Terri Favro

The Birth of Canadian Classic

This blog post appeared in The Toronto Star (April 12, 2013) as part of my participation on a panel at the SPUR Festival

"Is Blackberry a Canadian company? Is Midnight's Children a Canadian film? What does it mean to label something Canadian? Does labeling something as 'Canadian' build our society or doom our cultural industries to failure?" -- question posed to Canadian writer-bloggers by SPUR  Festival of politics, art and ideas. Here's my response. What do you think?

When I was a kid, my parents owned one true Canadian innovation: a Canadian General Electric kettle, model K42. Developed by industrial designer Fred Moffatt, the K42 was a fixture in Canadian households throughout the 1940s, 50s and 60s. Moffatt got the idea for the domed shape from a soldier who used the casing of a broken car headlight to boil water.

Even my Italian-Canadian immigrant parents - who didn't come from a tea drinking tradition -- loved their kettle. It was part of living with their feet in two cultures, as so many Canadians do.

Today the K42 has been elevated to the status of a Canadian classic, a perfect balance of elegant form and practical functionality. Moffatt's design was an example of what happens when we do our best work by being true to ourselves - to our own tastes, needs and vision.

Canadian culture is all around us, whether we consciously realize it or not. Think of the work of Umbra's product designers, who manage to even make a waste basket look cool. Or the Blackberry's clenched-teeth of a keypad, reminiscent of the grilled cage of a hockey helmet. Or the Avro Arrow, the plane that almost attained the status of myth and whose destruction people speak of as a type of mechanical martyrdom. All are expressions of classical Canadian personality and style.

Read Sheila Heti's fiction or a graphic story by Seth or Kate Beaton, watch a Guy Maddin film or Russell Peters's stand-up, listen to a Ron Sexsmith or Tegan & Sara song, go mano a mano with GSP, try on a pair of John Fluevog's wildly imaginative shoes, walk around Douglas Cardinal's Native-art inspired Museum of Civilization or stand in the afternoon light in the Galleria Italia of Frank Gehry's redesigned Art Gallery of Ontario - and while you're there, take a look at the art of General Idea. What else could any of these creators possibly be but Canadian? And why would we not want to claim them as our own?

The 'Canadian-ness' of our cultural industries is their strength. Canadian creativity travels well, even when it doesn't wear a maple leaf on its shoulder. Irrelevance lies in trying to be a one-size-fits-all culture, not recognizably Canadian (or anything else). The more we move toward the generic, the regionally non-specific, the blandness of Nowhereland, the more we risk becoming cultural ghosts, roaming the world in search of a definable identity.

Our problem isn't cultural, but demographic. Survival depends on being appreciated elsewhere. Our creators have no choice but to look beyond Canada's borders because Canadians are too few in number to support our cultural and technological industries single-handedly.

But without our creative topsoil - and by that, I mean myths, stories, shared tragedies, cultural touchstones, history, weather and the thousand-thousand indefinable experiences that nurture creativity - we would have no materials to work with.

Our idea of ourselves as 'true northerners' may be more myth than reality, but as myths go, it's a damn good one. Diversity and hardiness, ingenuity and resilience, multi-cultured and multi-lingual lives are part of our cultural legacy, no matter where we, or our families, came from. Those are all good ingredients for a culture that we can be proud to export as sturdily and identifiably Canadian.

Do Canadians find it off-putting that Slumdog Millionaire was a British-made film, set in India? Or that Stieg Larsson's Millennium Series is suffused with a chilly Swedish sensibility, even if the prose is as flat as an IKEA end table? Or that Manga graphic novels and techno horror films were birthed in Japan?

Would we prefer South American authors be less magical and more realistic? Or that Fellini stop being so Fellinesque? Should Zadie Smith downplay her British-Jamaican background? Why, then, do we feel that a creation's Canadian provenance needs to be hidden from the rest of the world?

Fierce, compelling work rises out of strong, confident cultures that aren't afraid to stand up for their own vision of themselves. We are already that culture. Time to stop worrying and focus on getting more creative work done.

My Deathmatch: Uppity Woman Meets Soylent Green

Phew! As I write this, the Broken Pencil Indie Writers Deathmatch 2013 edition has been over for me for almost two weeks. (Final round wraps up at midnight March 10th, 2013.)

The results: I won my quarterfinal match (863 to 370) and lost in the semifinal (4,998 to 5,528). The semifinal was a particularly tough battle, with excitement building as I battled a writer at a university in Albany, New York, jockeying for votes, hour by hour, over seven days. To make the process even more challenging, Broken Pencil required all four winners of the quarterfinals to rewrite our stories before our semifinal rounds.

The experience - good, bad, occasionally ugly - is still a bit fresh for in-depth dissection but here are a few insights.

The Good

• My short story, "Cold Comfort", gained more readers by being part of Deathmatch than I suspect it ever would have if published in a more traditional way (i.e. in a literary magazine). I worried at first that friends would simply click without reading but in fact it seems most did read, not only my story, but both of my opponents'. Lesson learned: readers like to be involved, to have an opinion, to discuss. The online forum might not always have been the most comfortable place for such a debate but a lot of people told me that they enjoyed it.

• Having won my quarterfinal round I win one significant thing: publication in Broken Pencil. So in addition to the online readers, there is also the pool of readers of BP's print edition - and a small publication payment which I plan to donate to a small new (but feisty) publishing venture, Meat Locker Editions, which supports the work of young (18 to 35 years of age) Canadian writers with a special focus on women.

• While I've been a long-time user of Facebook, Twitter and email blasts, Deathmatch forced to me to kick up my game by several thousand orders of magnitude. It was Social Media 101.

Facebook turned out to be a great way to rally the troops  and provide inspirational music and movie clips (the egg salad speech from "Mystery Men", the St. Crispin's Day speech from Kenneth Branagh's "Henry V", clips from cage match movies "Beyond Thunderdome", "Rocky", "Gladiator", "Kansas City Bomber" and plenty of rock songs - "Saturday Night's Alright For Fighting" was a particular favourite.) Twitter/HootSuite helped me push out round-the-clock teasers to the Deathmatch site.

• I was astonished at how excited and involved people became with the Deathmatch, how much support they threw me, and how much they inconvenienced themselves to do so. My network of supporters grew and grew and grew. All over a short story. Amazing. (To all of you reading this, thank you again.)

The Bad

The charmingly Steampunk vote clicker on the Deathmatch site makes it easy to vote: no registration or twisted code to decipher. But it's also easy to get around the 'one person, one vote, one hour' rule. After all, when Deathmatch launched six years ago, smartphones were not as common as they are now and the iPad was still a gleam in Steve Jobs' eye.

In the heat of battle, it becomes obvious that anyone, on either side, can vote from any mobile device with its own IP address. If you have three devices (laptop, smartphone, tablet) you can vote three times in an hour as long as the devices are not all running off the same IP. (Easy to get around, let's put it at that.)

So when, in the dying hours of the semifinal, someone posted on the Deathmatch blog that something called an 'IP generator' was being used to unfairly generate an avalanche of votes for my competitor, I immediately believed the claim. (I'd never heard of an IP generator before that point.) But -- mea culpa - Broken Pencil could find no evidence of a generator being involved. So I am officially putting the cheating claim to bed. I was beaten fair and square.

Having said that, it seems to me that if the voting system is to remain 'charmingly Steampunk', there should be no rules that technology has made unenforceable. Perhaps instead of "one person, one vote, one hour" it should just be "vote'em if you got'em".

The Ugly

Deathmatch is called 'the world's most dangerous short story contest.' But the trash talk is supposed to be about the writing. At the end of the semifinal round, some individuals (anonymously) flamed me because of my age.

Clearly, these tender souls were disturbed by the idea of a woman 'of a certain age' being fit, willing and able to compete (vigorously) in a literary online cage match as opposed to, say, being turned into Soylent Green.

Their ugly invective translated out to something like this: "Harumph! How dare you, woman! And at your age!"

Give me a break.

I think a woman 'of my age' having the guts to take part in Deathmatch is something to be celebrated. I hereby accept the label of 'Uppity Woman' with pride.

All in all, it was worth it and I would do it again. Down the road, there might be a story to write about the experience. Maybe even a novel. We'll see.

Cold Comfort at the Deathmatch

 One of my favourite movies of the 1980s is the Australian postapocolyptic action film Mad Max III: Beyond Thunderdome. My affection for the movie that immortalized the line "Two men enter, one man leaves" may help you understand why I am about to 'throw it down' in a literary cage match called the Broken Pencil Indie Deathmatch.

Like Beyond Thunderdome (and Alien Versus Predator, Hunger Games, Mixed Martial Arts, the Pepsi Challenge, etc.), the Deathmatch selects challengers, arms them (with their wits, friends, live blogging and social media) and watches them fight to the death.

I should add that by "death" I actually mean "elimination". No one in the Deathmatch "dies" of anything but embarrassment or disappointment. Not that that isn't bad enough. That's why I am asking you to be at my back.

How did I get mixed up with this slugfest, this donnybrook, this brouhaha, this game of literary Survivor?

Getting into the Deathmatch was a victory in itself. I sent a short story titled "Cold Comfort" to Broken Pencil's call for entries. Based on that story, I was picked as one of eight writers who will fight it out online, two on two, to capture readers' approval -- and votes. Last year's Deathmatch attracted more than 25,000 votes.

Anyone, anywhere in the world, can go online, read the stories, and vote for their favourite. My fate is in their hands, and yours.

Here's how it works and how you can help me:

* The eight finalists enter the Deathmatch 'online cage', two at a time. Every week, starting on January 21st, a different pair of writers face off. There are never more than two writers in the cage - along with hundreds of readers, supporting or haranguing them. It's utter chaos with the writers in the middle of it.

* Each cage match lasts one week with votes counted in real time, so we always know where we stand. My first match runs from January 28 to February 3. That's when my story ("Cold Comfort") and my opponent's story will go live  at 12:01 a.m. on January 28th.

* Vote! You can go back again and again and vote as often as once an hour, if you are so inclined. You can also post comments (a.k.a. insults, taunts, trash talk, editorial suggestions) that my opponent and I will respond to. Writers have to gather supporters to win the Deathmatch - I can't win unless I roll deep.

Two writers enter the online Deathmatch cage. Only one survives to fight again.

Here's another wrinkle: the "winner" of the first round must rewrite their story before it is posted in their next heat.

Then the whole mess starts again: quarter finalist versus quarter finalist, semi-finalist versus semi-finalist, under the final epic Gotterdammerungian battle takes place in March and one writer stands sweaty and triumphant.

The victorious writer gets an Indie writer makeover and publication in Broken Pencil.

Sounds brutal, doesn't it? But before you think that this is a crazy way to run a literary contest, check out the venerated CBC Literary Prizes. In the judging phase, the CBC posts their shortlisted stories, non-fiction and poetry and invites readers to vote for their favourites and post comments - which can be cutting. Although the winners are selected by a panel of professional writers, they also have a readers' choice award. And CBC runs other contests, like the People's Choice Gillers, that is decided by popular vote.

Why do it this way? To get people involved in the process. To open the door on what was a closed and mysterious judging process. To invite participation and involvement by people besides the writers and judges. To introduce an element of suspense by turning the competition into a horserace - step right up and back your favourite story, ladies and gentlemen!

Maybe the Deathmatch even reflects a growing Darwinian reality in publishing -- but that's a topic for another post.

Despite its name, the Deathmatch is a cakewalk compared to the cage match in Beyond Thunderdome: when a large, screaming, punkrock haircut wearing combatant on a bungee cord comes swinging at you with a chainsaw, death is certain. Unless I find myself facing down Pris from Bladerunner, I should come out of this alive.

See you at the cage, starting on January 28. My story goes up at 12:01 a.m. and remains available for reading, voting and comments until 11:59 p.m., February 3. I'm hoping you'll be there some time that week to hand me a chainsaw at a strategic moment.

Please read! Please vote!

Unbrand that writer!

 Back in the early Jurassic (the 1990s) when typesetters still roamed the Earth, they referred to exclamation points as 'screamers' -- a way for the printed word to raise its voice.

I've added a screamer to the title of this post to emphasize my feelings about the claim that writers (well, not just writers -- everyone) should 'brand themselves.'

I know brands. Brands know me. That's because I write copy for marketing and advertising agencies. I've seen first-hand what branding can do for mobile phones, minivans, investment instruments, Irish liqueur, educational toys, mass market magazines, charitable fundraisers, vacuum cleaners, television networks, cosmeceuticals, pharmaceuticals, neutraceuticals, shampoo, tampons, pet food, diapers, ice cream, yeast infection creams, industrial cogeneration power systems, IT consultants and coffee whitener. But when it comes to books - at least, literary ones -- brand me no brands.

"Don't you have to brand yourself to sell your novel?" you ask.

In the roughly three months since the publication of my novella The Proxy Bride, I have done plenty of marketing. Readings, book club visits, interviews. None of those activities are branding.

Which brings me to the point where I need to use another screamer: branding and sales & marketing are not the same thing!

Sales & marketing, and its sister, publicity,  are sweaty, warm, friendly, time-honoured human endeavours. They are the art of persuasion, personal charm, the foot in the door, the handshake, the business of a 'smile and a shoeshine' as Willy Loman would put it - with  luck, without the death of the salesman. Think of a reading as a free sample or product demonstration.

 Brands are above all that. Brands are bloodless. Steely-eyed. Controlling. They go about doing what must be done to succeed, at all costs, without emotion.

Sales are personal and one-to-one. Brands are Legion. They are the Borg. They are the collective might of the many versus the blood, sweat and tears of one writer against the world, reaching readers one book club visit at a time.

I don't want to name drop, but I'm on a first name basis with Brands. Brands and I go way back; occasionally I was there at their birth. I get invited to their parties. I air kiss Brands. Brands have been very, very good to me.

But to bludgeon a phrase from The Great Gatsby (a novella that knew a thing or two about Brands, its author F. Scott Fitzgerald being a former department store copywriter), "Brands are not like you and me."

Brands are made, not born. They do not bleed, neither do they sweat, swear, give birth, get blocked, develop carpal-tunnel syndrome or go into rehab.

Brands are durable: stubbornly so. That's the whole point of a brand. They stand for a set of values, best described as in their brand promise:

"I, your Brand, promise never to surprise you. I am your brand and I am going to give you the same pleasant experience again and again and again."

Brands are in your face every day but when a Brand's day has passed, it quietly goes into a bin at the back of the dollar store and eventually, to nostalgia sites where people can buy the perfumes they wore in high school and eat candy corn last produced in 1965. Brands don't cry. They simply soldier on in the nostalgic underworld of eBay.

Brands don't have epiphanies. They want to be your epiphany. That doesn't mean you don't care about the brand, and vice versa. There are low involvement brand categories, like shampoo (go to your bathroom right now and count how many bottles you have in the shower) and high involvement ones like coffee, tampons, cat food and perfume.

It's true that brands change. They evolve with their target market, usually after much focus testing and the sacking of various executives. Brands change too quickly at their peril. (Remember "New" Coke?) They don't change after the death of a spouse, a motorcycle trip across South America, coming out to their parents, a cancer scare, their fortieth birthday, finding God, taking up yoga, falling in love or giving up dairy.

Brands endure because they are bigger than any one person: if, let's say, a product manager at Starbucks goes rogue and starts pushing for chicken soup in a cup, the other product managers will walk into her office wearing blue latex gloves and wave some type of electromagnetic device in front of her eyes so that she stops betraying the brand.

Brands have people to stop them from doing things that might hurt the brand. They have product managers and shareholders and PR and ad agencies. Writers have (if they're lucky) people who love them and love to read them. If they're very lucky they'll have an agent and a publisher. Maybe a personal trainer.

There are other ways that brands are different from writers. Here are just a few:

Brands don't sleep with other brands and get all confused about their feelings.

Brands don't tweet overheard conversations on the subway.

Brands don't fall off barstools and get into weepy diatribes about how they should have gone to law school as a fallback.

Brands don't go to the gym to offset all that sitting at the computer. Brands hire trained actors to be their bodies. You can't blame them: the brand has to look good, and it's good for the actors to have a paying gig so they can pursue their art elsewhere, occasionally making enough to buy a writer a drink. In branding, this is what is known as a win-win.

Very few writers are brands. J.K. Rowling is; she's all Harry Potter, all the time - or was, until "A Casual Vacancy". The excellent Scottish mystery writer Ian Rankin might count as a brand; even the jackets of his books look the same, they all take place in Edinburgh and involve the police. You know what you're getting with Rankin, and it's that desire to return to his imaginative world, again and again, that brings you back. This is close to the world of brand.

Even very successful writers are not necessarily brands. Margaret Atwood for example: a great writer, but a brand? Don't think so: during her long career she's done everything from poetry to non-fiction to speculative fiction to Canadian Gothic to...well, you name it. She transcends brand.

Let's not confuse branding with a writer's distinctive voice, personality or popularity. You can have all those qualities, be as famous as hell, and still not be a brand. And why would you want to be? Often, the quality that makes a writer's work so compelling, that causes a reader to sit, and read, and perhaps even to read again, is something very anti-brand. Something that comes from the writer's heart, gut and memory. It's very hard to truly brand that; in fact, it can be hard for the writer to recapture that unselfconscious beauty in their own work if, while they are writing, they are thinking: I must stay true to my own brand.

It's true that people can be brands but sadly, writers aren't rock stars. Books take a tragically long time for most of us to write, making building ROI (return on investment) tricky. And although everyone may want to know what Bieber ate for breakfast, when it comes to writers, your readers are more interested in simply reading your book. They probably like your characters more than they like you. In other words, it's the writing, stupid. (Oh no -- now I'm misquoting George Bush Senior.)

Perhaps, though, I'm being a bit of an old stick-in-the-mud about the purity of brands. Perhaps you, if you are a writer, still really want to be a brand.

Fine. I'll humour you. And so, I offer the Terri Favro (TM) Guide to Self-Branding (2013 Edition). Build your brand in 6 E-Z Steps!

1. Choose a colour palette and stick to it; that's right, all your clothes, all the time, in the same range of colours. (Just so you know, I already have dibs on PMS (Pantone Matching Systems) 185.) Dressing your children in your brand colours is also a good idea. It won't hurt the kiddos to support you, their parent Brand.

2. Assemble a legal team to develop boilerplate that is mandatory every time your name is mentioned. Be a stickler about this: don't just let some pezzonovante from CBC Radio mention your name on air without the proper qualifiers. Be tough. You're a Brand! Make sure you control that message!

3. Make a commitment to providing CRE -- "Consistent Reader Experience." This means writing the same story over and over again, or at least writing stories set in the same place, with the same characters. If you must switch it up -- say, moving from short stories to poetry, or experimenting with a novel entirely written in the second person -- start a sub-brand.

4. Identify your psychographic-demographic cluster. We all know about Yuppies (Young Upwardly Mobile Urban Professionals) and DINKs (Double Income, No Kids), but there are hundreds of clusters. Are you an Urban Bohemian? A Town & Country? A Canadian Elite? A University Enclave? Find out! Then self-identify on your Twitter bio and letterhead. I, for example, could be 'Terri Favro, Brie & Chablis'.

5. Always refer to yourself as 'we': brands always have an entourage, staff, hangers-on, consultants, etc. There is no "I' in 'Brand'.

6. Become an identifiable enough voice as a writer to be an object of parody. This is Brand Nirvana. True brands are so strongly branded that it's easy to make fun of them.