WORD
ON THE STREET
by Holiday Dmitri
The Booster - Wicker Park
July 24, 2002
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WORD
ON THE STREET |
Back in 2000, less than a year out of college, I was hired as the senior associate editor of Velocity magazine, a popular culture/lifestyle publication in the city, where I edited and assigned articles to freelancers nationwide. Velocity eventually folded. I look back at my time there, and realize in all likelihood, that it was the most fun and most rewarding job I've had to date. My tenure lasted about a year at the magazine, but -- to this day on -- it has been the longest full-time job I've had. I got to write and edit some entertaining stories, was invited to a bunch of exciting events and parties, and met plenty of interesting and talented people. One of those people whom I used to correspond with via email was a then California-based freelance writer named Amy Schroeder. After the demise of Velocity, rather than look for a full-time job, I wanted to try making it on my own. That was when I started freelancing. Around the same time, Schroeder was having her own amusement in the world of magazines. She had quit the copy-editor position she held for four months at NYC's now-defunct hip-hop arsenal Blaze and moved to California. There, she did a little more of the same thing: worked briefly in the editorial departments of San Francisco's SOMA magazine, quit, then did a quick stint at Bay Area's progressive-press The Guardian, before moving to Chicago. I was on the hunt for publications to solicit when I picked up an issue of Venus Zine. That was when we met in person. "Chicago is the best thing that's ever happened to Venus," states Schroeder, 26, the publisher and editor-in-chief of the women-who-rock journal Venus Zine (originally "Venus," but "Zine" was needed to differentiate between her paper and Venus Magazine -- a lifestyles magazine specifically for gay and lesbians of African descent). "For the first time, I don't plan on leaving a city any time soon," she continues. "Chicago has been such a blessing. I couldn't have done it without everyone I've met here. The community is very supportive. I don't know if it's the Midwestern mentality, but Chicagoans are hard- working and very community-oriented." In 1994, while a freshman at Michigan State University, Schroeder started Venus. Then, a black-and-white, cut-n-paste, photocopied zine, totaling 10 pages in length, it is now a national publication with solid binding, nice color, and a readership, according to Schroeder, of 24,000. Venus's focus has also changed. Originally, heavy on quirky human-interest stories, Schroeder's publication is now an open-forum focusing on the work of women in music. "It kind of just happened," Schroeder says. "I was freelance music writing for other publications. And basically, the stuff that didn't get into the other publications -- i.e. interviews with female musicians mostly -- went into Venus." Today, Schroeder publishes the magazine out of her West Side apartment. While her magazine has generated a fairly large readership of mostly college-age women, Schroeder still cannot afford to pay her writers, a goal she hopes to fulfill soon. In addition, she constantly worries about printer cost and meeting a quarterly publishing schedule. "Around the time I was in San Francisco, Venus got its first major distributor," Schroeder explains. "JANE magazine wrote a blurb on us, and all of a sudden we got a load of new subscription orders in. Things were going well and I really wanted to work on it more, but I didn't have enough time. I was frustrated and so I kept switching jobs. I knew I wanted to work on Venus, but I knew I had to pay my bills and that felt like the only way to do it." But Schroeder recently quit her daytime job, her longest residency to date (at a year and a half), to focus on Venus. She wrote the following explanation in the latest issue of Venus: "Yep, I did it again. I quit my day job. You knew it was coming. Seems like every 'Editor's Whateva' I've written in the past, well, since I started writing 'Whateva' column back in 1997, I've in some shape or form written about the poop that comes with the day job ... Yeah, I know, how exciting-like. But the epiphany was confirmed -- just as its been confirmed time and time again in the past. I just can't work the day job. No matter how good the hours, the pay, or the co-workers, I just can't mentally handle doing the same thing, day in and day out. I don't care if I have to work 80 hours a week working random jobs ... I just can't handle the monotony of this thing known as the 40-hour-per-week day job." Sometimes, quitters aren't losers, and sometimes, it takes more balls to say no to a biweekly paycheck than to stay put. I think about this all the time as a freelance writer, even as I barely scrape by, knowing that there's nothing more rewarding or more empowering than supporting yourself by creating something from scratch. I think Schroeder does too. "If you are depressed about your job, try as hard as you can to get out of that situation," is her advice. "I work my ass off. It's stressful. I work at least 60 hours a week, usually more, but I love my life now." It's usually around 4 a.m., shortly before sending an issue of Venus out to the printers, that you can see Schroeder putting the finishing touches to her magazine. "I think about coming into work in a few hours, so what I write about [in the editor's column] are the problems with my day-job." Though now she adds: "But now that I'm self-employed, I don't think my future columns will talk about that anymore." Look for the summer/fall issue of Venus Zine featuring Sleater-Kinney on the cover in August at Quimby's, Reckless Records and Chicago Comix. Side
Note: Venus will be throwing a summer issue release party Saturday,
July 27 at Fireside Bowl with music from Ari Up (formerly of the Slits)
and Chicago's DJ Lady D (of SuperJane). Music starts at 10 pm. $8 cover.
For more information, visit http://www.venuszine.com. |
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