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Catching upJul 14, 2010 | Read

It’s been a busy few months, and not surprisingly I’ve neglected my website. So here’s the Cole’s Notes of my life since March.

In April, I married my best friend and lover in a small ceremony at our home in Vancouver, which was followed by a huge, rambunctious reception on Granville Island. Highlights included Ben, Nate and Julian’s famous homebrew, Linda’s handmade chocolates and her strange and delicious wedding cake, a taco bar, Jen’s visual weirdness that included an illustrated book telling the story of the bride and groom destroying Toyko, five bands including performances by my brother and sister and a photo booth that got a little dirty by the end of the night. (It’s not a real party unless the cops show up, right?)

Just days before the wedding, we scored a contract to write a book for university students based on the work I’ve been doing for Maclean’s, The Globe and Mail, Chatelaine, Reader’s Digest, The Georgia Straight and other publications in which I’ve written about education. So since returning from an amazing honeymoon in New York in May, we’ve been busily churning out chapters while trying to make time to enjoy summer in beautiful Vancouver.
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Sharing the wisdom of othersMar 22, 2010 | Read

One of the reasons that I love my job is because of the community of writers and editors I am surrounded by, particularly my freelance friends here in Vancouver. They are warm, encouraging, endlessly helpful and always generous with their time. I benefit from their help almost every day.

Their support is also why I always jump at the chance to talk to other up-and-coming writers, particularly student journalists. It’s gratifying for me to be able to pass on some of the knowledge that other freelancers shared with me. This weekend I got to do that twice: I spoke first on Friday afternoon to a group of journalists at the Ubyssey student newspaper at UBC and then again on Saturday morning to students at the Canadian University Press western regional conference.

For my freelance friends out there, here is one piece of wisdom I included in my presentation at Saturday’s conference, which focused on crafting pitches. The following illustrates just how much work an editor does before accepting a pitch. The most successful freelancers anticipate these elements and address them in their article proposal. I am quoting this from an email sent by Jess Ross, executive editor at Homemakers, to the Toronto Freelance Editors and Writers listserv:

“I try to acknowledge every query I receive and give a first impression on queries as they come in, sometimes returning a few questions about story focus and so on. If it’s clearly not right for my magazine then I say so, and I try to articulate why. But for those story ideas that aren’t an immediate no, sometimes it takes a long while to sort them out. Is a string of “I don’t know” messages a good response? That’s often all there is to say. I try to be responsive, but I know I often fail.

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That old feelingFeb 10, 2010 | Read

I first saw my name in print when I wrote a letter to the editor of the Penticton Herald while in junior high. It was a passionate defense of our high school production of “Sweet Charity,” which had enraged our town’s gray-hairs with its sexual undertones. Sure, the play featured us 15-year-olds singing “Big Spender” and wiggling our asses at the audience as we pretended to be New York prostitutes, but this is Art! the teenaged me raged.

When I recently happened across that clipping in my grandmother’s collection of grandkid things, at first I cringed. But my embarrassment quickly gave way to what I felt when the letter originally appeared in the Herald: the nostalgic excitement of seeing my name on newsprint.

It was the same feeling I got when I first published articles in my student newspaper the Capilano Courier and later when I published my first articles in Maclean’s. But as I wrote more, the thrill of the byline began to wear off.
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