Well, it’s finally time. The last ivory tower missive I write as a capital-E editor. What, you might ask, is on my mind as I leave Arthur?

The wild blue yonder which yawns precipitously in front of me? A little, yeah. However I’ve known the angle for this thing for a while, and all that falls to me now is to deliver.

I’ve spent the last four months trying to externalize and condense everything I know and think about writing, editing and running a not-for-proft corporation (and doing all three at once) into a relatively accessible format to the benefit of my successors.

The wages of that have been paid in a new layout for our—their, I should say—monthly print edition, a handful of internal documents detailing how to do boring day-to-day shit, and a series of new neuroses I’ve instilled in them about the composition of various types of sentences.

Most of this proves to be of little visible benefit to the reader. While you should probably be grateful that I’m insisting they spell the word “Labour” with an “ou” as is proper, it’s not necessarily the kind of thing you’d notice unless I point it out.

A lot of the work of teaching people how to do journalism comes at some point before the work you’ve been reading from us all summer ever hits our content management system—so it is that even when I am publishing more (in length and in frequency) I’m publishing more behind-the-scenes.

However in the spirit of paying it forward, I’ve designed this final editorial mine as a sort of parting gift for the masses—a thing useful to you, the devoted reader of my work, aspiring writer, or future Arthurian, and not just three people whom I’ve been paid to hang out and drink coffee with all summer.

In the almost-five years I’ve been doing this job, I’d be lying to say I never had any regrets. Indeed, were I able to do there’s a lot of things I’d have done differently. So would you in my position—don’t you pretend any different.

Cause and effect being what it is, that possibility is not afforded to me—at least until such time as someone discovers a way to violate certain fundamental principles of physics. In lieu, then, of mine being able to run a sort of metaphysical spell-check through the last five years of my life, I’ll instead tell you how to live yours.

Sorry, let me rephrase—I worry that comes off a little matronizing.

I’ve learned some stuff in my time at this rag. Not a lot, and not all of it worth knowing, but at least a little of it would seem worth passing on. That’s what I intend to do here—to induct you into a fellowship of knowledge amassed by a select group of shadowy figures who assemble under cover of darkness to engage in strange rituals and speak in esoterica.

I’m talking, of course, about journalists. The Freemasons kicked me out because I’m a woman.

So here it is: everything I’ve learned in the past four-and-some-change years. I wish someone had told me half this stuff out the gate because let me tell you it was not fun to learn it the hard way. 

Shrink your head. Everyone thinks they’re hot shit right out the gate, myself included. You’re not, myself included. You’re probably going to read back the stuff you’re writing right now in five years and cringe, so you had best get comfortable with that idea real fast.

Learning to view your writing in a more detached way is beneficial to it, in large part because it treats it like an actual craft and not a super-special expression of some deep-seated emotional interiority. 

Your work is not your pet. Get over yourself.

If you’re in writing for recognition, this probably isn’t the discipline for you. That only compounds if you’re in journalism. The average reader of even the biggest outlet can probably name one writer there, tops.

Moreover, if your sense of self-esteem is going to live or die by whether or not you win awards you should probably not go for them at all. It sucks to lose, but it sucks more if you’re going to internalize that fact.

The quickest way to get anywhere is to develop a thick skin. Once you’re not walking on eggshells, then the real work can begin.

Develop a crush. This will help with the last point. It’s easier to internalize that you’re not that important when there’s somebody you admire more than yourself. 

Find someone whose work you admire and become completely obsessed with it. Follow them on everything no matter how few other people do. Read all their work obsessively. 

Turns out there’s greener pastures than your right hand! Who’da thunk?

Realizing that someone else is a better writer than you is also helpful because it forces you to confront the reasons why their writing is better than yours. Is it their sentence structure? The elegant simplicity or complexity thereof? The breadth of their vocabulary? The way they play with subject–object accords?

They say that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, so pilfer their style with abandon. 

Write more than you think you need to. Write when you don’t know what to write. Write until you figure out what you’re writing. Write every day if you can. 

The saying goes that to be good at anything you need to put in your thousand hours. Writing is by no means the exception. Journalism certainly isn’t.

Good writers write well, great writers write often. Sometimes you only find the perfect angle once you’ve put 500 words in. Sometimes you have to cut those 500 words and start all over again.

It helps, in those instances, to be comfortable with the idea of writing. Writing a lot, writing for a long time, writing even when it isn’t all that fun. 

If writing is something you do reflexively—when you’re walking around your house, before you go to bed, even talking to yourself in the shower—it’ll become easier to do when it’s time to write to deadline.

Writing a lot also makes each individual thing you write seem less important. This is good when you’re writing at scale, or to the public. 

Your first article seems monumental. Everything about it needs to be perfect. Your hundredth article, meanwhile? Put it this way: I never bothered to note what mine was.

Kill your darlings. My editor said this to me all the time. When they get around to making my biopic they'll present this as a powerful turning point in my time as a journalist where I internalize some deeper lesson about the writer's craft, which is unfortunate because I never learned how to do this. That's why I started a film column. 

Kill fees exist for a reason. Don't get attached.

In some ways this goes part and parcel with my first point, but it’s worth reiterating, if for no other reason than I think there’s no greater instructor than the first time you have to kill a piece.

If you don’t learn this skill early, you will invariably find yourself years into a professional writing career with an unhealthy perfectionist streak and an insistence that everything you write must be published. This is flatly unrealistic. 

I have almost 100,000 words across my various works-in-progress from my time at Arthur. That’s a novel and then some, and you know what? Most of it never needs to see the light of day.

The occasional piece being a dead end is not a reflection on your character or ability. If anything, it demonstrates a level of maturity on your part as a writer if you’re able to engage in a degree of mercy killing.

They say a good screenwriter guts 20% of a script before the final draft. Despite my own reputation for writing long, cumbersome things, the first thing I do on my last readthrough of a piece is unrepentantly carve out paragraphs, because more often than not, I find I’m restating myself or just being unnecessarily florid.

Concision is less about brevity than it is about making yourself as intelligible as possible in the fewest requisite words. Again, this comes down to a matter of discernment.

Stick to your guns. Reading this heading, you might think it sounds oxymoronic, though I assure you it’s not. Let me explain.

Throughout my time at Arthur, my colleagues and I have abided the mantra that “We could have been meaner.” 90% of the time, that’s proven to be true.

There’s a time and a place to be diplomatic, and there’s also a time and a place to drop the fucking gloves. Learning the difference between the two is crucial, obviously, but equally knowing exactly how far you can go in those instances where you can is just as important.

Of course, I mean this in ways beyond viciously mocking the ex-President of Trent University.

When you’re on the beat, don’t get pushed around. Don’t take no for an answer when you don’t have to.

My former co-editor said the only thing you need to be a good journalist is “to show up and ask questions.” 

I’d add to this “Don’t leave until you know the answers.” Be insistent. Get in that cop’s face. Cold call a city councillor. Your reporting will be the better for it, this I promise you.

Pitch everywhere and often. Don’t underestimate your potential. If you ever wonder why there are so many talentless hacks at the top of every creative industry? Know that it’s because more than anything they are better at selling themselves than you. It’s your job to beat them at that game.

Much though you might like to dream of some recruiter at The Globe and Mail reading one of your pieces and sending you a job offer on a whim, the chances of that happening are slim to none. This isn’t an isekai and you’re not the main character.

Legwork is the legwork of the industry. Put it in!

I was lazy for longer than I’d like to admit. I only got a by-line in the 2022 Maclean’s University Guide because my editors were gracious enough to refer it to me when the Student Life Editor asked them to provide a piece.

I got a by-line at Xtra largely because my mom suggested we pitch their Queering Families series. Both of those are great, resume-bolstering accomplishments, but my point is those don’t happen in a vacuum. I could have put it a lot more work and put my name a lot further out there, and in retrospect that’s exactly what I should have done.

Finding your hand at freelancing is essential to get you accustomed to a certain degree of precarity which is pretty much intrinsic to professional writing in this day and age. It teaches you communication skills, concision, time management, and all the things you learn in the abstract as a staff writer at a masthead, only on a much more immediate timeline. It can be sink or swim, but if you manage to stick it out you’ll be all the more versatile for it.

This year is the first year I really started pitching other mastheads, and even then my success rate has been less-than-stellar. All told I think that’s healthy—if nothing else it’s an instructive reprieve from being the biggest fish in a pretty small pond.

Prepare for your eventual irrelevance. Another thing I could have done a lot better. In an industry as precarious as this one is at the best of times (to say nothing of this particular moment) it’s a good idea to know where you’re going to land before you decide to jump.

Whoops, heh heh.

As much as I hate self-promotion, I do recognize its necessity, especially in this of all industries. As I say, there’s a reason certain people are at the top.

For as much as I don’t want to be one of those people constantly plugging their Substack on their Instagram, it is good to actually build up a network in the event you should fall because more likely than not, it will happen to you at some point!

Build on your momentum while you can. Pitching goes hand-in-hand with this, but it also means continuing to work on stuff even when you’re not being paid for it. Reader retention is essential to going it alone in this industry, and it’s generally easier to retain readers if you’re consistently publishing accessible (and FREE) content for them to engage with.

The same thing everyone tells you when starting YouTube is true if you go into writing: Consistency goes a long way. 

This is the bit where I tell you to subscribe to my Substack and to my Medium! I promise I’ll get better at posting there! 

Being a writer these days is a lot about building a brand image, for better and for worse. Personally, I’d much prefer to have a couple hundred (or thousand, or tens of thousands) loyal acolytes if and when I publish my debut novel.

The best prose in the world does nothing if you have no one to read it. Ultimately it’s having an audience to sell it to that will make this venture sustainable in the long term.

Oh God. Am I going to have to make a LinkedIn?

Never, EVER do a master’s degree. I don’t care how you’ve convinced yourself it’s the right decision, it’s not. You’re better off moving halfway across the world to a country whose language you do not speak, couch-surfing while working a menial office job and writing freelance columns for lifestyle magazines than pursuing graduate-level education.

At least you would be twenty years ago. I don’t know if they publish glossy paper full-colour Japanophile magazines in the United Kingdom anymore.

Regardless, the point stands that there are much more productive things you could be doing with your time than paying upwards of tens of thousands of dollars for a piece of paper.

I know this firsthand! I made this mistake! I’m miserable and unconvinced of the actual utility of my degree. Please, kids, don’t be like me.

It could always be worse, I suppose. I could be doing an MFA.

Of all the pieces of paper conferred by institutions of higher education, an MFA might just prove the most worthless. Sure, writing is a skill which can be developed like any other, but the majority of creative writing programs just serve to homogenize their students’ prose and diction. You can smell an MFA book a mile off.

You know who doesn’t have an MFA? Sally fucking Rooney, maybe the most famous it-girl author of the moment. You’re better off sparing yourself the trouble and using those $35,000 (or however much a NYU MFA costs these days) to subsist for a year while you sit down and actually write a novel (or better yet, two!).

At least then you’ll actually have something to pitch publishers.

This is doubly true for journalism. If you’re going to do a master’s degree in journalism, it probably shouldn’t be because you intend to do journalism, because at the point in your life where you’re thinking about getting a master’s degree, you should already be doing journalism.

Remember what I said about legwork earlier? A degree is no substitute for actual newsroom experience, and any talent recruiter who’d tell you otherwise is out of their mind.

Even the best writer produced by an MFA program is probably not ready for the culture shock of working with a bunch of foul-mouthed reporters constantly working to deadline. A thick skin doesn’t even begin to cover it—if your fingers aren’t rubbed raw from your pen yet you still have hours to put in.

A master’s in journalism is great for teaching other people who want to do a master’s in journalism, and that’s about it.

To conclude, learn from my mistakes and learn from your own. If you never have the sense of having failed at something, you’re probably doing something wrong.

The thing I kept telling myself (and others) in my last year at Arthur was that I wanted to leave it better than I found it. 

That doesn’t mean that tomorrow the new editors are going to be churning out stuff of the calibre that it took me almost five years to cultivate. That kind of thing doesn’t come with a title, it comes with time.

What it does mean is that I hope I’ve set them up for success. Writing is a process more than anything else. It doesn’t start and end with the first and last word in one piece. You can trace the last word you’ve just written to the very first you ever put to page. Everything in between is the story of your self-improvement.

You learn nothing if you don’t move forward. That’s not to say you’ll never face challenges along the way. This is a thing that—in order to get good at—you must work at for the rest of your life. 

Rather, what I hope, as a mentor, is to provide the tools to the next wave of writers that they might move forward with a greater degree of ease. It’s by putting down ladders behind us that those who follow are able to climb even higher than we did. 

In the meantime, we gotta keep on truckin’.

𝄌

Evan Robins @ Arthur, 28 May 2021–31 August 2025