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The cool thing about writing is that you can do it heavily disguised. In spy novels, the spooks put handkerchiefs over the mouthpieces of their phones to disguise their voices, and in this day of cellular technology I can only imagine that it's getting harder and harder for the poor bastards to hide their real identities from the other multi-identitied baddies they are stealing secrets from. But as writers, we don't have to worry about that. The process of putting words down allows us the time and thought needed to find whatever voice we want. It's bloody difficult to convince people that the voices we're wearing are authentic - that's the hard part (much harder than leaving messages in dead letterboxes or watching someone from behind a newspaper), that's where research, reading, thought and having a good brain come in. But the thrill of being able to adopt a persona on paper makes the slog so damn gratifying!
Magazines offer the aspiring writer-spy the opportunity to adopt a million different voices, because they cater to specifics: go-getter-women-with-diposable-income; socially-conscious-label-junkies-with-an-eye-for-design; slightly-flabby-white-men-with-no-idea-how-to-cook. All of these types have magazines that cater to them, and we magazine writers are the lucky few who get to infiltrate their worlds for the duration of the story, adopt their voices and, once the edits are done and the invoices sent, slip out again, clutching our cash and dictaphones.
There are seminars you can attend which teach you how to write for women's magazines. The main lesson, as far as I can gather, is that you mustn't use words like poes and shit, and always remember: your reader is looking to you, the writer, for guidance. Even if, underneath it all, you are scared shitless, you need to make it sound like you know how to satisfy your man, how to apply lip-liner in the car, and how to lose 20 kilos in just three weeks. The best way to do this is to adopt a self-consciously flippant tone, make frequent references to your gay best friend, or to your useless boyfriend who has absolutely no idea of how to use a dishwasher, and make a point of the fact that, as an empowered woman, you may not enjoy waxing your legs, but what the hell, everyone else is doing it, and it's your choice.
If you work for a youth magazine, you get to use the words shit and poes all the time. In fact, the more times you cram them into your sentences, the better. These worlds give you an "edge" and make you sound "gritty". Both of those are good things. You also need to reference pop culture films, books and albums. It's very cool if these films, books and albums are made by ex-junkies and feature female characters or singers who wear their hair in pigtails and frequently change its colour. Youth culture is all about being sexy. Because most of the youth don't actually have that much sex, you need to convince your reader that you, and the people you write about, have sex all the time (sometimes with each other) and that if they buy your magazine, people will want to shag them. Even though The Face declared irony dead well over a year ago, keep your tone dry, and hope to god that that particular issue (a) never made it over here and (b) was so bloody expensive that none of your youthful readers were able to afford it anyway.
If you work for a men's magazine, you need to be comfortable with farts, vomit and pooh. All of these will be your subject matter. You also need to be able to look critically at a story written by a writer from the USA or UK, and be able to remove all cultural references and replace them with South African ones. Try to include lesbian sex in as many of your stories as you can.
The point that I'm tying to make here is that magazine writing is fun. In academic writing you have to make a science out of things that are totally illogical and complicated and groovy like African Government and Law, or Keats or the Human Brain. In news journalism you have to present facts, tell the truth, and be insightful. In magazine journalism, as long as you can adopt the voice that is expected of you, you can go on a rant and tell people exactly what you want them to hear. It's unbelievably liberating, as a writer, to know that you've got about two thousand words, and as long as you say it properly, what you choose to say is entirely up to you.
Magazine journalism is fun. Magazine publishing is not. The deadlines are lousy, and (most of the time) the pay is even worse. Editors often mess with your stuff, and payment usually comes only three months down the line. In the past few years the South African market has been flooded by international titles, full of licensed content, which have the money and resources behind them to give local titles a real run for their money. When cigarette advertising was banned, local magazines took a real beating, and we're now faced with the prospect of losing alcohol clients as well. We're all bickering over the pie, and the slices are getting smaller and smaller as more and more titles seem to appear weekly. Our readers have more and more to choose from, and not necessarily more money to spend. It's not pretty. It's certainly not sexy. It's actually rather scruffy.
Don't get me wrong: choice is a good thing. It forces local magazines to innovate, to try new areas and to take more risks. Covers need to stand out in the sea of glossy women with white teeth, barely hidden nipples and fabulous hair. Content needs to be smarter, more relevant, and more exciting than the pages full of shleb-celebrity interviews, syndicated columns and generic lists that you feel like you read three months ago in the same magazine under a different title and with different photos. As budgets are slashed, and book sizes go down, local magazines are forced to get as creative as they can with the few pages they have, and the writers and photographers who will work for love, and not necessarily money, stick around, and still write stories, take pictures and do illustrations that are rock and roll.
Why? Why do these creative, smart, talented people stick around? I'm not sure. I'm a bit scared to ask, in case I jinx them. Perhaps it's the thrill of putting on someone else's voice and being able to shout about something that you feel is important, and seeing those yells in print.
As someone who works in local youth publishing, it does my soul good to look at the names of the people who have written for this conference, and see how many of them have written, and continue to write, for local magazines. Perhaps it's because they really do believe in what they're shouting about. Be it gay marriage, the lousy club scene in Pretoria or the challenge of illustrating a story that cannot be photographed, local magazines, by the very fact that they're on the bones of their asses, can take a few more risks with their content than the other titles on the shelves. This attracts people who like to take a few more chances and innovate with their work. It's a win-win creatively. And financially I think it will pay out. Being street, having credibility, being real is extremely important, and the smart advertisers are beginning to cotton on to this. The swing back to the left-of-centre will happen; we're already moving away from what is perceived as mainstream.
In The Big Chill, Jeff Goldblum's character writes for a huge, syndicated weekly American magazine. At one point he says, "Where I work, we only have one rule: we can't write anything longer than the average person can read during the average crap." I read magazines on the loo too. But once I've flushed, I like to take the magazine and, still reading, balance it on the basin, read, wash my hands, dry my hands, and walk on, still reading. That's the kind of reading matter local magazines need to keep publishing. Publish online, publish on stickers that get stuck up in taxis and bathrooms and stations. Publish in journals and free 'zines. These are forums that give writers the chance to take their writing and do what they want with it, and they are really important. But write for magazines as well. We need all the smart, creative, opinionated people we can get. In return, we'll give you a space to shout in.
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Rebecca Kahn realised a while ago that if she
wanted to spend her days reading, she would have to fool people
into thinking that she's some kind of writer. Then she could
call reading all day "research". She's 25 years
old, and hasn't done a whole lot of stuff, and she knows that,
eventually, she'll get the commissions that will allow her
to cross those things off her list. Rebecca is currenly working
in Joburg as Features Editor at SL magazine. 
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