As you may have noticed, we didn’t get around to doing MY favourite posts in our little birthday celebration, so I will now list them for you, and talk a little bit about how they came to be.
1. Knight of the Swan, by Molly Minturn:
When Molly sent this to us, I handled it like a little tiny baby bird, because it was so complete and well-written and generous, and I was so grateful that it came to us, and not somewhere else. It was the first piece on The Toast to get picked up by Longreads and Longform, which I had been gunning for (hence putting “a longread” in the title, in hopes they would notice it, you should try that!), and from an editing point of view, my job was to make sure she had talked to anyone in her family she felt should sign off on the narrative, and to do the most minor of tweaks. I think the only thing I really did was change the ending, which sounds like a much bigger deal than it is. I find that authors often have a powerful, elliptical sentence that gets to the heart of the piece, feel dorky about it, back off, and then write an extra paragraph being “so, in summation,” and as an editor, your job is to get rid of that part, and then feel secretly happy whenever anyone says “oh, that ending was so great.”
2. Texts from William Blake, by Mallory Ortberg:
I decided to only allow myself one Mallory piece in this list, because, oh, man, right? I will not get gushy about Mallory’s creativity, I just want to talk about Texts from William Blake. We’re not giving you any more Texts From for free, because you have to wait and buy the book, but this one is probably my favourite (okay, technically, my favourite is Texts From Little Women, but that’s not a Toast post.) What I love about Texts From is how devastatingly clever they are, honestly. I mean, it’s “texts,” so someone who didn’t know Mallory might be “those kids, ripping off classic works of literature with their teeny attention spans,” but LOOK at William Blake. Look at it!
I drew you something
oh wow
is it horrifying?
no
do you promise?
William?
do you promise me that it’s not horrifying?
i drew you something
William
you know what I mean
what do you mean by horrifying
is anyone being
flayed alive in it
or committing suicide
or does something have eyes that shouldn’t have eyes
you know what I mean
horrifying
never mind
sorry i bothered you
Happily, Holt appreciated her vision and swallowed the whole thing as-is, like a terrifying snake in a William Blake painting. I have never edited a Texts From. There is no need. I am as excited as you are when I see one on the schedule. I am a Mallory Ortberg superfan.
3. The Stages of Being Biracial (If You’re Me), by Jaya Saxena and Matt Lubchansky:
These crazy kids! These crazy, wonderful kids. They’re so in love, they’re so talented, they make beautiful work together. Obviously, I’m crazy about Dad Magazine, and Matt is the illustrator behind the classic Street Harassment masterpiece, but this one is just so sweet and goofy, and also makes no attempt to be “This is What It Means to be Biracial,” it’s just Jaya’s own story. With that drawing of little baby Jaya.
4. When We Wore Foundation Garments, by Mary J. Breen:
Mary Mary Mary Mary J. BREEN. I would run one every week if I could. Hers is a voice I’m so proud to have on the site: smart, thoughtful, self-aware, darkly-funny, and a glimpse into a whole era of being a woman that can be tricky for us to access. And I love, too, the moment when I offhandedly said that she had called us “young ladies,” and Mary emailed me (not wanting a correction, mind you!) to say that actually, she would never say “young ladies,” because even though we all do this merry retro reclaiming thing now, which is totally fine, she and her compatriots spent years and a lot of emotional capital to be called “women,” so for her, it’s a different experience altogether. And I liked that, because it also reminds you not to go on auto-pilot with “older women relate to younger women like THIS,” there is no one thing. Her pieces have covered religion, and sexuality, and childhood, and this one (my particular favourite) is a perfect recounting of the experience of being a young girl observing your mother’s friends. What it’s like to see your mother as a person who interacts with other people, to get glimpses of what her non-motherness might be like. I love that.
5. Joanne’s Story, by Joanne McAlpine:
I’m biased here, because this is my aunt, and she is one of the best people in the world, and someone I try to emulate. I’ve never met someone who tries so hard to live up to the ideologies she preaches, and I find her generosity and tirelessness and kindness and ENERGY intensely inspiring. I also wanted to have a piece about abortion on our very first day, because being Officially Pro-Reproductive Rights is something Mallory and I put down in every checklist and Google doc and email chain when we were getting started.
This piece, and Jessica Valenti’s and Anne Helen’s (my kingdom for a post where I can discuss ALL the pieces I love), were left untouched, for the most part. I had asked my aunt to write this for us, because we had a long conversation about it on her back deck, looking at the water, and she did the dither-dither thing people who are not officially “writers” do about writing things, and I promised that I would make it publication-ready, no matter what, and then she sent it to me, apprehensively, and I moved…one comma? It didn’t need anything. It was perfect. When an author gives me a really personal piece, the only editing they tend to need is encouragement: “This will be great.” “I will block anyone who calls you a murderer.” “Women will be helped by your writing.”
Thanks, writers who have let us put your more personal work into the world. Thanks, all of our writers!
Bonus Round:
One of my favourite editing experiences was “Are You There, God? It’s Me, MacGyver”, because the writer and I wanted to make sure it could in no way be construed as trans*phobic (I mean, there are men who get their period, right, we didn’t want the joke to be “hahahahaha a man gets a period that’s funny”), but, at the same time, it’s about MacGyver, and about MacGyver getting a period, so it was vaguely surreal to be very earnestly exchanging emails about whether MacGyver is genderqueer or trans* or secretly a woman and eventually arriving where we did.
Okay! What were yours?
Tags: business, editing, meta, nicole and mallory, popular and notable posts
This is fantastic! I’m so glad to remember some of the best posts and to see some I had missed, too. Anne Helen Petersen’s is definitely one of my favorites. Also Jessie-Lane Metz’s Ally Phobia piece. The “She said, she said,” which I think used to be “Advice from Two Disparate Persons” posts, always get me. OH, and obviously MISANDRIST LULLABIES.
Misandrist lullabies is so fantastic, but then again I’m someone who just generally points to Mallory’s writing and tell people to read. I also have a soft spot for her take on the Giving Tree.
Nicole doesn’t have to get gushy about Mallory’s creativity because WE WILL.
INDEED
I am still sick even unto the point of death (I CAN SEE WHITE SPOTS ON THE BACK OF MY THROAT), but your kindness warms the heart of this invalid.
Hi Mallory,
I had your exact same symptoms last week, swollen glands, white patches, etc, and it was strep throat and they gave me Augmentin and in only one day I felt much better!
If it’s strep I highly recommend eating frozen blueberries (other frozen fruits are fine, but blueberries feel the most soothing).
signed,
a lady who constantly had strep throat as a kid and knows the hell of which you speak
Ugh, white spots? I suspect that’s the pox that Christopher Kimball puts on those who know.
To get rid of the test kitchen pox, you have to flout common-sense kitchen-science rules: scramble three eggs HARD in a dry non-stick pan. Use a metal fork to stir them. Spoon them out onto a cold plate and then and only then, when it’s too late, add not enough salt.
The invisible malevolent spirit-throat he has wrapped around your own throat will shrivel and fall away, now a harmless husk, and you’ll feel better almost immediately.
Anne Helen Petersen. I follow her near-obsessively on FB and Twitter. She once “liked” a comment I left on one of her Facebook posts and I grinned the rest of the day. She’s such a great writer and the Celebrity Gossip, Academic Style stuff is SO interesting.
strongly agree
also the DUI series!
So honored to be on this list! Nicole and Mallory are the greatest.
This is “like asking someone to pick who’s hotter
his half-sister or his cousins
it’s literally impossible”-Lord Byron
“Things I Won’t Do to Make Your Space Less Racist” will always bring me joy.
Well played.
oh man, I had forgotten about Knight of the Swan. Such a powerful piece. (This obviously means I have to reread it and get all weepy at my desk again. Toast!!!1 *shakes fist*)
me too!
Cut From the Classics! especially the footnotes. And that first Feel The Burn challenge for beginners, which I still do. And AHP’s first post, and Bird of the Month, and What Abortions Should be Like. But I have a huge soft spot also for Taylor Swift and My Mom, which was just brilliant.
What Abortions Should Be Like! That one had me floored. Such a good read.
That was my first favorite Toast post. I am nearly positive it lost me friends on Facebook.
Je ne regrette pas.
Sometimes when I am having a bad day I go re-read “Justice Scalia Yawns.” I always promise myself I will get all the way through without collapsing into a giggle fit, and I always fail.
Oh yeah, how could I forget Feel the Burn!!!!!!!!
I pinched a nerve in my shoulder and had to stop Burning until it quiets down. Nicole, I pay you my highest compliment: I really really can’t wait to start doing chair dips again.
(But not Burpees. To hell with Burpees.)
No! Pinched nerves are the worst. I have had a lot of relief for pinched nerve problems from strength training. Mine were lower back/hip, not shoulder. But maybe it could help! If you can move, that is. Hope you feel better.
And yeah, burpees are stupid.
Oh, I’ll be fine and yeah, I’m betting that target-strengthening those muscles will help reduce future flare-ups. (I have recurring back, hip, and shoulder problems stemming from an accident a few years ago.) But really what I’m getting at is how approachable the for-beginners Feel The Burn was: I’m downright eager to get back to it.
Nicole, I LOVE how seriously you took the potential for transphobia in the MacGyver piece. Care like this is why I love The Toast.
ME TOO. Finally, a place on the internet where people do some gosh-darn thinking before posting.
Right? I started reading it quite uneasily, feeling my way along the walls of the piece the way you feel your way through a dark corridor. Then partway in, I remembered where I was and realized there would probably not be any thoughtless stumbling blocks.
Agreed, Nicole was great on this.
I wrote this piece and I couldn’t imagine writing it elsewhere. Nowhere would I trust as much as The Toast for something that was, for all intents and purposes, the kind of piece where one last minute editorial tweak could have turned it into an unholy phobic monster.
The joke (MacGyver + all the cool and painfully researched things you can do with menstrual-related items) existed perilously close to a transphobic place where the joke was man menses, and well, that would be utter shit. So, it was really great to know that I was writing for a place that would intrinsically understand what the joke was and wasn’t about. It’s something near and dear to me (my son is a transman).
And never have I had the pleasure of discussing something as weird as “MacGyver enters menarche” with such earnest sincerity. And I’ve written some really weird shit.
So, what I’m saying is, your fondness for the editorial process we shared is reciprocal, Nicole!
A+ to both of you. It was a brilliant piece.
I also have a huge soft spot for Sailor Jupiter, Gender Expression and Me, because apparently “making me overly emotional at work” is the way to my heart.
(and Sports Day! that was wonderful.)
I just spent a good chunk of time rereading the comments under Texts from Little Women and then I got to the bottom and something about that particular article made all the spam comments generate with phrases like “spell casters.” It’s odd, but amusing.
I can’t WAIT for the Texts From… book, I’ll definitely be getting that. And I’m definitely going to spend a good bit of time today reading through these posts, revisiting the ones I’ve already read and enjoying the ones I haven’t for the first time. I make an effort to read everything the Toast produces, but some slip through the cracks when I get busy, and then become little gems that I can find later.
Some very good posts, indeed.
Again, I have removed lines of invisible code from your comment before approving it. Please stop putting sketchy-looking invisible code in your comments.
NICOLE
YOU ARE TOO NICE
I checked this person out and I was like “Uh, obviously a spambot! all their comments are in Portuguese with random names of video games!” But then I realized those were other IntenseDebate comments on Kotaku Brasil and this is clearly a real person.
So, real person, if your computer is appending random sketchy code to your comments, you might want to run a thorough virus scan?
Just everything, like, all of them.
More specifically though, aside from Texts From and Misandrist Lullabies, I like Adwoa Asiedu’s beauty column the bessssssst, and Alexis Coe’s history post on the Crafts from yesterday.
and the creepy lil short story about the girlfriend who had to look after the woods ETA I’m sorry my darling whoever wrote that but I’m not sure I remember who it was correctly (I have triplets, and therefore no memory beyond earlier today)
Search engine reveals it was indeed my dear C.B. Blanchard who wrote “Someone Has To”.
It was. It was me.
I am always here.
I’m even going to paint my fingernails, which humans can see, instead of just my toenails! It might not sound like a high compliment to an author, but I ASSURE YOU it is.
I love this look inside the great Toastbrain!
The Sherlynn Hicks essay about the playboy club, Mallory’s Oscar Wilde met Walt Whitman piece, the convos with cross-dressing civil war reenactors, Anne Helen Peterson, the latkes piece, Middlemarch book club… so many.
Oh YES the Playboy Club, and the latkes one was soooo good!
The Toastiversary!! I’ve spent a really incredible amount of time these past 6 months laughing at Mallory’s history posts and Nicole’s burning love for Beelzebub Krav Maga and her Canadian patience.
But as for faves: THE WHOLE HISTORY CATEGORY, THOUGH. I could read every post here forever.
Also, thank you for letting me write about butts and Kenneth Branagh. JOY OF MY LIFE.
TRUE FACTS: Your piece about butts and Kenneth Branagh is MY favourite Toast piece. Thank you from the bottom of my pervy Shakespeare loving heart.
It’s hard to choose favorites when every day brings something riveting or moving or hilarious, but my list would certainly include Jane Hu’s How Not to Take the GRE with a Non-standard English Name, which made me consider whole aspects of institutionalized racism and sexism I’d never noticed before. So infuriating! So well-considered.
Those Hey Ladies!! emails deserve a mention
My daughter and I KNOW those ladies
YES.
OH MY GOD YES
Mary J. Breen, not only do I love your writing, but When We Wore Foundation Garments spurred me to sit down with my mother and ask questions – and take notes! – about her mother, whom I mentioned in the comments there. Now I know a good deal more about my family’s history, and specifically how my blind grandmother, living alone, managed to deck herself out in vividly colored dresses and sandals with stacks of matching bracelets, earrings, brooches every cocktail hour. Thank you for that.
I just last weekend discovered the interview from September with Rainbow Rowell about Eleanor & Park being challenged in Minnesota. It was so great to get her thoughts on the kerfuffle and I kept wishing that I had found it a few months ago because I loved seeing how many other people love that book like I do.
KENDRA WELLS GIRL TIPS! Every time a new one comes out, I am so happy for the rest of the afternoon!
Oh, and Alexis Coe’s pieces on overlooked women in history. Fascinating!
DAD MAGAZINE. All of them. Comments sections (naturally) included.
Besides the so-many-impossible-to-choose, and because they haven’t been mentioned, open threads have been pretty fantastic in the first 6 months. It’s like they got transferred over from [website name redacted] with so much care that they had been thriving in their packaging and when they were unwrapped they bloomed out and continued to flourish naturally, beautifully, savagely.
I love the open threads, even though they mean I get no work done on Fridays. My new year’s resolution for 2014, which I have been pretty okay at complying with so far, is to never read the comments! with the single exception of The Toast. As much as I love the features on this site, the comments section on this site just manages to make my day every single day no matter how shitty everything else is. Thank you all for saying terrific things, all the time!
You make incredible sense. Your priorities are objectively correct.
Femslash Fridays have become my whole reason for living! (But if I had to pick just one, I’d have to go with Sansa/Brienne, as it blew my mind both thoroughly and irreversably.)
It was. It was me.
I am always here.
TRUE FACTS: Your piece about butts and Kenneth Branagh is MY favourite Toast piece. Thank you from the bottom of my pervy Shakespeare loving heart.
Oh wow, how did I miss The Knight of the Swan? Wondrous, magical, thank you mminturn! And yes, Texts from, a thousand times yes. I occasionally text them to my BFF and let him guess who they’re from. (I have a great love for Texts from Lord Byron: UGGGHHH MY LIFE).
And thank you Toast for publishing my first ever thing on the Internet! And for your all-around greatness, which makes the Internet worth having, pretty much.