00:03:34
Speaker
that's what it's going to be that's the magazine and it only goes out to the patreon community a patrons get lots of goodies as well as the knowledge that they're supporting writers in the cnf and community you won't want to miss this one cnf which i mean it it's really it's really good i'm very proud of it and i think it'll uh
00:03:56
Speaker
I think it'll pluck at a lot of people's heartstrings and make you think and long for those days of summer as we head into yet another summer. So for just $2 a month of support, you get the magazine and a chance to ask questions of guests on the show, I periodically will just put out a post and be like, hey, I'm talking to someone so, or hey, what would you like me to ask people? Because ultimately I make this show for you.
00:04:24
Speaker
for me, but also for you. Once you do this long enough, you have to realize that you really have to have the end user in mind. You can scratch your own edge all you want, but ultimately it does have to be in service of somebody other than yourself. So hence why I put out those calls sometimes.
00:04:39
Speaker
There are other tiers and other goodies so go ahead give it a shot and I should mention that there is now a new call for submissions for issue 3 of the audio magazine and here's the theme Heroes Now I don't know what your relationship is to heroes maybe to you the best hero in your life is a sandwich or Maybe they're superheroes all I know is that at the end of the dark night Batman famously said
00:05:06
Speaker
I'm not a hero. So maybe you have an equally conflicted relationship with hero worship idolatry. So I want 2000 words max on heroes, a hero in your life, a hero's journey. That's up to you. Email with the subject line hero in the to in the subject line to creative nonfiction podcast at gmail.com.
00:05:29
Speaker
And from now until August, I plan on giving the loudest of shout outs to Hippocam 2021. It's back in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, Lancaster. Registration's open. It's a conference for creative nonfiction writers. Marion Winnick will be this year's keynote speaker.
00:05:47
Speaker
I will be delivering a podcast themed talk if I can get off my ass and do a far better job than I did the last time. I freaked. I choked. Basically, I just choked. Anyway, I can't speak highly enough about this conference. There are four scholarships and six full awards. Those are open till June 15th. Oh shit, so that just ended.
00:06:08
Speaker
Scratch that. We've also got a debut author panel featuring Lily Danziger, remember her, Greg Mania, Carol Smith, and Janine Willett. August 13th through the 15th. Dig it? Use the promo code CNFPOD21 to get $50 off your registration fee. You can buy me a beer with the savings or some books, but maybe a beer too.
00:06:33
Speaker
Hey listen, and you've heard me say that if you want to get in shape, you hire a personal trainer, right? You know the fundamentals of how to eat, write, and exercise, but you know what? You don't have abs. You don't even have an ab. But you hire a trainer to hold you accountable, to put you through the paces and see things you can't see, to motivate you. And that's where I come in regarding your writing, of course.
00:06:55
Speaker
So if you're ready to level up, I'd be honored to help you get where you or your book or your essay or your book proposal needs to go. Email me and we'll start a dialogue and we can see where you want to go and we can talk pricing and all that stuff. Got it? Good.
00:07:10
Speaker
Got one final sponsor. The show is brought to you by the word huang. It's a noun and it is a resounding blow. The sound produced by such a blow. The huang of gongs and symbols.
Inspiration Behind Pipe Wrench and Distributed Work
00:07:24
Speaker
Thank you huang. W-H-A-N-G. Also pronounced wang. It's up to you. Here's my conversation at long last with Michelle and Catherine about the inspiration and ethos behind their exciting new venture with Pipe Wrench magazine.
00:07:50
Speaker
And then I had a podcast back in the day. Back in the day, a long, long time ago in 2019.
00:08:03
Speaker
Michelle did the first recording. This was for the Long Reads podcast, which had just a wonderful era and heyday for all of 2019, had about 90 episodes. And it was recorded with a team of
00:08:27
Speaker
an all distributed workforce. And the main thing about being an all distributed workforce is that most people don't need to be seen or heard synchronously at all. So having somebody host a podcast became a quick game of not it. And I think I touched my nose last. Or you were the best at it.
00:08:55
Speaker
These are competing narratives that are both out in the world. And you have inborn podcast voice. It's possible. It's possible. So we started recording that. I feel like we recorded the first episode in late 2018. I remember it being Christmasy or New Year's. And Michelle did the first episode and then never again. Never again.
00:09:23
Speaker
I just asked her if she uses the microphone right now, if she was going to break it out from when she was sent a specific microphone to use. And she has decided not to. The microphone, I have to say, the fancy microphone made me very nervous. And I wonder now if I had not used the fancy microphone for that very first episode, if I would have been like, hey, podcasting is my jam and been on all of them. We'll never know.
00:09:54
Speaker
We'll never know. Fantastic. But so you're getting Michelle back on a podcast. Congrats. Nice. Kicking and screaming. Get her back on the mic.
00:10:07
Speaker
I love, ever since you guys started to promote that pipe wrench was gonna be a thing, it was really cool to come across it in sort of the ethos and everything behind it. And as we sort of start to unpack that, I'd love to just get a sense of your experience together at Long Reads and how maybe that sort of sets the table for this venture you have now.
00:10:35
Speaker
Michelle's history with Long Reads goes back a little farther than mine. Yeah, I have been editing at Long Reads since, I don't know, whenever they were acquired by Automatic, which was 2014. 2014? Yeah, I had been at Automatic, I was on their editorial team, and then they acquired Long Reads, and then I got the opportunity to start working on Long Reads and curating, and then editing, and then Catherine, when did you come on to do all of our audience development?
00:11:04
Speaker
I came on in May of 2017 when y'all were looking for a social editor and I immediately walked in the door and was like, you need more. You need an audience editor and I'm going, I'm going to do audience development. It's not going to be limited to social and you won't regret it.
00:11:27
Speaker
Uh, and I came on and then promoted myself. I mentioned this in the bio that I just make up titles wherever I go. I promoted myself to head of audience at some point, uh, to feed my ego. And I came on in 2017, long reads at the time had been publishing originals for a year or two already. And the idea was to
00:11:58
Speaker
build the audience for more of their original reporting because
00:12:03
Speaker
Long Reads at the time was very well known for curation and is still well known for curation and it's a huge part of what makes it such a wonderful website. But they were doing more original reporting. There was increased investment in just being able to increase production at the time. So when I started, it was May of 2017 and the first several top five newsletters of the week
00:12:33
Speaker
featured I think six features a week and a few months into it that had gone up to about 10 or 11 a week so I was working on promoting about 40 features
00:12:49
Speaker
a month for a couple of years there, all of which had a minimum of 2,500 words. Is that it? That's a lot of reading. We were publishing books very, very often.
00:13:04
Speaker
with many, many chapters and from writers who had tremendous reach and plenty of writers who didn't. And all of them still were working with an editor at Long Reads because their work was incredibly strong. And so I came in to build
00:13:28
Speaker
audiences for both kinds of writers there for writers who this was their first major byline. It was their first experience having a team of editors, some of them being fact checked, and then others who were veterans and who
00:13:46
Speaker
had a lot of experience already and came with their own audiences and I focused on working with both sets of those kinds of writers. And we'll get into more of the origin story of pipe wrench but one of the things that I love about it is that we've got
00:14:05
Speaker
both kinds of writers in each issue at this point because writers who have different strengths and different levels of experience and different reach can help each other by being in the same issue together. And that's something that was definitely happening at Long Reeds where
00:14:24
Speaker
Long Reads Reach was huge, some of the writers working with us, some of the editors working with us, and then a ton of new voices who got to benefit from having resources pooled to build their audiences with them, rather than what's happening now where a lot of folks need to build their audiences alone, which is rather difficult.
00:14:46
Speaker
Yeah, given this landscape where we're dealing with a lot of – well, there's a lot of freelancer types out there and it can be very hard to find a niche, develop an audience, find what Seth Godin might call that smallest viable audience that
Creative Nonfiction vs. Journalism
00:15:04
Speaker
will sustain us to do the kind of work we set to do to serve the people we want to serve and make the change we want to make.
00:15:10
Speaker
And in your experience as a audience development, what can people be doing to better foster that audience growth that they can parlay into a career in words or whatever artistic endeavor they might be in? Collaborating. Not doing it alone. Right, yeah. Which, I mean, I think that
00:15:38
Speaker
One of the main things that I've been doing coming to audience development around a time when that was an unusual title, an unusual title to have an audience editor. I'm sure that there's still huge sections of populations who wouldn't know what that is or what kind of editing that is. If that's even journalism or if that's a kind of journalist, it definitely is.
00:16:07
Speaker
But I think that the through line for how I got into this kind of a title and this kind of work is that I've been a reader advocate for a very long time. I am a reader myself and a voracious one. And
00:16:25
Speaker
The main thing that I do, and I think that Michelle does, in order to build audiences at all, is that we have to read constantly. You have to engage with the work of others. And at Pipe Wrench, we're doing that outside of even just writing or journalism or reporting.
00:16:46
Speaker
We're trying to go way beyond our current media silo, really, where you have to just be up to date on who's doing what fascinating work where.
00:16:59
Speaker
And that can lead to partnerships and collaborations, and you just need to be a fan first. And then you can start working with people who are in the same boat as you and work collaboratively on audience building. But I think it has to be a communal effort. Yeah, I think with freelancing, it's so easy, and understandably so, to fall into kind of the scarcity mindset, right, of like,
00:17:25
Speaker
Is someone else covering this? Is this story already been told? What am I doing that's different? And look, there's room for so many stories from so many perspectives. And there's always someone who needs to read whatever your iteration is. And your version is not going to be the same as someone else's version. And by not connecting with other people who are doing the same kind of work like you are then, you're putting yourself in this situation of having to build a thing
00:17:54
Speaker
from scratch in a very crowded landscape, which is really, really difficult. I mean, before I did any of this back in the day, I was a blogger, right? And how did I get people, how did I get an audience from my blog? I read a ton of other blogs who were doing the same thing. We were all writing about food. We were all making the same cupcakes and the same popsicles with the same cute little stripy straws, right?
00:18:19
Speaker
But the audience is out there, and so I read and I left comments that were genuine, genuinely wanting to connect, and then it brings people back to you, and then everyone's audience kind of grows. But I mean, it is also, I have to say, like, totally understandable to fall into the scarcity mindset, right? Like, the publishing landscape right now is not...
00:18:42
Speaker
in a healthy, sustainable place, right? Where it's people can make reasonable salaries and reasonable livings without constant hustle and constant compromise. So trying to find
00:18:58
Speaker
different path is kind of what part of what is driving pipe wrench as well to help to help show that there's a different way that we can do this yeah it feels like and it feels like it can be a zero-sum game and you're talking about that with this the scarcity mindset that
00:19:15
Speaker
That it can really lead to a very sort of toxic cesspool of environment that doesn't foster the kind of a community out there of of this kind of storytelling or this kind of a cultural analysis or whatever you want to call it and to be able to see people do the work you have to really kind of have a almost a Jedi mind trick.
Community Building and Collaboration
00:19:39
Speaker
conversation with yourself that just be you know the fact that someone wrote this piece it doesn't mean that I can no longer do that it means actually there's room for this and I can do this too they're opening the door for me to have that kind of platform also not that oh they took it away from me no it's like you can do it too right it means a conversation already started and now you can join a conversation instead of just being off in a silo trying to do your own thing
00:20:07
Speaker
Well, and I think that there are mindsets that are coming from fusions of creative nonfiction and journalism. There's scooping in the news. There's scooping where, well, if somebody gets to that story first, they had that source first, they had that reporting first, you then will be citing them. If you are good and not
00:20:33
Speaker
passing off the work of local journalists somewhere else as national reporting that's breaking a story even when it was broken somewhere else, just a sub-tweet. But there's no scooping in creative nonfiction writing. There really isn't. That's what the creative part is for. You'll always tell it differently. The narrative and the way that you approach it and your personal experience is always going to be different.
00:21:04
Speaker
Yeah, like what Michelle you were saying a moment ago is that if people might be covering a certain thing, but different people will cover it differently. I almost feel like that would be a fascinating thing for you guys to explore at some point down the road where you basically assign the same exact –
00:21:24
Speaker
basically the same exact moment to like five different writers and then you just see what they do with basically the same information and how they tell the story filtered through their own worldview. I think it would just be really fascinating in a sense where you have what you think is a scarce thing but there's an abundant way to tell that story.
00:21:46
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, I think that's what we try to do now on a slightly different scale, right? Where for each of our issues, like all of the conversation computers, they're reading that same story and they are contributing completely different things, different forms of writing, different forms of media focused on completely different pieces. And it all just deepens and makes richer whatever that original conversation was.
00:22:14
Speaker
Yeah, it was great when I was reading, you know, the piece that you have published right now on the homepage too, and seeing like, you know, Sayward Darby, you know, there in the margins, and then, you know, and other people too, just like, oh, this is kind of a cool little spur to go off of at the moment. It's like really, really neat. You know, how did you arrive at that as a form to deepen the experience with the featured piece?
00:22:42
Speaker
That is a fine question. I don't know. It came out of Michelle's mind. It did. It came out of like, what is the thing that I want to read? And how do I, when I read something
00:22:55
Speaker
fascinating or interesting or thought provoking that I think is great. Like what do I do when I finish reading it? I share it with my friends and I wanna know what my friends think. And then I Google it, right? Because I wanna see what other people are saying about it because I'm fascinated and I wanna see the directions that other people are going in. And so I thought, well, why can't that all just happen in the same place? And can we use that
00:23:24
Speaker
to start to create a community and break down silos because the people who are involved and the people who are contributing are not all writers. They're people doing lots of different things in lots of different ways. So yeah, it's just kind of the thing that I wanna read. And I was like, well, no one is making this. So I wanna make this and I want Catherine to help me make it. And luckily she wanted to.
00:23:52
Speaker
Yeah, so take me to the moment, the conversations and the dialogue that the pair of you were having when you're like, oh, let's do this thing.
00:24:04
Speaker
I believe that I DM'd Catherine on Twitter, probably in all capital letters, and said... I think that it was more polite than that at the time. You know what? I'm pulling it up. Because I have to say, back to the earlier question, like at longreads, we would work together for brief periods on individual stories that I had edited that she was then promoting.
00:24:28
Speaker
but we didn't have a super intense daily working relationship because I was very head down editing and she was promoting a hundred bajillion words every month. I feel like it would have been all caps, but you know what, you could- I'm checking. Either way, I'm pretty sure I DM'd on Twitter and I said, I'm starting a magazine. Do you want to come? And Catherine said, oh yes, I do.
00:24:53
Speaker
Yes, yes. You say, okay, I'm right to be clear. What else is new? It's all lowercase. It's all correct grammar and punctuation. But we're both right in the end.
Bootstrapping and Reader Support Philosophy
00:25:11
Speaker
This is a good story. Because in the first one, you do initiate the idea of bootstrapping a new mag.
00:25:18
Speaker
and that you'd love to be in touch about it. And this is August of 2020. It took me, I think, three hours to respond. And my response was instant happy tears, many exclamation points, hearts, and I love this so much. And then you replied with many all caps. And it's been like that ever since. Yeah, that's pretty much what our entire Slack day to day looks like. That's accurate. Yeah.
00:25:47
Speaker
I like this idea of bootstrapping also. It puts the onus on serving readers and subscribers versus, I don't know, investors or angel investors or whatever. Sure, it probably elicits a lot of sweat and a lot of stress.
00:26:09
Speaker
But it would appear that it feels more genuine to know who you're serving versus some other sort of on-high entity, right? Yeah, I mean, to know who we're serving and to know what we can do and what our boundaries are. And it puts the onus on the reader as well, right? I think we
00:26:33
Speaker
Many of us are very used to just going on the internet and reading things for free. And sometimes that's because there is a powerful person or interest behind it that's funding it or for whatever reason. And that masks the huge amount of work that goes into
00:26:50
Speaker
all forms of writing, whether it be journalism or creative nonfiction or memoir or fiction. And I mean, I feel pretty strongly that we should, I try whenever I can to pay for the things that I consume and find valuable in so far as I'm able. And I think we both feel very strongly that that's what we all should be doing to the extent that we can so that
00:27:12
Speaker
a better journalism environment can flourish and so that people who don't have the means to pay for things have it accessible. But yeah, it was super important to me, and I think to Catherine from the beginning that this be funded by, that it fund itself, that it not be an investor project, that we not go after money and have someone else kind of making ultimate decisions.
00:27:39
Speaker
Yes, and we have big plans in the background for the near term horizon where we're going to unveil a different kind of subscription option that's going to allow more clarity around the two different kinds of readers
00:28:04
Speaker
that we're talking about and that we've got readers as consumers who have very comfy lives and quite a bit of disposable income and a lot of people who read your average magazine are making quite a bit of money.
00:28:27
Speaker
A lot of them are the people who can afford quite a few subscriptions, have it, and want to. And then there's just a huge number of people who are struggling, especially in 2021, after the last couple of years that everybody has had. And that is a different segment of reader who we don't
00:28:53
Speaker
want to come to with a constant refrain about sharing a few of those pennies with us later. Read it for free. And then we will come up with an exchange where there are many ways to participate in creating important work as a reader and as somebody who can
00:29:22
Speaker
be a part of the community. You can contribute expertise. You can introduce us to somebody. You can tell us something we don't know. There are so many valuable things that people can do to participate in growing a community or a company.
00:29:38
Speaker
that isn't with money. And then I think there are a lot of people who have money or access to it who can support that and who'd want to. So those are two different kinds of consumer readers we're trying to talk to. And Readers as Consumers is a really interesting consumer group.
00:30:01
Speaker
in the same way that selling a book is a very interesting product. I used to work with the American Booksellers Association, the Trade Association for Independent Bookstores in the United States.
00:30:16
Speaker
and independent bookstores, real challenging business, very, very tight margins. If you have a 2% margin and you run an independent bookstore in a community that is beloved, you're doing amazing. And you are in the top percentile of
00:30:37
Speaker
business owners who own and manage independent bookstores in the country. So the consumer and all of the publishing players have a really interesting intellectual tradition. There's literature with a capital L. There are the starving artists and the ideas about what writing is really like. And
00:31:00
Speaker
Then there's like a bunch of money on the other side and there are profit and loss statements and there's how publishers break even or don't or profit or don't and what advances they give where and there's still tremendous inequality.
00:31:18
Speaker
between even one writer versus the next or what one reader can afford versus the next or what one press can make versus another publisher. There's a lot of inequality in the whole ecosystem. And so you have to be able to address that, I think. You have to let there be an option that doesn't require money for folks who can't afford it. And then to be realistic that there are folks who can and to reach them to help fund it.
Fair Practices and Publishing Industry Challenges
00:31:49
Speaker
I like this idea of what I what you had shared with me Catherine that in in the interview that you're the aim is to kind of restore what feels broken and I wonder if maybe you two can speak to that you know what you know what feels so broken and you know what is you know what is your mission to spackle over the the cracks
00:32:13
Speaker
maybe restore the wall altogether. I don't want to speckle. I want to strip that down to the studs and remake it. Yeah. There's a total remodel. Right. I mean, look, a lot of things are broken, right? Like for me as an editor and the writers that I work with, like the fact that one, we pay fair rates and two, that we pay on a graduated scale so that you get
00:32:37
Speaker
50% of your fee upfront when you sign a contract because it's bananas that you should just start doing work and work for months.
00:32:47
Speaker
Yeah. And with no, with what? In what other, where else do we ask people to do that? It is normal in other industries to have a deposit and then to pay a balance or to pay upon milestones. Right. And many workers will not begin that work until that deposit is paid. And it's just so normal in publishing that that
00:33:13
Speaker
doesn't happen and nobody expects it and nobody asks for it and so
00:33:19
Speaker
So I mean, there's a range of things that are broken that I'd like to fix. But on a very specific level, that's one thing. The treatment of the people who produce all of the stuff that we read, often for free, and their ability to have a sustainable livelihood that's not 75% hustle. Because when people get, it turns out when you pay them fairly,
00:33:45
Speaker
upfront, they produce really great work because they're not in a constant state of stress and worry about when this invoice is happening. So yeah, I love that we partnered with the Freelance Solidarity Project at the National Writers Union for our guidelines, along with Defector and Intercept, and I hope that we, one, can just help to promote that
00:34:11
Speaker
as a way of treating freelance labor, and two, that we can show that even a smaller place can do that. You don't have to be a giant, well-funded media machine to be fair to people and treat people well. But yeah, I'll let Catherine speak to the bigger plan. Well, I'll give credit where credit is due.
00:34:33
Speaker
Quoting in that interview lines from the membership guide from the folks who are working on the membership puzzle project and that they did a ton of research and got a lot of feedback from people who identify as members of organizations and why. Why did they do that? It's
00:34:56
Speaker
It's totally optional. It's something that everyone wants right now. How do you get somebody to feel like a member of a community rather than a consumer of a product? And that was something that came up in a lot of their research that members and readers and community members feel like something fundamental in the world or in themselves is broken and they seek out membership.
00:35:27
Speaker
in places where somebody's trying to fix it, where you're trying to solve a problem. And that's the fundamental basis of a business, you're solving a problem. And it has to be a real problem and people have to care about it. And the way that you know whether they care about it or not is whether they then
00:35:47
Speaker
sign up for membership for your organization that purports to solve that problem. But there are quite a few problems and no one really argues against that, I would say. Is there anybody who thinks publishing is doing gangbusters right now? Who's it working for? A few people. A handful of people, much like many other sectors of the economy.
00:36:13
Speaker
Most people have some quibbles, have some quibbles, the whole spectrum of quibbles to destroyed livelihoods that say media and publishing are broken. And so trying to come up with different ways to structure
00:36:31
Speaker
a website to structure an online magazine to structure some of these companies that may or may not have the size or the time or the resources or the ability and skill sets to found a nonprofit and then go for philanthropic.
00:36:50
Speaker
or grant support, which we chose not to do. And that was a decision that happened over a very long period of time that went back and forth with waffling. And we came down pretty squarely on the side of wanting to A, of us not having development backgrounds, and then B, just wanting to try this in the beginning as something that we sell to individuals.
00:37:18
Speaker
and to readers and to go the grassroots route that if enough people agree with us that this is a good idea, we'll find a way to make it sustainable. Have you identified what enough is in terms of what will be sustainable? The short answer is yes.
00:37:40
Speaker
The real answer is that I figured out how to class different expenses and revenue in our online QuickBooks subscription yesterday. And so I've broken out our issues. We've got at least one commission for at least our first five issues.
00:38:07
Speaker
And so now I can see much more clearly, thank you to classes in QuickBooks, I can see clearly what revenue was being offset by our expenses for issue one, the same for issue two, issue three, issue four, issue five. And right now, because our scale is so concentrated and we're staying minimal on purpose,
00:38:31
Speaker
I see many, many routes to the revenue outstripping the expenses fairly quickly. So yes, if you start with something small enough and then don't scale or grow until you have some
00:38:52
Speaker
measure of profitability, this is a better idea or at least one that could last or that can go on for some time because you're basing your business on something people want and that's validated rather than I said in that interview that we were referencing founding Quibi.
00:39:14
Speaker
where it's not clear that there was validation that folks wanted this product at that time. And then you can burn through billions of dollars that way very, very, very quickly. So don't build anything too big too fast and you can figure it out.
Maintaining Quality and Sustainability
00:39:32
Speaker
Yeah, I've been reading Paul Jarvis' Company of One, and that's just this idea of strategically staying small and just focusing on that enough, whatever enough is. And it's such a great concept that keeps you lean and small and nimble.
00:39:51
Speaker
And it just keeps you from overreaching. In this culture, we are so obsessed with growth. You got to grow, grow, grow, grow, grow. But what if you don't grow? What if you just grow relationships and deepen the connection with the people who are already in on the joke? That seems to me like a great sustainable way. And the irony is, at that point, you probably will grow.
00:40:17
Speaker
Well, exactly. And I think I'm forgetting who to quote about recommending ramen startups.
00:40:28
Speaker
OK, so I'm going to do one of my classic Brendan Punchins right here. And what Catherine is talking about is Ramen Profitable. From a July 2009 blog post on paulgram.com, get funded by Y Combinator. He's one of those VC guys.
00:40:48
Speaker
And ramen profitable means a startup makes just enough to pay the founders living expenses. This is a different form of profitability than startups have traditionally aimed for. Traditional profitability means a big bet is finally paying off, whereas the main importance of ramen profitability is that it buys you time.
00:41:11
Speaker
And it goes on and on, and I might as well just link up to this in the show notes, but I just figured, why not give you the definition of ramen startup, or ramen profitable? Speaking of ramen, as a small aside, I'm sorry for the digression, but in college I used to sometimes just eat dry ramen and sprinkle the seasoning on top, chewed the hell out of my gums, but it was a quick and easy, and dare I say, very fun snack.
00:41:37
Speaker
Okay, I'm sorry. Back to Catherine, back to the conversation. Here we go. Ramen startups right now. I'm going to find out which venture capitalist is like, I would recommend ramen startups currently, if you're going to create a startup. And that is basically just exactly what you just said, of keep your overhead as low as you possibly can while still producing the quality you mean to and support it. Yeah, I mean, keeping it small also
00:42:08
Speaker
means that we are both doing the things that we are the best at and that we love to do, right? Like I don't want, I don't want to manage a team of editors. I want to edit. That's what I do. That's what I love. Um, and I'm going to produce, we're going to produce better work because we're both doing things that we are both good at and excited about. So for selfish reasons as well, and for, and for magazine reasons, I think it's a smart way to go.
00:42:35
Speaker
That brings me to a question I wanted to ask you guys, Michelle, you wanting to edit and then, Katherine, you wanting to do the thing that you do with audience development and having a very irreverent voice that is incredibly funny and lands on my ear in a way that is just cracking me up the whole time. It's working.
00:42:57
Speaker
Yeah, nailing it. What leverage did you two bring to this scene from your prior experiences that is uniquely a rare and valuable skill that is uniquely leveraged for this venture? I can hear both of us going back into the cabinets where we're like, oh, my past career, the things that have led up to right now, what's in there?
00:43:26
Speaker
I'm buying you time and selling for you, Michelle. I'm girding my loins because this feels, to me, it's still like horn tooting. And so I'm preparing myself to do some horn tooting. I'm like sitting up a little straighter. Tooted. I mean, I think going into this, I knew that I wanted it to be the magazine to be centered on a great piece of long form in every issue and have that be the springboard.
00:43:57
Speaker
that's something I had actually not done before long reads and then started to do it long reads. And then it turned out that I was both good at it and I love doing it and got a lot of great feedback and created great relationships with writers that helped me to say like, okay, one, yes, people are gonna wanna work with me with us on this project. And two, I feel good that I can create
00:44:23
Speaker
the quality or shepherd things of the quality that I would like to see into the world.
00:44:30
Speaker
And that needs to be supported. And that's very easy for me to respond in all caps to the DM and say, yes, I love it. Exclamation points and heart emojis. That's a skill set that needs to be supported. And my work up until now, I have a couple of different impulses, one being that
00:44:55
Speaker
Talented writers of whom there are many and quite a few more than are enjoying spoils because of it. Very, very talented, wonderful people who are putting out work into the world that makes me feel something.
00:45:18
Speaker
which I think I'll stop and slow down at because a lot of things don't. Many things don't make me feel something. It's actually kind of hard. And so when I actually feel an emotion in response to work that somebody has done, that's really incredibly difficult. And then I think,
00:45:37
Speaker
It is a totally different skill set to market that work. Some people are wonderful at both things and hooray. That is great. I think it's more often than not, people are better at the work. Or if they've spent a tremendous amount of their lives working on a craft, they have not spent an equivalent period of their lives
00:46:07
Speaker
learning about classes in QuickBooks Online. I think that, especially in the building audiences realm, people need support. They need partners. Many strong writers would tell you they need editors. And in the background, we're all a bunch of very anxious people.
00:46:32
Speaker
And you need support. You just need somebody to continuously tell you, this is a good idea. I think you should do it. You should put it out into the world. And let's find a way to do that. That doesn't make you go broke. And I think that
00:46:50
Speaker
People doing that work need champions who can understand how difficult what they're doing is, who can understand what kind of support that they need and then be able to give it to them. And I have skill sets on both sides. I know what editors need and care about and identify as one often.
00:47:14
Speaker
I know what writers need and care about and what will help them, especially new writers who need that first big byline, who need that first long core story that we're trying to create for each issue to then unlock the rest of their career. They need that social proof that editors took a chance on them.
00:47:40
Speaker
And I can speak to and in the language of editorial and readership and caring about things and my feelings and what resonates with me. And then I can talk to our accountants and I can talk to legal and I can bind our insurance policies, which also happened yesterday. I had a big day yesterday.
00:48:04
Speaker
And those are a challenging set of things to find in one person. So I spend a lot of my time building up both skill sets. I read a lot of things to hopefully one day be very good at people management so that when, if and when, hopefully when we can have more folks come on,
00:48:29
Speaker
I have a grounding in being able to manage, which is a totally different skill set. So I work on trying to be able to have those broad interests and to be grounded in them and to cover the things that make most people, most not all, most people in the writing community, very allergic, nervous, anxious, or afraid.
00:48:59
Speaker
Um, which are many things.
Emotional and Professional Support in Publishing
00:49:01
Speaker
I mean, look, you, you knew that you had to buy me some time to prep myself to even be able to say that I'm good at my job. And you know, and I will, I do know how to use QuickBooks. Like you're, this is why I sent you the DM in the first place.
00:49:15
Speaker
I will also, even in a meta way just for the listeners right now, if you were listening back at the beginning of this episode, I spoke a lot. I answered the first question for a while.
00:49:31
Speaker
I did that on purpose. Michelle did not ask me to do that, but I did it on purpose because I know Michelle. And I know Michelle's psychology and I know that because I have worked on being approachable and someone that you can tell what you're really thinking about and feeling. And I know that Michelle has
00:49:50
Speaker
these moments in the beginning where she just needs, she doesn't want to be the first one to talk, or she needs a minute. The terrifying, the terrifying comfort of being seen. It's wonderful. Everyone should have, everyone should have something. Which goes away for her.
00:50:06
Speaker
after a couple of minutes. It just takes a couple of minutes. And so I've tried to work really hard on being somebody who has conquered the first two minutes because they're hard for everyone. I
00:50:23
Speaker
And my wonderful partner reminds me regularly that bravery is not feeling the fear. It's just barreling through it anyway and being courageous through it anyway while still feeling it. And so I will toot my own horn and have mastered the ability to feel tremendous anxiety while very few people know that.
00:50:48
Speaker
other than me. Hopefully, we'll see. I hope that I am offering calm to others and sounding comforting or reassuring whether I'm doing it for myself well or not.
00:51:04
Speaker
Well, that kind of segues to something I wanted to ask you guys. Also, given that the pipe wrench itself is kind of a collaborative effort around one sort of central piece, I wanted to get a sense of the nature of your collaboration, of Michelle and Catherine together, and the combination of your powers and what that makes.
00:51:33
Speaker
I mean, I feel like this whole discussion has been a good illustration so far of the... I think one of our joint superpowers is that we both acknowledge the importance of feelings and feeling the feelings. Yes. You have to, I'm sorry, it's the only option. Right, like people have feel... all people at the end were just roiling balls of feelings, floating on an even bigger sea of feelings. And the more you try not to have the feelings, the more you try to pretend
00:52:03
Speaker
that business can occur without the feelings, the more messed up you are and the more messed up your business is. So let's just have the feelings. We have a feelings period. We have it twice weekly video chats every week. We always start them with, you know, do we need to have feelings today? Sometimes we don't. Sometimes it's fine.
00:52:20
Speaker
Do we need to start with feelings? Are we going to table the agenda that we have? And the agenda is very businessy, but sometimes we rip it up because some days you just can't. And then you have to address why not first. Right. I mean, let's also acknowledge that it's a period in time in which there are more feelings than normal, right? Like life has not been
00:52:43
Speaker
easy for the past year and a half. There are a lot more feelings or feelings are intensified. So let's just make feelings an agenda item instead of pretending that they don't happen. I think that that sounds very funny and it is. It sounds very woo woo. And it sounds woo woo and it is, but I think it's also massively important. And I love that we do it and I think
00:53:10
Speaker
we would have gotten stuck at 17 different points if we had not made the space for feelings. And for the people we, and for everyone else who comes into the pipe wrench and bit and works with us or contribute something to have that same opportunity. Yeah, and I think that, I think there are several strengths. One, I mean, our mutual,
00:53:38
Speaker
very large head start is that we've both been doing distributed work for a very long time. Michelle and I have met twice. I think once. That's amazing. I think it was twice. Oh, now I feel bad. Once at dinner and once at the bar. Okay, but that was the same night. It
00:54:03
Speaker
Yes, so that's once. One was in the afternoon and the other was in the evening. I'll let everyone guess which.
00:54:11
Speaker
Yes, we met two times in person in 2019 and had been working together for a couple of years, and now we've been working together for a few more years after that. So we had a massive head start, which often inspires some guilt for me at this point when so many people were thrust into distributed work.
00:54:34
Speaker
unbeknownst to them with no plans or safety nets and or guidance or people who had a lot of background working that way or with documentation or with any useful important ways of collaborating while abroad. We live in different countries so we had a head start
00:54:57
Speaker
being able to do work in this way. And then otherwise we have very differentiated skill sets. And I think one of the important, really important things is that we want to do different things.
00:55:12
Speaker
And a lot of folks, I think, lose out on starting new endeavors with your wonderful friends who are wonderful and charming and great to have in your life. It's challenging to start businesses together if you all have the same title or if your backgrounds and your work skills are very similar to each other. I think there's
00:55:39
Speaker
And I think this is baked into each issue. There's tremendous value in working with folks who know how to do things you don't know the first thing about and don't want to. I don't envy the work that Michelle does on each issue. It's very hard. And I don't think that she envies the stuff that I'm doing that feels very in the background. I don't think that she wants to do it. I don't.
00:56:05
Speaker
It's great. What a wonderful working relationship. We don't secretly want to be doing each other's jobs. No, I think it's the best decision, aside from the decision to start a magazine in the first place, the best decision I made was to ask Catherine to do it with me.
00:56:22
Speaker
Uh, I mean, can you submit if it was just me and another editor or someone who writing, like we would, oh, we would have a janky website. We would be paying people under the table in very illegal ways. It would not be super legal. No, we would have like contracts scrawled on napkins. It could be a mess. It wouldn't be a business.
00:56:42
Speaker
Legally, it would not be great. Tax-wise, it would not be great. And it would die. It would die very quickly. The audience would be like our 10 friends, and there would be like two really hilarious issues, and then that would be it.
00:57:02
Speaker
And I did come right into it from the start of... There's an element of protecting Michelle from herself. She may or may not have an editorial plane that she's like, it's fine with me if I drive this into the ground, right? And I'm like, no.
00:57:20
Speaker
You can fly the plane forward. We can make it go farther than that and then like land safely maybe somewhere in the future. But no, we don't have to nosedive directly into the ground right away illegally. That was a suggestion. And at least here we are.
00:57:42
Speaker
Take me to that moment where you announce what pipe wrench is going to be, and then the moment where you hit publish on your first issue. Oh, God, that was scary. How are your feelings then, Michelle? Michelle, how do you feel about hitting publish on Tuesday again? On Tuesday, oh. We're about to hit publish again. Let's not poke at those feelings, lest they break the banks.
00:58:09
Speaker
For there are many. It was frightening. It was extremely exciting and also very frightening, which is how I knew it was the right thing to do. That's true.
00:58:26
Speaker
Yeah, I was... We both wanted to feel really strongly about our work after maybe having... I mean, Michelle was at the same company for over eight years, wasn't it? It was my eighth anniversary. It was my last day, actually. Oh, poetry. Yeah, no, I like symmetry. I like organization.
00:58:47
Speaker
We wanted change and part of the change that we signed up for, even when we need to set aside our business agendas to have our feelings, is that we wanted to feel really strongly about the work. We wanted to be scared and to make things that were like, oh, I'm in this and my skin is in the game.
00:59:09
Speaker
And we're not divorced from it. It's not an abstracted thing that we put out into the world. And we're not cynical about each individual piece. Or, luckily, in a deadline environment where we have to produce so much volume, that it becomes really hard even the next day. I mean, my heart goes out to breaking news reporters. Even the next day, your work is already yesterday. And you might not even remember what you wrote last week.
00:59:37
Speaker
That's difficult, even though you care very much about it at the time. It's hard to even keep track of your own body of work. So we have a pace that lets us engage with our own feelings and to be able to hit publish as often as we currently can right now, which is every two months.
01:00:01
Speaker
which is a long time. Yeah. But I remember that the very first, like before there was an issue when it was just the kind of landing page and announcement that we were a thing. I mean, I remember pushing that button and thinking, man, I hope that this idea makes sense to literally anyone other than me and Catherine. I think this sounds hella cool, but I've also been locked in my house for 11 months. I really hope that this is a thing that other people
01:00:31
Speaker
want to read, but I think if we wanted something different and new, and I think if we had not been scared, that would have been a sign that it was not different and new, that we were doing something that was same old, that we knew how to do.
Shaping the Magazine's Voice and Identity
01:00:46
Speaker
So I welcomed the fear, and I welcomed the fear that will happen on Tuesday when I push the publish button again.
01:00:55
Speaker
Yeah, and you tweeted a while ago that we don't have a formal background in journalism. We don't have any particular idea of what a standard pitch should be. We started a new magazine because we wanted it to be something new. We wanted to be a home for the stories that don't have a home. And I just I love the sentiment there. And I imagine that that solicited in it in and of itself a lot of very unique things. It did. Like we get I have to say it makes me
01:01:24
Speaker
It's sad that right now we're bi-monthly, I would love for us eventually to be monthly because I want to take more of the pitches that we get because when you give people that kind of leeway and you tell them, I want to hear not what you think I want, but the thing that you most feel that you need to write about, you get fascinating, fascinating pitches.
01:01:48
Speaker
And so, yeah, the response to that, at least from that perspective, has been lovely. And at the same time, you get those pitches and immediately we can say, well, we know why this isn't going to have a natural home elsewhere. We know why this is not going to strike your average assigning editor as
01:02:13
Speaker
sometimes even something that a writer can execute and that may not even finish or get done, but that's perfect. Great. We'll take it. The stretched out publication cadence means that we also
01:02:35
Speaker
We also can take a chance on pitches that seem maybe a little too unformed or from writers. I mean, the writer of the central piece for our first issue, which is one of my favorite things that I've ever worked on, that's her first publication. Really? I read that. I was blown away by it. So we'll get excited for issue two then. But yeah, that was the first thing that she published.
01:03:03
Speaker
And we have a couple stories in the works for later in the year that are, the pitches were sprawling, they're big ideas. But we could say, yeah, we love this and we want you to go even bigger because we have the time to really focus on this and help you figure out how to turn it into a great story. And if we're going to prioritize new voices, they're not going to have
01:03:29
Speaker
multiple clips, they're not going to have their previous working relationships to have taught them on the job, what the job is and how to pitch and how to do it in this standard way. So if we're going to care about folks who are potentially debuting, which a handful of them are, we have to be open to that. We're going to get something where it's like, yeah, you have not read.
01:03:59
Speaker
8,000 pitches in the last several years. Awesome. Great. We've read quite a few. How about we hear from some people who haven't? Okay, let's do it. And then we're gonna get really, really interesting stuff, which can be blended with
01:04:16
Speaker
again, bringing it back to creative nonfiction, that on the fiction side of things, folks work in isolation for a very long time to perfect something. And it's totally different. It's completely different from how reporters build their case to put a specific pitch together. So when we're open to as many people as we can be, because
01:04:42
Speaker
Gatekeeping is everywhere and it's hard to have gone through a formal education or to have a specific set of credentials before that we would need to say our prerequisites to pitch us. That's not going to work. So we have to be open to everything and then we get a range.
01:05:03
Speaker
Yeah, and you're going to hit publish on a story about, you know, Birmingham roller pigeons and where you bet we are. It's about this, you know, it centers on these pigeons, but it's really about, you know, black Americans trying to just have their space and and and just the the sad reality of, you know, that sort of dichotomy that's been in this country for centuries.
01:05:32
Speaker
Yeah, and about the joy and creativity that is masked and lost or not paid attention to when we stick to the traditional American narrative about race. It's a great story and it had so many
01:05:53
Speaker
Wonderful entry points like the the conversation pieces around it are a an eclectic mix that do exactly I think what we were talking about earlier right that the first issue was super thematic and I think that that
01:06:09
Speaker
is inevitable given the topic and the gravitas of that central story and this story I think has more entry points for people to come at it in different ways and I'm excited to see how people respond to the issue, to the whole collection, but the central story
01:06:26
Speaker
Yeah, it's great. I think as soon as we saw that pitch, that was the first pitch where we both at the same time were like, ooh, that's a pipe wrench story. That's a yes. And I keep thinking if we were to distill her original pitch, which was wonderful and really strong right away, if we were to distill that into the log line version,
01:06:52
Speaker
And it was only a few words, give us your pitch. And it's like racism, but then also pigeons.
01:07:01
Speaker
Um, but then also a way in to having this conversation and telling this story, which you could tell again in a million different ways, but let's use the entry point of these fantastic birds. And Michelle and I are like, yes, that that's a yes. That's an immediate yes. Connect those two things for me. And she does brilliantly.
01:07:27
Speaker
I love hearing you say that you guys came to a collective realization that that's a pipe wrench story. And you guys are just on issue too, but it sounds like you're already developing a voice of what you want this to be, an identity of what you want this to be, which is just great. So I love hearing that.
01:07:50
Speaker
Thanks. Yeah. I mean, I think it's interesting, right? When people ask me, people I meet ask me, what do you do? And I say, oh, I'm the editor of a magazine. And they say, oh, what's it about? And I say, well, it depends, it depends on the month. But this month, it's gonna be about racism and pigeons. Like it doesn't, it's a hard, it's a hard question to answer. But I think that we are,
01:08:15
Speaker
definitely honing in on, you know, every issue is going to be completely different topic wise, but the approach that the stories take, and the kind of critical lens that they all apply to whatever topic it is that they're talking about, I think is the
01:08:33
Speaker
is the distinguishing characteristic, and that's what we, and that's what definitely grabbed us about this pitch, right? It was not, oh, isn't it quirky that there's this bunch of black men in Los Angeles who fly pigeons? I bet you never thought they did that. It was instead, which it could have been, right? It very easily. Absolutely, absolutely. And has been, because there have been other stories written about these men, and that has very much been the kind of broad approach.
01:09:01
Speaker
But instead, to get a pitch that said, OK, there's this community of men. They fly these pigeons. Why? Out of all the things that they could have chosen to do with their time, why pigeons? What does it bring them? And what does it teach us about what these communities need and how we can build better communities? That's what grabbed us. And I think that kind of very critical look at the topic is what distinguishes
01:09:29
Speaker
a pipe wrenchy story from a non pipe wrenchy story with the caveat that we are on issue too. So always evolving. Um, but yeah, and those, those are really fun conversations to have, uh, to figure out what it, what is it? What are we drawn to? What do we want to say? What do we want to put out there? What makes the story pipe wrenchy? That's, those are some of my favorite, some of my favorite conversations. Yeah. You get to make that call, which has to be really exciting.
01:09:59
Speaker
It's again exciting and frightening, right? Because the whole issue then is based around this story. So there is pressure to pick the right, right? And it can be challenging to look at all of the things we've had to turn down and think like, oh, was that going to be
01:10:18
Speaker
A lot of the things that we've had to turn down are going to get published in other places, and they're going to be great. But yeah, it is very exciting to get to make that call. And it's that same excitement, terror mix of pushing the publish button for the first time of we're doing something that's new and important, and that's great and scary.
01:10:37
Speaker
It also takes me the longest. This year, the year of 2021 for me has been the adoption of timeboxing for productivity folks out there. Timeboxing is wonderful. I recommend. It's the Cal Newport method.
01:10:55
Speaker
I'm here for it. I'm here for it. It's been working for me. And I can't time box that task where we have a sidebar place where, because of our background in distributed work,
01:11:13
Speaker
This is one of those decisions that we need to record. This is the kind of thing where we want to look back at these conversations next year, and hopefully the year after that in the year after that, where we both defend. Why, why are we backing this.
01:11:33
Speaker
what makes it worth investing in, what's something we have to turn down, and why Michelle spends a tremendous amount of time doing really wonderful work, giving everyone feedback, especially the folks who we spend the longest time deliberating about, that she gives very specific suggestions of where else to place it. And we give as much personal feedback as we can, and both of us pool
01:12:03
Speaker
every publication that we ever read for curation for long reads to think of here's a place that will probably support this when we can't yet because we just can't publish that many things but the documents that we have going back and forth and back and forth writing down why are we deciding this what is it that we feel in reaction to this story
01:12:30
Speaker
let's talk each other into and out of things. There's one we're doing for sure that I had to
01:12:37
Speaker
One of the reasons Michelle would have walked away from it was I think of this as you being the best possible editor for this story. And her nervousness was that it was too close and that it was too right of a fit of editor and writer. And I had to talk her out of that. I think it's going to be fantastic because she's exactly the right editor for it. But we go back and forth for a while and I spend
01:13:04
Speaker
the most time thinking about and writing those for future us and just for each other. Yeah, I'll tell you what the actual skill set that I most leverage in working with Piper and she making a success is that I read super fast. Yeah, I don't. I do not. So that is a very useful. So I do that I do the pitch triage. And then I'm like, right, Catherine, here's what we need to talk about. Let's have a conversation.
01:13:32
Speaker
That's amazing. I'm so excited for what you're up to and the doors that you're opening for the season vets, but also new voices who need that stage.
Conclusion and Where to Find More Information
01:13:47
Speaker
I'm just really just thrilled for what you guys are doing and what you've built and where I hope it will go. So I just want to commend you on a job well done so far. I can't wait to see what you guys do with the momentum you've already created.
01:14:03
Speaker
Thank you. Thank you. And where can people get more familiar with the pair of you and of course, Pipe Wrench itself? Well, the magazine you can find at pipewrenchmag.com. And then we are also at pipewrenchmag on Twitter. And then yeah, I'm on Twitter as well. I'm at Michelle in Chief, if anyone wants to follow me and see pictures of my dog.
01:14:29
Speaker
And my Twitter handle is my last name, followed by my first name, Q6CUSICK, Catherine, C-A-T-H-E-R-I-N-E. And there will be more activity there soon. It's been quiet for a bit, but I have plans.
01:14:54
Speaker
You know, I have to apologize, my intros are getting awfully bloated again. I had this thing where I would just, it was about two or three minutes of stuff, and now they're just really, they're front loaded with a lot of ad-many type stuff. And I know you have the option to skip, and I know I like to have it start the interview far quicker, but it just doesn't happen, it's just not happening like that.
01:15:20
Speaker
What can you do? What can you do? Well, that was fun, wasn't it? I like those two. That was enlightening and a lot of fun to shoot the breeze with a couple of badasses like that. Check out www.piperinchmag.com.
01:15:39
Speaker
to read what they're up to. You might even see some say word Darby action on Pipe Wrench Mag. They're in the margins in their sort of dinner party ethos of this thing of the central piece and then off to the side you see people talking about it.
01:15:54
Speaker
Yeah, say words in there. You know her, she's a CNF Pod BFF. Anywho, thank you to West Virginia Wesleyan College's MFA and Creative Writing for support and to Hippo Camp 2021 for promotional support. Drop that CNF Pod 21 code for 50 clams off your registration. Tell them BO sent you. And to Huang, where would we be without Huang in the world?
01:16:22
Speaker
I'm going to keep eating the Patreon Drum, of course, because that's what's going to take the show to the next level. Having the show be listener supported gives you ownership, gives you agency, helps pay writers, helps me make a better product. Upgrades. Hosting. The show is free, but it sure as hell isn't cheap. Helps me celebrate more CNF-ers and build the community. And it's not like you're getting nothing in exchange for a few bucks a month, so go Window Shop. Patreon.com slash CNFpod.
01:16:50
Speaker
and the audio magazine it is out summer comes out two days from the publication of this episode june 20th 2021 the first day of summer according to my calendar it goes out to every member of the patreon community and if you're not in that community unfortunately you don't get the magazine no matter but it goes out no matter the tier either $2 tier $25 tier
01:17:15
Speaker
You get the magazine. Got it? And you can also visit BrendanOmero.com for show notes and to sign up for the up to 11 monthly newsletter. 11 recommendations including books, articles, blogs, pods, writing prompts, and interviews of course. First of the month, no spam. As far as I can tell you can't beat it.
01:17:35
Speaker
I have nothing really to add this week other than I'm glad the audio magazine is finished because it's a heavy burden off my plate. Now I have to finish a couple other things with this pro bono podcast for the animal shelter in town. I really hone my Hippocam talk and work with my book proposal and editing clients and maybe try to get my freaking baseball book in the hands of someone who wants it. Maybe dust off that old horse racing manuscript from grad school that I think is the best story I've ever worked on.
01:18:02
Speaker
and read that novel that's on my end table and work on that other novel because I've always wanted to write one and go hiking and work out and bake cakes and have abs and call mom and see if she still remembers who I am and it's almost Father's Day so I've got to call the old ball coach, got to listen to the podcast, got to watch that movie you told me about. So in the meantime, stay cool, CnFers, stay cool forever. Bioses. See ya!
01:18:46
Speaker
you