I'll Have Mallory And a Side of Toast, Please!
- blueshiftjournal
- Nov 14, 2014
- 10 min read
You heard me. Mallory Ortberg.
Breathe.
Mallory is the co-creator of The Toast, a general-interest website geared toward women and literary junkies (http://the-toast.net). She has written for Gawker, New York Magazine, The Hairpin, and The Atlantic. She also guest posts on many humor sites, including the wildly popular Buzzfeed.
Right now, Mallory is promoting her brand new book, Texts from Jane Eyre: And Other Conversations with your Favorite Literary Characters. Everyone knows that if Scarlett O’Hara had an unlimited text-and-data plan, she’d constantly try to tempt Ashley away from Melanie with suggestive messages. If Mr. Rochester could text Jane Eyre, his ardent missives would obviously be in all-caps. And Daisy Buchanan would not only text while driving, she’d text you to pick her up after she totaled her car. Based on the popular web-feature, Texts from Jane Eyre is a witty, irreverent mashup that brings the characters from your favorite books into the twenty-first century.
If you are not familiar with The Toast, check out our favorite Toast pieces:
And check out segments from her upcoming book, Texts from Jane Eyre: http://textsfromjaneeyre.com
See what she had to say below in a phone interview with Tyler Tsay, our Editor in Chief:
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I assumed we should just start at the beginning! Tell us a bit about your background and how you got into writing.
Absolutely. Like many readers of the Toast, I was an English Lit major. Then I was working in publishing for a couple of years, started writing on the side for Hairpin and Gawker and a couple other places. It turned out I was writing all the time, and I felt there was some tipping point where I was writing more than I was working at my job! It was a clear indicator that writing was something I wanted to continue doing, so I quit my job and decided to do this instead.
Were you ever editing at those other magazines?
I was never an editor at Hairpin and Gawker, and that’s kind of where it was great to have Nicole come in. She was the co-editor of Hairpin for quite a while before we started The Toast, so she had a little more experience in actually managing a website (which, it turns out, you actually need if you’re going to be managing a website).
Actually that was going to be my next question. So you guys met through the Hairpin?
Yeah, it was pretty funny because it’s one of those things where it sounds crazy if I try to describe it, but we met because I commented on a website that she worked for and we just liked each other a lot (which is not normally how you start a business I think but…). We would always be commenting about the same things, and I always loved what she had to say and vice versa. One day, she emailed me and said I should come visit her in Utah, so I said yeah, that would be great, obviously, but when would I get to Utah? So she bought me a plane ticket. It was very cute, we ran into each others’ arms at the airport and it was pretty clear to me that yes, we were going to be friends, and this was going to be a meaningful relationship. Ever since I’ve gone back to visit her a couple times a year.
Wow, so you guys just found each other on the Internet?
To be honest, same thing for our third business partner, who’s also called Nick. I knew Nick from before, because he was a commenter at The Awl. I actually did not physically meet him until this past summer! Basically, he and I started a business together without ever having met in person, which is a terrible idea, and I do not recommend it, except it totally worked out, and it was a great idea. I’m just glad he didn’t murder us.
Trust me, we’re glad too. So once you all somewhat got together, what prompted you to start The Toast?
At that point, I had already quit my job to write fulltime, and Nicole had been thinking about moving along from Hairpin for a while now. We’d been talking about how it would be really fun to work together on a project, and the timing was perfect. I was already willing to do something fulltime, and Nick was willing to work as our publisher and our lawyer. We had a little bit of money that we could contribute to it, so we just went for it.
You’ve probably heard every variation of this next question, but to satisfy our readers, what does The Toast represent to you?
Yep, I absolutely hate that question, mainly because I’m terrible at describing things. When we were starting up, people would always ask me what The Toast would be about, and my stock response would always be “hmmm… shut up, read it, don’t worry about it.” It’s part a general interest, culture blog about literature, publishing, pop culture, movies, TV, science, and whatever else we find interesting. It’s mostly whatever the Mallory and Nicole gang finds interesting. We joke that our target demographic is the little queer librarian, which is definitely not the only kind of person who reads the website.
I hope not, considering I’m on there all the time. When I was surfing around, it seemed like the website had strong feminist undercurrents as well.
Absolutely, Nicole and I are both women and we’re both feminists, so even if it’s not always explicitly part of a piece we’re writing, it’s always hanging out in the background. Women are cool.
How do you think The Toast’s progress has played out since your inception?
The first things we were worried about when we got started were, “Was this going to be something that six people read and love, and we’ll have to quit after a year?” or “Is this going to be the kind of thing that we can make a living off of?” To be honest, our third month in, we were making a profit, and we haven’t stopped making a profit since. That was a cool moment, when we realize that this could be bigger than just the two of us, that we could make this a company, we could hire people and have employees. That’s been an adjustment – from being this fun cool thing we did to a profitable enterprise with a mission statement and all kinds of official things.
On the monetary side of things, how do you generate revenue? How are you able to pay all your writers?
Well, from day one we were paying people. We didn’t have a huge endowment, we weren’t owned by a media company, and we don’t have millions of dollars of funding, so we weren’t able to offer incredibly competitive rates, but we knew that, if you write something, you should get paid for it. We built that into our budget, and we’ve been pretty proud to be able to do that. Occasionally someone will offer to write for free, and we graciously say thank you, but other than that, yeah, we pay everyone.
We make our money through advertising, and Nick is fantastic at that. He’s great at killing fake ads that might pop up, like “Try this one weird trick to get a flat stomach,” cause those are hard to avoid. We have a target number of visitors we want to get every month, but after that, that’s just it, and it’s pretty crazy because you’d think it would have to be more complicated than that to make money, but not for us.
Well, it seems to be working pretty well so far. So how do your roles fit in? Do you help with picking pieces from submissions?
It’s split pretty specifically. Nicole handles the submissions, and now that we have an assistant editor, Nicole Callahan (because everyone who works for us has to be named Nick, except for me apparently), Nicole Cliffe and Nicole Callahan do most of the submissions work and they decide how to edit them, which ones to select, and how to schedule them and all that. I do a little of that; basically, I have a few freelancers that I’ve been working with since the beginning that got Grandfathered in with me and stayed with me. But most of what I do is write. The majority of the daily writing is mine, so that’s my number one job, getting up and creating content.
Do you have a process for writing these pieces?
Basically, I have a Google doc of a handful of ideas at a time, titles, snippets, etc. and sometimes I’ll check the news, see what’s going on, sometimes I’ll make jokes on Twitter, see what people respond to, but generally I wake up in the morning and just start writing.
I feel the same way. Sometimes I have little phrases of words popping up in my head throughout the day, and I’ll constantly be writing them down everywhere until I actually sit down and write something, so it’s great to hear that’s not just me being totally schizophrenic.
Yeah, trust me, I’m weird. I text myself sometimes because I don’t know how to use notes on my phone.
I do that all the time!
Good, don’t worry, you’re very normal Tyler.
The big question I’ve always had is about the quote, “A willing foe, and sea room.”
Yes! That’s the motto of the site, and I wish you could see this, but somewhere there’s a Google doc of all the names we came up with for the website. They’re all terrible, it was like pulling teeth everyday. They were just the stupidest names, cheesy, boring, and it was the least fun part of making the site. We wanted to narrow down the names to a handful of options that expressed warmth, conviviality, and a little bit of a party atmosphere, and we finally settled on The Toast because eating toast is delicious, and raising your glass in a toast is fun.
I don’t even remember how we found this, but the British navy would have official toasts for every day of the week, so the toast for Tuesday I think was “to our wives and mistresses, may they never meet.” The toast for Thursdays was “a willing foe and sea room.” Like, all they wanted was a willing enemy to fight and room on the sea to maneuver, and I just found that really charming. It’s a little combative, a bit militant. I mean, Nicole does push-ups, yet we’re not exactly out there fighting the Spanish every day. But I really like the idea of us in a room clinking glasses, roaming the seas looking for someone to fight, the wide-open seas. So we like to sit on our couches and pretend we’re fighting in a war.
I would never have guessed that.
I mean, they’re all on Wikipedia, don’t be too impressed.
I was wondering if there’s a specific continuing segment you love to write the most?
I won’t do the Texts From series, because I made a book about that, but I would say probably the women and art history series, just because it’s so fun, and it’s a continual source of delight because every other painting in Western art history has a woman making the saddest facial expression you’ll ever see. It’s funny.
Any specific pieces?
I did one earlier this week that was a lot of fun, “Sorry I Murdered Everyone, I’m an Introvert.” [http://the-toast.net/2014/11/10/sorry-murdered-everyone-im-introvert/]
I was just sharing that with a bunch of people!
I actually shared this one with my mom, cause she’s very into Myers-Briggs, and I was a little worried she would be offended but she liked it.
Especially here at school, my friends seemed to identify with it. A bit worrying perhaps.
It’s just something you hear a lot nowadays, like that’s a blanket excuse for behaving a certain way: “Yeah, I’m an introvert, so I have to behave this way.” No you don’t. But no, I can totally see how you can identify with the desire to murder everyone in a room.
It’s such a unifying idea, why wouldn’t we?
Yes, I would love to slaughter everyone at a party.
Speaking of which, what’s the worst party experience you’ve ever had?
I am attaching a picture that I think sums it up nicely. I am the one on the far left.
While we’re on the subject, my favorite bit has always been Dirtbag Teddy Roosevelt. What was your inspiration behind it? http://the-toast.net/2014/09/16/dirtbag-teddy-roosevelt/
I LOVE TR. He was born to get the dirtbag treatment. Plus I've always had a real soft spot for Taft. He just wanted to be Supreme Court Justice! He was devastated when Teddy ended their friendship! I wanted to end this with a win for ol' Tafty.
If you had a pain twin, what would you make her do? What would she complain most about? http://the-toast.net/2014/09/17/bring-pain-twin-movie-star-names-things/
Answer my emails. I would not allow her to complain.
Outside of The Toast and everything else, you have Texts from Jane Eyre coming out! How is the book tour going?
I’m in the middle of that right now actually. Friday I just got back from New York, and tomorrow I’m heading to Austin. I’ve been doing the texts from series now for two and a half years. It started on the Hairpin and we brought it over to the site. Jane Eyre was the second or third entry we did on the series, before Little Women, and honestly it just sounded the best in the title. It was also the most one of the most popular texts from the series. It was one of those things that took off, and I realized once I had that idea, there were so many entries in the series that I wanted to do, and so many different angles I wanted to tackle it from. It’s been really fun to do.
So it’s not just Jane Eyre in the book?
Nope not at all, it’s got Hamlet, Medea, Gilgamesh, William Blake. Name one of the usual suspects in Western canon and they’re probably in there. It kind of goes in chronological order, and the book is divided into quarters. It’s just laughing at the expense of Western literature, which is my favorite thing to do.
Edgar Allen Poe in there by any chance?
Absolutely. Everything from the site is in the book, but there’s about 50-60% new material that’s never been on the site.
What do you have planned for both The Toast and your writing career in the future?
I have no new projects on the horizon. I will continue to tour and promote this book, keep doing my job, and the beauty is that that’s it. I’m just going to hang out and do business as usual before I head off.
However, we’ve got a new site launching called The Butter (butter.com), run by Roxane Gay, who wrote something called “Bad Feminist” and she’s awesome, she teaches at Purdue. That’s going to be a site that publishes some more long-form pieces, some more essays, cultural criticism, and whatever Roxanne wants. It's going to be our first expansion, so we're excited.
Any advice for our readers? Great life goals?
The best times in my career came when I was saying yes to every opportunity and working a lot, but that’s just me. Gosh, this is the most qualified, crappy advice. Being a nerd is great, stay in as often as possible, watch a lot of television, and it’ll all pay off. You’ll become wildly successful and one day run your own website!
I’m going to hold you to that.
Yeah, that’s a promise; anyone who doesn't have a website up and running in five years can come find me and kick my butt.
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