Megan Cole describes herself as a tattooed food enthusiast with an obsessive reading habit. But she is so much more than this! If you’re a writer in BC, you’ve surely come across her in some way—either as the host of the BC and Yukon Book Prizes podcast, Writing the Coast, or as the host of many Federation of BC Writers events. Aside from helping writers, Megan also is a nonfiction writer, with a manuscript, “Nice Boys Don’t Kiss Like That: Womanhood Explored Through 90s Romcoms, MSN Messenger, and First Loves.” I asked her here to answer a few questions for me about working in the writing community and writing nonfiction articles for general interest magazines, something I’ve been told a writer should do to keep their name “out there” between books.

I see you as being essentially the Queen of BC literature. You work for not only the BC and Yukon Book Prizes, and in that role, you get to interview all the finalists for their podcast, but also the Federation of BC Writers. How did you get into these jobs? Were you actively trying to find something that would allow you to make connections in the writing community?

Oof! Queen of BC Literature! What a title! Honestly, I feel so lucky to do the work I do. I was given a lot of opportunities early on by people who saw potential in me and I’m so grateful for them.

Since I graduated from journalism school, I’ve approached every job being hungry to learn. This has trickled into how I write too. I started working with the BC and Yukon Book Prizes as a volunteer. The former executive director, Sean Cranbury, had posted on Twitter that the Book Prizes were thinking of doing a podcast. I have a background in broadcast journalism and thought “heck, I could do that.” A few months later, in my kitchen, while drinking beers, we hatched a plan and I started the podcast that summer. The podcast is now on its fourth season!

I wasn’t actively looking for jobs in the writing community when I was offered a job with the BC and Yukon Book Prizes. I actually had a full-time job at the time at the Powell River Public Library, but even in that job, I was working to build connections between the qathet region and authors from outside the community. I launched a reading series at the Library that brought in authors like Dina Del Bucchia, Sam Wiebe, and Mark Leiren Young, and we did virtual presentations with Monique Gray Smith and Kathy Page.

When I was doing my MFA, there was talk about literary citizenship, and what that meant as part of a writing practice and an author platform. I don’t know if I was actively looking for work that would help me build connections with the writing community, but I think that because I believe that being part of the writing community means creating opportunities to celebrate and elevate other writers in our community whether that’s through recommending their work or suggesting them for events. The work I do now is just an extension of how I try to be as a writer, so maybe it’s a chicken and egg thing? I often say I fell ass backwards into the work I do because it wasn’t something I planned, but I love it and learn so much by working with writers, publishers, and other members of the publishing and writing community.

I used to work at The Malahat Review and I remember both loving it for all the great writers I got to meet and all the insight into writing I gained but also like I needed an escape from the writing world after work. How do you like having your paid work being so deeply entrenched in the world of your writing?

The hardest part for me when it’s all knotted together is separating work, writing, from life. I have to actively work at maintaining boundaries so that it all doesn’t seep together, and I don’t know where work ends, and my “free time” begins. But I guess if I’m being honest, I love that it’s all connected. I love that so many of my friends are part of the writing community. I love that I can be doing an interview for the podcast and a poet will say something that resonates with a question I’ve been having about my own writing.

I need boundaries, though. Those boundaries mean that I can create compartments where my own creativity can flourish. I try not to work on the weekends, or answer emails after 4:30 pm. But it takes constant effort to maintain these boundaries and to create new ones because it’s all a beautiful messy knot that I get tangled in if I’m not careful.

And now that we’ve gotten into that, how do you carve out separate time for your own writing? Do you have any time management tips?

I kind of hinted at some of the stuff I do in my last answer, but one of the things I’ve learned from amazing people like Chelene Knight, is that our writing practice changes, and it kind of needs to. I was a very different writer during my MFA, because I had a full-time job and had to write at 5 a.m. before I went to work. I was a very different writer before I had COVID because now I have long-COVID, which means brain fog and fatigue. I rarely wake up before 8 a.m. these days, and require almost 10 hours of sleep a night. It’s getting better, and I feel more myself these days than I did in August. Luckily I’ve tried to be more flexible with my writing practice for several years, knowing that because life changes, how and when I write needs to change too.

I hadn’t really been writing much at all for many months, but I’m showing up again even if it’s just for 15 minutes. I’m practicing a lot of kindness as I write, and trying not to put pressure on myself. I’ve incorporated reading for about 10 minutes before doing a writing warm-up. I set a timer, and I write for 15 minutes because even on days when I can’t even imagine writing any words, I know I can do 15 minutes. And often 15 minutes turns into 30 or 40.

I think there’s this idea that we need to write for hours on end every day, but writing can look like so many things. I do some of my best writing while making dinner or wandering in the woods, but no one talks about how we need to make time away from the page for our creative minds to work and mull things over. I remember a presentation from a New Yorker staff writer who talked about how he writes for like eight hours every day. I rolled my eyes because this is often presented as the norm but really it’s the exception, and we need to talk about all the many ways writing looks because so many of the ideas we have about creative practice are ableist and require a lot of privilege (and money)!

I also want to ask you about the magazine articles that you write. The latest one was published in Chatelaine, “How Cookbooks and James Barber Helped Me Find Fat Joy.” I’ve been told all writers should do this as a good way to keep their name out there in “normal” people’s (non-writers) minds, but it seems like an insurmountable task to me. So I have a couple of questions.

First: How do you come up with topics to write about? And, once you’ve come up with a topic, how do you shape it into an article. I think an article needs to sort of connect a personal story with something bigger. How do you do that?

I’m lucky because I have a journalism background, and when I was in journalism school at Langara College, an instructor I had, Peg Fong, told us when she started working at the Vancouver Sun she would walk to work and tasked herself with coming up with three story ideas to pitch by the time she walk through the front doors. I applied this to my journalism career, and I think this has helped me as a creative nonfiction writer too.

I have a white board full of ideas for articles and essays. Many of them are too weird to become anything, but when I have an idea, I write it down. Regardless of whether I’m writing an essay for a literary magazine or starting an idea for a manuscript or pitching an idea to Chatelaine, I try to find a universal connection. There’s a great book by Vivian Gornick called the Situation and the Story. Essentially, what she argues is that in good memoir there is the situation which is more of the personal story (i.e., a divorce or the death of a parent). The situation can also be the plot, but the story is the universal aspect, the emotional heart, “the insight” or “wisdom.” Some creative nonfiction writers describe this as the “what” and the “so what.” This is the kind of nonfiction and memoir I like to read, and it inspires what I like to write. Often times building that universal connection is creating space in the piece to reflect back on the “what.” I love to do research, so for me I often use research or insight from other writers as part of my “so what.”

The thing that differentiates what I write for Chatelaine vs. The Fiddlehead (or any lit mag I might submit to) is maybe style, form and voice. And really this is typical of submitting or pitching to any publication. For The Fiddlehead, I knew they’d be into something that played with form that included white space and changes in text alignment, where as because Chatelaine is more commercial I wanted the voice and style to be more accessible. At the end of the day though, in my mind, the approach was similar. I was using my own personal experiences to talk about a bigger topic like fatphobia, or gender-based violence.

Second: Are there any tricks to finding publications to send your articles to? And what about querying? How much of something do you have written before you’ll query? And any tips on querying?

I don’t know if I have any tricks besides the usual stuff. Make sure you’re familiar with what a publication is interested in publishing. Read back issues, read the submission guidelines. I keep an eye out for different calls for submissions on social media. I also try to cultivate good relationships with editors because if you can build a good working relationship, they’ll often be happy to have you submit again. Two of the most important things for getting on an editor’s good side are: submit clean copy, submit on time. I’ve learned that these two things can get you a long way.

When it comes to pitching work, the keys for me are to have a sense of the research. Because much of my writing is personal narrative and research, I try to know what the core question of the piece is and how I’m going to get to the answer, which typically means knowing who I’m quoting and the research I’m including. I used to pitch a lot without having written the essays, but lately I’ve been trying to spend more time just writing the weird ideas I have because lit mags often want finished essays not queries or pitches.

I took a great online workshop with R. O. Kwon about a year ago and she said the most important things to remember when querying is that most people are reading their emails on their phones these days. So short, focused queries are important. Three or four paragraphs max. But just because it’s short, don’t forget that this is your chance to make an impression and give a sense of your voice. Another thing that is helpful with querying and pitching online publications is a timely/news hook. Could your essay be good for Valentine’s Day? Or even Body Positivity Month? I pitched my Chatelaine essay with the hook that it was for Body Positivity Month. I’m currently looking for a home about Leonardo DiCaprio because it’s the 25th anniversary of Titanic. These kind of things help finding a piece a home, and don’t forget to put TIMELY PITCH in the subject line so the editor knows.

You’ve also finished a memoir manuscript that’s currently out on submission—congratulations! Can you tell me about your process finding an agent? How did you choose who to query, how long did it take to find yours, etc.?

It was a real journey to find an agent. This is actually the second memoir manuscript I’ve written. The first one led to the second one, but I did query with my first manuscript and was met with a wave of very kind rejection. When I finished my second manuscript, I decided I wasn’t going to query lots of agents. I knew I only really wanted to work with a few wonderful people. I had pitched those people when I queried with the first manuscript and they had all said that they were open to reading again if I had another project, so I went back to them. I developed my agent list as I read. Most authors thank their agents in their acknowledgements, so I made a list. That being said, my agent, Chelene Knight, was new as an agent when I queried her the first time, but I am a huge fan of her writing, her approach to craft, and the industry. I also knew she’d get my book. It’s not a straight-ahead memoir. I play with POV, I play with tense. I write letters to my ex. She got it and loved it, and it's been a dream to work with her ever since. With the second manuscript, Chelene was the first agent I queried. I sent one other query out at the same time, but that was it. I feel incredibly blessed that it worked out this way, but it really was a journey.

Any advice on how to make it through the submissions process? Are you diving into a new project to distract yourself?

I’m still making it through the submission process. Haha! I had an idea for a new project for a while, but only in the last month or so has it really begun to flow. I recently found out I will be the writer in residence at the Wallace Stegner House in Eastend, Saskatchewan for the month of March, 2023. I’ll be writing and researching towards this new book project which is digging into my family’s history as settlers in the Prairies, the transition from land to property, and the false narratives of what it means to be Canadian. I also cook a lot, and hike, and read. Rewatching Shetland has been a balm for my submission anxiety and depression. I’m also very lucky to have many wonderful writer friends who’ve been through the submission process who have reminded me over and over again how shitty it is. The waiting, the waves of rejection, the worry that no one will publish your book. It’s a hard road, but that’s why there’s chocolate cake!

Megan Cole is a tattooed food enthusiast with an obsessive reading habit. She began writing when her high school’s short-lived newspaper published her feminist opinion pieces. As a journalist, Megan has worked for community newspapers, CBC Radio and Canadian Press. Her creative nonfiction has appeared in The Puritan, Invisiblog, untethered, and Hungry Zine. In her essay “How Cookbooks And James Barber Helped Me Find Fat Joy,” she combined her life-long love of cooking with an examination of fatphobia. As a podcast and event host, Megan has interviewed Michelle Good, Steven Price, Billy-Ray Belcourt, Ivan Coyote, and more. She is at work on her first narrative nonfiction book titled “Nice Boys Don’t Kiss Like That: Womanhood Explored through 90s Rom-Coms, MSN Messenger, and First Loves.” When Megan isn’t writing, reading, knitting or cooking, she’s working as the director of programming and communications for the BC and Yukon Book Prizes. She lives and works on the territory of the Tla’amin Nation in BC.