January 19, 2013 · 2:18 pm

Only India

India: You know, that one, single, homogenous, ever-invasive bully-country that strode across the seas and snatched up many many jobs from the nice US economic systems that existed, and strode back across the seas smirking and proud?

That’s much of the image I guess I’d been creating in my head, by the turn of the Century, before being burdened with any actual information whatsoever.

Then, at Legal Aid, they had National Geographic magazines in the lunch room, and one day I read all about the caste system. And felt superior accordingly.

A while later my daughter (she was around 11-12 yrs old at the time) came across ‘Bend in like Beckham,’ and she really wanted us to watch it. I resisted strenuously, having already seen a number of kid-sports movies, and really not feeling like that Indian gimmick was going to work for me.

Finally, exceedingly reluctantly, quite a while after it came out, I gave in. And loved it. Loved the story, the characters, the setting a little bit even, and Loved the Music – especially the Indian music.. I really think looking back that it was the music as much as anything that prompted what happened next.

We found another Gurinder Chadha film, Bride & Prejudice I think, and watched that – loved it as well (the disconnects didn’t bother me at all at that time). And then What’s Cooking. And then another Aishwarya Rai film. And then, tip-toe-ing in.. another suggested one from Amazon. This was before I was on Netflix; and if I still had cable at that point, I hadn’t found any Indian content there (if there was any), hadn’t found iTalkies – was buying one film, then another. Came across a couple I didn’t care for much at all, and just about figured I was done with all that.. then saw Aamir Khan’s Lagaan. And a very long, rich journey was officially launched.

Today my film tastes are forever changed – I’m more used to having subtitles on than off, because even when I do watch American things, sometimes there’s a cultural dialect or it’s independent and the sound is muffled now and then or whatever. I really enjoy the emotion (and music still) of Indian film, the multi-genre aspect historically, the playfulness and other specific choices often made, the rich character focus, and the details such having a line at the end either replicate an earlier line (coming full circle) or completing a pattern etc…

I’ve learned that there are many languages, multiple regions, close to 50 major cities, a tapestry of rural communities, sophistication and intelligence and subtlety and every other similar attribute to infinite extents; right along with and within all the opposites and deficiencies that are most everywhere in various mixtures; many strengths for the rest of us to learn from and much to enjoy and celebrate.

I don’t know if I have any ancestral relationship to India, and probably never will, but my current country (US) certainly has been much richer for it’s existence, with the Civil Rights movement and many other aspects. Also India and one of my countries-of-origin – Ireland – certainly share a great deal historically.

And after all that, as far as India’s effect on financial services, I mainly put that to entities within the US. Changes were inevitable, they didn’t have to be implemented the way they were.

So I’m happy to have started learning about the global neighbor and friend that is India, and am looking forward to including Indian food (which I also love), music, and film as well as democratic struggles and so much more the rest of my life.

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January 19, 2013 · 10:19 am

Workings – Accounting

Returning Online Message to the World. Hello World!

I do accounting, and I don’t talk about it. Almost ever anyway. The one time I do talk about it.. well, it’s this blog post! This is my sole episode of self-exposition, hopefully a foundation for the rest of my social media life going forward. There are links to this, so that other main posts can be as pithy as self-awareness suggests they be. I hope this is illuminating to those interested, while still not getting me in any trouble. (Maintaining that delicate balance is strenuous, hence the singularity of this event).

Accounting is a dynamic, variable, and intrinsically-confidential process that most people in the best of times are unaware of. In the current moment, the accounting process has been rendered even more invisible, because of the paradigms that have sprung up around it.

Talking about it in an interesting way that is relevant to others yet also maintains all necessary confidentiality is generally impossible. Despite that, I’m going to share some information about it this one time, in re-joining the social media world after a long absence.

In my work, I create and maintain accounting structures and practices that enable efficient, correct financial transactions; and that also result in those transactions generating a data trail. I do additional steps with sets of transactions at periodic or project-specific intervals, to put that transaction data into specific patterns. And then I turn that data into information, both to meet external requirements and to provide useful organizational and programmatic information to internal managers and staff.

All of that is done within the framework of GAAP (Generally Accepted Accounting Principles), as well as federal and state laws (regarding payroll, sales tax, and all sorts of other things), particular structures established within specific grants, and the body of established practice within each entity.

A significant part of the work is also engaging productively with the organization itself, participating in relevant decision-making, sharing information, and implementing change proactively; also helping with the organizational work itself sometimes.

All of that happened a certain way when I started out, in the mid- to late- 1980’s. That established ‘normal’ for me. I thought things would always be that way. I imagine now that, if they had, it’s possible I would have ended up in a certain comfort zone, a set of habits and practices within which I would have been content in a static way, and work would have existed within 9-5 and the rest would be my personal life.

Instead, things turned out differently.

These accounting practices in general have since been subject to a series of pressures that I did not at all foresee when I started out – as is the case with many work practices. I may write more about them at some point, but here’s a brief description.

Quickbooks – which I can honestly say I identified as a very mixed change agent right from the very beginning – operates on the basic premise that accounting as a theoretical framework or structured practice really doesn’t exist. Anyone can do it. There are qualifiers inherent in that statement over time, but that’s the basic gist. Anyone can do it, and any negative outcomes from that process are manageable. If outcomes are to be better managed, you can get help after the fact to fix it. (Stop rant now/)

And while I support all small businesses and entrepreneurs, and I know it’s been an effective tool for many to some extent, I am critical of the messaging and the implementation and the reaction to it by the other entities. (And that last part is something I’ll probably never talk about, which leaves a gap, but so be it).

Outsourcing of financial work has been another huge sea change. I only ever briefly worked for ‘Corporate America’ – but the shift from there of people looking for work has been substantive in the arena I do work within. It’s been just as impactful of the shift from the bottom up caused by the Quickbooks mindset. I was angry at India – you know, that one big entity that is India-of-Outsourcing-Fame – for a time; and then ended up in a discovery process with India, and became very fascinated and enthralled. More about that some time too perhaps. Not angry now (not directed there, anyway!).

And the last huge change has been the recession of course, which has had pervasive effects in the number of employment options for everyone everywhere in accounting, and the related pay scales. I know it didn’t affect me nearly as much as so many, but it’s still been quite a change agent in my life.

My mother has worked in organizational consulting in the practice of nursing for several decades; familiarity with her practice and implementation of it has fueled my belief that I could adapt sustainably to this all, and keep going. And I have done that. Some aspects involved have been SWOT, Social Media, continual learning and the serenity prayer.

I’ve considered other options, and explored some, discarding them due to the long lead-in time required, market aspects, investment requirements, my own interests/skills/strengths and so on.

The main other area I was interested in early on, and partway through my college career – computer technology – has also been very over-populated; in addition it’s been dominated by monopolistic entities and the barriers to entry at this point are as high as my interest level today is low. It still works well for me to simply focus on accounting software, and to some extent the relationships with related other software packages, web technologies and operating systems, although I haven’t done as much with that lately.

Writing and everything about the written word – always a primary interest core to my being – remains as an internally-rejuvenating interest only, for the time being at least.

So as a result of those pressures, and those explorations, and every experience to date, I’m still in accounting but it’s quite different from how it was in the 80’s. Not only no more ledger paper (sigh), but organizational paradigms are very different, cost pressures are huge, and regulations/adherence monitoring is much more significant. It’s a 24/7 continually changing social-media-enriched client-focused experience, very different from how I thought my career would be way back when.

I’m continually grateful that I have been able to continue in the practice of accounting, in a sector of it that I’m happy to be in (nonprofits, and entrepreneurial entities), in physical locations that are often Downtown and always transit-friendly, with organizations that are doing great work and people that are truly wonderful.

The social media result is that I’m here, but talking about myself as others do gehts nicht – it’s not going to happen.

I’m thinking now, after being away for a while and within my current complex work situation, that I may write something once a quarter or so, about distillations and non-specific accumulations that might have relevance.

The whole rest of the time though, my online presence is about the goals of my work, which is to support entrepreneurs, creativity, adaptation, communities, and best possible futures. Sometimes that support lends itself to writing, such as new technologies or new impactful situations etc.. but I like to support the writing of others who have invested much time and energy in doing that well also – I respect their commitment to that process.

There, hopefully we’re all still standing and no lasting damage has been done.I know I feel Better.

So you see, my lack of original writing: it’s just the way my work is.

Although I know it’s true – the one constant in life is change!

Comments/feedback always welcome! Thanks for visiting.

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February 29, 2012 · 7:54 am

“Salt Creek Anthology” Virtual Book Tour!

CCLaP’s Book Tour for Jason Fisk’s “Salt Creek Anthology” is in process, and I’m honored to be included!

In case you are new to this exciting new work, here is an introduction:

A couple meet in a mental institution, have six kids, and devolve into violent alcoholism. An elderly Polish woman with Alzheimer’s goes insane in front of our eyes. A frazzled empty-nester has her bruiser son move back in, along with a scheming girlfriend planning a surprise pregnancy to get them both back out. And an abusive, overweight, racist monster of a man psychologically lords over them all, a total of twenty-odd characters all living on the same cul-de-sac in the far rural suburbs of Chicago. Welcome to the dark, poetic world of author Jason Fisk, a “micro-story” collection that breaks these families’ adventures down into a series of 75 linguistic nuggets; these are then experimentally hooked together in a non-linear fashion through literal hyperlinks within each story, letting you read them in whichever order you wish. With “Salt Creek Anthology,” tumble down that brooding, enticing rabbithole that Fisk has created on this unassuming street for yourself, and see just how far the nightmare will take you.

What follows is a conversation with Jason Fisk, the author, about his work in general, this book in particular, and various other topics of interest.

ClaritySol: You are a husband and father, you teach, you write. You have a blog and other social media outlets to feed. How do you manage to be enthusiastic about all of it? Do you have any words of advice for those to seek to gain traction on a path similar to yours?

Jason Fisk: Well, with the exception of the upkeep of the blog, and other media outlets, I honestly feel like my enthusiasm is directly connected to the fact that I’m truly passionate about my family, my teaching, and my writing, which makes the balancing of it all a lot of fun for me. That’s not to say that I don’t have bad teaching days, days that I feel like a failure as a parent, and days that it would be so much easier not to write, but I’m always back at it the next day, even when I don’t feel like it. Okay, that might be a bit of an exaggeration; there have been weeklong stretches where I have quit writing all together, due to various reasons, but it usually weasels its way back into my life and routine.

The whole social media thing is relatively new to me too, and by relatively new, I mean less than two years on facebook. Initially, I was resistant to it, but have found it to be a wonderful and necessary resource for the promotion of my writing, which, in the world of the small presses, is sometimes exhausting in and of itsel

ClaritySol: It looks like your paths have been intertwining with CCLaP, Jason Pettus and the other writers there: Ben Tanzer, Mark Brand, Sally Wiegert and the others. How important is that to your process, to share your work with writers and to hear what they’re doing and to work with your publisher in the way that you and Jason do?

Jason Fisk: That’s a tough one to answer. My involvement with other authors has changed over the years. Writing started out as a very solitary thing for me. I’d sit at my desk, write, and send my stuff out into cyberspace and wait for a response. I would not necessarily consider myself much of an extrovert, and there is part of me that struggles with the act of social networking, especially when it feels disingenuous. I have to give credit to Ben Tanzer for opening a lot of doors to the local literary world. He actually put me in touch with Jason Pettus and CCLaP, and introduced me to different authors in the area, Mark and Sally being two of them. The actual act of writing and sharing my writing with other authors is something I’ve just started doing recently.

ClaritySol: I know one of Jason Pettus’ goals is to be responsive to the CCLaP audience – to provide what they want to read, and/or provide what they want to be challenged with.

How do you and your work fit in to those goals? What is your approach to the audience – are they part of your writing, or is your writing more a personal process?

Jason Fisk: When I write, I don’t think about audience. Personally, I believe thinking about an audience while writing sucks the integrity from what I’m writing. It begins to feel watered down. I would always be second guessing myself and wondering how a certain group would react to this or that.

I let Jason Pettus worry about the audience. If you send him something, writing or an idea, that he’s not so into, he’ll let you know, and he’ll gently push you in the direction he’d like to see you go, which is probably where catering to his audience comes into play. I also think he does a nice job of creating, or attracting, an audience that has similar tastes as him. Publishers like Jason not only have to sell their product, they also have to create and generate an interest where there may not initially have been one. Having said all of that, Jason Pettus also has this great philosophy of being hands off while the author writes their first draft. I think this is very respectful of the creative process and of the writer.

ClaritySol: You have an impressive publication history already, which I found here:

http://jasonfisk.com/publicationpage.html

It is clear that poetry also has a big place in your writing. Which do you prefer? Do you find certain content is best explored in one format or the other? Are the struggles inherent in each very different, or mostly similar?

Jason Fisk: I started writing poetry in an elective in graduate school, and I absolutely loved finding that little piece of truth (or at least what I thought was truth) and writing about it. Most of my poems have a narrative quality to them, which probably has something to do with my early love of the short story. My relationship with poetry is somewhat contentious though; I really like accessible poetry, and hate pretentious, dense poetry. My real love is the short story, which I find more challenging to write, especially after working so hard to pare a story to its bare essentials for a poem. It’s hard to get into the short story mind set.

ClaritySol: From your blog, here is a description of a book meeting from one of the attendees:

‘What began as a discussion about fictional others quickly turned to ourselves and our own little bits of crazy. We praised Fisk for his ability to hand-pick what is absolutely essential about a story, entertain us with it, and then make us look twice for a glimpse we thought we caught of ourselves – all in two to four paragraphs.’

It sounds to me like you are one of those writers who applies to discipline and the strength of poetry to any other form you engage in as well, would you agree? That you are always a poet, and sometimes you write poetry and sometimes you write in other forms?

Jason Fisk: To me, it’s all about the transaction between the writer and the reader, and I believe the transaction part is very important. My goal is to create an outline of place, time, and movement, and have the reader fill the rest in with their imagination. The reader has then invested part of himself or herself in the story by painting the walls the colors they see, or imagining that particular space is similar to one in his or her house. I believe poetry has been a wonderful tool to roughly sketch out those bits and pieces of a story, and allow the readers to fill in the blanks, which, hopefully, creates a unique reading experience. I think you’re right; I will always be a poet, or at least retain those elements of poetry.

ClaritySol: From your blog, I borrowed this passage of yours:

William Carlos Williams wrote, “No ideas but in things.” While I know that my poetry is nowhere near Williams’ level, it is something I strive to emulate. I love the thought of “No ideas but in things,” and only want to paint what I see (whether it is in my imagination, or in real life). What the reader takes from it is their business.

Is that an accurate capture of your attitude towards this piece as well?

Jason Fisk: Oh, absolutely!

ClaritySol: What’s next? Do you have many additional things that you’re working on right now? Do you have additional pieces percolating that are not even in the writing stage yet? What can we look forward to?

Jason Fisk: I just finished up a small collection of more flash fiction, and am currently in the process of polishing that up. Jason Pettus has also suggested that I take the next year and try my hand at writing a novel, which is what I’m planning on doing, so that’s what’s currently fermenting in my head. We’ll see…

ClaritySol: Anything else you’d like us to know about your work, your plans, your art?

Jason Fisk: No, I feel like we’ve covered quite a bit here. I do want to thank you for taking the time to research and craft such insightful and thoughtful questions. Your time and involvement is very much appreciated.

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February 12, 2012 · 3:31 pm

Update: Starting up activity again!

Hello again!

Have been away for a while, just due to normal busy-ness and so forth. But things are starting to begin to commence simmering a little more easily soon, so I thought I’d hurry up and take advantage early accordingly.

I have an exciting post coming up soon, a literary interview in conjunction with CCLaP of Chicago.

In advance of that, thought I’d better stop back in, open the windows, let the place air out a bit.

And thought I’d start doing something I’ve wanted to do for a while, but haven’t yet: actually write a little bit about what I’m doing.

I’m currently working with 5-7 entities, providing accounting services. Some of the relationships are employment, some contract, some a combination (providing contract services as an employee of a service provider).

Needless to say, it all adds up to a strenuous work week. But I thought I’d note (for the record) that I really believe it’s important to keep striving for excellence, despite all the challenges.

I started out being employed as an accountant, in a company that consulted on the process of work. And the values of that company have stayed with me ever since. They include focusing on the overarching goal at all times, even when the task is a piddly one. Mutual respect, functional trust, eschewing pettiness, going that extra mile to get the job done.

These are challenging days for anyone in the accounting field. There is a sort of mania out there to pay the least amount, which often translates to doing the least possible chunk of work, which then often has effects that accumulate and multiply.

Instead I believe in gaining an understanding of what the optimal amount of work is – balancing outcomes with effort required – to meet the best needs of the organization, and doing that to the best of my ability within the existing constraints. The strenuousness of that is why I have not written very often lately.

I believe many in the work world today are facing similar challenges in different guises. I hope we’re all able to keep carrying on, and that better days will soon be on the horizon!

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August 17, 2011 · 12:42 pm

Storify and Journalism: An Exploration (via Anna’s Cubby Hole: Ramblings of a Cub Reporter)

Interesting, have heard about this but not explored it yet. Thanks for the info!

Storify and Journalism: An Exploration It's a little embarrassing for a media/journalism junkie to admit, but I just discovered Storify this morning. I'm hoping to use it for future blog posts, but my first story will be an investigation of Storify's impact on media and journalistic potential. From what I can tell so far, Storify is an interactive tool for people to easily create stories using tweets, Facebook statuses and links. From their FAQ: Storify is a way to tell stories using … Read More

via Anna's Cubby Hole: Ramblings of a Cub Reporter

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August 17, 2011 · 12:35 pm

Eliminating the Pain with a Lean Business Model (via Applied Entrepreneurship)

Great article! Hope the Big-Box model is eliminated going forward, way too many costs all the way around!

Eliminating the Pain with a Lean Business Model I've long been a student, as well as an occasional mentor, on the subject of innovative business models. As part of my continuing self-education efforts on the subject, I recently picked up a copy of Business Model Generation, written by Alexander Osterwalder and Yves Pigneur. As the promo for the book says, it is "a handbook for visionaries, game changers and challengers. If you're interested in business models, I strongly suggest picking up a c … Read More

via Applied Entrepreneurship

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August 17, 2011 · 7:56 am

Site-Member Profile: 3232 Design!

Year Established: I’ve been doing freelance web design on the side since 1996, and in 2007 I created 3232 Design and started treating it like a business. In January 2010 I quit my day job of nine years as a Creative Director to concentrate on my business full-time, and it’s been nothing but awesome.

Business/Organization Name: 3232 Design. ‘3232’ is my address, possibly the least imaginative business name but I currently dominate the market for people searching Google on ‘3232’. Take that, RFC 3232!

Owner/Executive Director Name: That’s me, Richard Mueller. No full-time employees yet, and I’ll always keep it small because that’s how I can deliver the highest quality design with the most minimal costs.

Product/Service: Graphic Design, specializing in web design but including brand identity, print, and advertising for small and medium-sized businesses. I love working with creative types.

Unique Features/Competitive Advantage: I’ve won design awards, yet at the same time I’m a great web coder. Finding both in one person is highly unusual, and it allows me to look ahead to take advantage of coding tricks in my designs that save tons of time and money for my clients while delivering agency-quality design.

Contact Information

Notes/Misc other: Though my design is often envelope-pushing, my business is very conservative. It was getting obvious that I wasn’t going to get laid off and if I wanted to do 3232 full time I’d just have to quit. I’d spent two years saving everything I made on the side into a capital cushion so I wouldn’t have to take out a start-up loan. Still, it was one of the scariest decisions I’ve made. Would I lose the house? How would I feed my family? The net result is, I’ve been profitable from my first day, and the freedom is very rewarding.

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August 8, 2011 · 3:49 pm

Dialects and dimpsy doddermen (via Sentence first)

Sharing a post from another favorite writer, this one a specialist in language itself. Fascinating!

Time for a recap of what I’ve been writing for Macmillan Dictionary Blog over the last few weeks. The theme for July was small talk, so a couple of my posts are on this subject. In “Small talk is no small matter” I make some general remarks about chit chat and its uses: [S]mall talk serves a useful phatic function. It helps us tune in to other people’s accents and dialects, and to get used to their presence and the ways they express themselves. B … Read More

via Sentence first

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August 8, 2011 · 3:10 pm

How to Maximize Your Success by Aligning Behaviors with Intentions (via Leadership Freak)

Interesting insight in to the importance of considering the relationship between behaviors and intentions! Definitely applicable to consultants and other entrepreneurs as well as those within employment situations.

How to Maximize Your Success by Aligning Behaviors with Intentions You won’t get where you want to go until your behaviors consistently express your intentions. If we could see your behaviors without your explanations, what would we think of you and your life-direction? The project: I’m asking a small group of selected leaders to evaluate my behaviors. I want them to let my behaviors explain where I’m going in life and leadership. For example, I might say I’m working on being positive. But, do my behaviors expre … Read More

via Leadership Freak

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August 8, 2011 · 6:26 am

Site-Member Interview in-Depth: CCLaP’s Four Year Anniversary!

CCLaP – the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography – founded June 2007 – is as a private for-profit company; established to champion the best of today’s bleeding-edge, ultra-contemporary work.

ClaritySol: Congratulations on your Four-Year Anniversary! Now, like many start-ups, you’re self-funded, so you’ve been slowly growing CCLaP’s client-base and community. Your pattern has been to publish one book each year electronically, complementing your extensive book reviews and essays (such as the ever-popular series about literary classics called “The CCLaP 100”). Now in the last year you’ve stepped things up considerably..

CCLaP: Yes, I’ve been publishing books since 2008 now, just with all the past ones being electronic only; it’s just this summer that I’m finally getting paper versions of them out for the first time.

2011 has been a year of significantly increased activity: after publishing only one book a year previously (Ben Tanzer’s “Repetition Patterns” in 2008, Sally Weigel’s “Too Young to Fall Asleep” in 2009, and Tanzer’s “99 Problems” in 2010), starting this year I’ve upped the schedule to four new titles every year . In 2011 the four books include Mark R. Brand’s “Life After Sleep” and Jason Fisk’s “Salt Creek Anthology” already published, with the compilation book “American Wasteland” and Katherine Scott Nelson’s “Write Me Back” still to come.

So that’s been a significant increase in work, needless to say, especially since I’m now adding paper versions to each release. So time that I had before been dedicating to extensive reading and high-octane book reviews (which are posted on the CCLaP blog) is going to these newer activities instead.
Accordingly, I started the long-term hunt for other staff writers who can do book reviews in the CCLaP “ethos,” if you will, so that I can keep the daily posting schedule up at the blog while still devoting my own time to more publishing-related activities.

ClaritySol: Would you like to give the audience a brief bio of yourself, your journey to opening CCLaP? Did you always have an entrepreneurial bent? Or had you had a different life vision, and then things shifted and this became the optimal path? I have heard you state over the years that you used to write, and then you stopped. Yet currently you write book & film reviews and various other things.

CCLaP: I suppose I’ve always had an entrepreneurial bent, now that you put it like that; by the age of six I was already doing puppet shows for neighborhood kids and charging admission, putting out a subdivision newsletter, things like that. I’ve had a whole series of different career focuses over the decades, mostly due to just a wide range of interests — first I was all set to enter college on a high math track and eventually become a computer programmer, then suddenly switched to political science for four years, then studied photography for four years after that, then became a publishing author and performance poet for a decade, after moving to Chicago in the mid-1990s.

When I say that I “stopped writing,” I mean only the creative fiction; as you point out, I’m still penning almost a quarter of a million new words a year at the CCLaP site, only all of it in the genre of critical and personal essays.

CCLaP itself came just very slowly and organically over the course of several years, as I first hit middle-age and became more and more dissatisfied with pursuing a career as a solo creative artist; it’s a way essentially for me to still work in the milieu I love, while hopefully bringing the kind of stability to my life that I simply didn’t need when I was younger.

ClaritySol: The close relationship between the artist and the fan, is that the main benchmark of success for you, the overriding goal?

CCLaP: Well, perhaps it’s better to call that a business goal, in that I ultimately view CCLaP in competitive terms to other larger institutions that do a whole variety of creative things, like perhaps the Museum of Contemporary Art or the Old Town School of Music; the center isn’t even close in size or scope to those examples, let me make it very clear, but that’s the eventual hope of where I’d like to see CCLaP heading as the years progress.

And what I feel is a good way to compete in that field is to pay very close attention to what your readers, your audience members want, what they really respond to, what they’re mentioning to you in emails and at dinner parties and things like that. I feel like a lot of creative institutions have lost sight of that, that many of the bigger ones especially that started back in the Modernist era have become so insular and so totally focused on grants, corporate partnerships, and just the mere struggle to stay alive at the level they’re accustomed to.

I feel a good way for a tiny organization like mine to differentiate itself from that is to be much more responsive to our customers than those groups are. But there’s of course a tricky balance to maintain, because as a creative curator, people are coming to CCLaP many times precisely FOR my recommendations of stuff they’ve never heard of or sometimes even thought about. My job as CCLaP’s owner is essentially to listen to all these people, listen to what they’re saying, and then think, “Well, if they say they want THIS kind of thing, I’ll bet that they’ll really be into THAT kind of thing too.”

ClaritySol: What is the unifying element of the work you publish?

CCLaP: My focus is on trying to get the best work possible out of that writer. I really look at an author’s entire body of work and where they are in their career, and think about what I consider the best thing they could possibly be doing right now for their particular style and where they should be next professionally. That guides what the finished book looks like more than an adherence to any particular type of genre, length, etc.

As far as the paper books go, I’m selling them literally as fast as I can make them right now, which is a double-edged sword; I could be selling more if I could simply make them faster, but the reason there’s such a strong interest is because everyone knows how long they take, and what a high quality these handmade editions have at the end because of it. Sigh!

ClaritySol: Who is your target audience?:

CCLaP: My main core target audience are people known by the term “creative class” — twenties to fifties, with creative careers but that still lets them be middle-class, essentially a lot like my personal friends here in Chicago, urban-dwelling and politically/ecologically aware, with only a certain small amount of money and time they can dedicate to the arts anymore, and wanting not just a good experience for their money but an opportunity to take a part in the process, even if just a little bit.

I think people of my generation and in my circumstances are a little burnt out on the “totebag syndrome” as I call it of older cultural institutions, where the idea is, “Give us a yearly check and otherwise just shut up and enjoy the splendor of it all, and here’s your token gift thanks very much.” I think creative-classers would like a much more direct say over which artists are being featured there, or at least what kinds of artists, and would enjoy an opportunity as a patron of one of these groups to occasionally be able to talk straight to the curators and decision-makers, literally say to them, “I saw this band or this photographer at this gallery or that pub, and they’d be perfect for your place.”

ClaritySol: How has your internet presence birthed/supported your business? Will you be enlarging it, and enlarging your business? Is there a particular size or scope you are aiming to attain?

CCLaP: Well, I have personal things to gain from maintaining an international audience, which ultimately is the simple answer in my case — I like traveling internationally, and hope to do so a lot more in the future, so it’s worth it to me to cultivate an online presence just for that alone.

Commercially it’s a trickier question; because although electronic content is great for building a passionate audience, it’s still through actual physical merchandise and physical events that most artists make the majority of their actual money, whether that’s a publisher or a photographer or an indie musician, so the question of a spread-out audience in that case ties in more with how easy or hard it is to ship things to them, whether you’ll be there regularly on tours or not, etc.

But then, I know for a fact that one of the things that a lot of CCLaP’s audience members like the most about the site is its international focus, so just from a curatorial aspect there are positive things to be gained — I read much more interesting books and see much more interesting movies because of it, feature a wider range of photography, get a wider range of perspectives.

ClaritySol: How involved are you in the Chicago Literary Scene, and is that important to CCLaP?

CCLaP: I’m unfortunately not too terribly involved with the local community anymore, for a variety of reasons. I’ve been changing that this summer somewhat, because I’ve been taking my new high-def videocamera out and shooting at least one live literary event in the city a week, then cutting it into just a little 60-second highlight reel and posting them at YouTube all year; that’s at least had me out and being a lot more social, and getting the word about CCLaP out to a brand-new audience.

While all of CCLaP’s authors have so far been Chicagoans, and all but one book have all been set in Chicago; that’s partly random, and partly that I skew a little heavily towards Chicago authors and projects from the mere nature of being here. But I’m certainly up for publishing people in other cities as well.

ClaritySol: Four year anniversary, very exciting – congratulations! Did you always expect to reach this point (and beyond)?

CCLaP: Well, thanks! As mentioned, the goal in my head has always been to go even a lot longer than this; but that said, it’s still a treat to actually make it to four years, given how many artistic projects are launched with such full confidence every year and then fall apart six months later.

ClaritySol: What about the past (four) years has surprised you the most?

CCLaP: I suppose the biggest “surprise” has actually been the anti-surprise of studying small business beforehand, and learning that just about each and every little thing I read about when studying small business has come true while actually running one.

ClaritySol: Are there things you would do differently if you could have a do-over? What lessons have you learned about entrepreneurialism in the real world?

CCLaP: If I had a chance to start over, probably the biggest change would be much less of a focus on live events at first, and a much bigger push into paper publishing from the get-go, learning in hindsight how much interest there’s been in it since actually starting it.

These are just little lessons you can only learn by actually opening and trying stuff out, which is another basic lesson from my “self-taught MBA” days that has absolutely come true: that it’s best at first to keep this sort of open, semi-flexible framework to what you’re doing, so that you can try some various things out without too terribly much commitment, and quickly shut down the things that aren’t working, even if they’re sentimental favorites.

I’d love to be doing more really big live events, like the one I did with Nathan Rabin last winter, but it just hasn’t been in the cards so far in terms of CCLaP’s audience being willing to support it, which as a business owner I have to pay more attention to than whatever personal desire I have to be sitting on a stage talking to someone cool and famous.

ClaritySol: New developments: you have an intern now! How is that going – I know for lots of folks that shift from one person to two people is a big one.

CCLaP: Oh, it’s been just about as minimalist as possible, to tell you the truth, and frankly I’m not sure if I’ll be doing it again for awhile; Traci Kim has been great, but the fact is that as a one-person, home-based business, there’s simply almost nothing for her to actually do. I’ve instead put her in charge of her own themed anthology, which we’ll be publishing at the end of the summer, which she mostly does on her own from home.

I just wanted to try hosting an internship at least once, since I had this opportunity just fall in my lap (Traci literally just wrote out of the blue this spring about it), just to see how it would go; I’m not sure if I’ll be doing it again until after CCLaP finally has its own permanent physical space somewhere in the city, and there’d be a lot more intern-type stuff for an intern to do.

ClaritySol: You’re producing blank journals – that seems a great idea – wide-open future sales. Congrats!

CCLaP: Yes, at Etsy, with me and ten million middle-aged moms! Stop by and purchase one, please!

ClaritySol: How does the Photography part of CCLAP – is that more of a future aspect of the company?

CCLaP: Yes, I have a lot more plans for photography, but they unfortunately almost all involve significantly more money than I currently have, and with a lot of it tied to finally having a permanent physical space in the city somewhere: at that point I’d like to have a full-time gallery, and also publish a book and giftstore-type merchandise with each show, which only makes sense if we literally had our own giftstore, etc.

I have a long-term view in mind with CCLaP, which at least makes it a little easier to decide to shelve certain things for now.

ClaritySol: Anything else you’d like us to know about your plans?

CCLaP: Well, just that CCLaP will have another four original books out in 2012 as well, one every three months, and mostly female-focused next year too — first a new story collection by Sally Weigel, then the new surrealist novel by Lauryn Allison Lewis, and then a new post-apocalyptic thriller of all things by Amy Guth, although political as well in that Margaret Atwood feminist-SF style, and then a winter slot I haven’t filled yet.

I’m going with an entirely new binding style for 2012, and all four books will be done in this similar style, so that in the future you’ll be able to just glance at CCLaP books and know which year they were put out.

Both the 2011 books and these coming 2012 ones are sold at a special subscription rate at the website, which is the main piece of news I’d like to get out, for those who really believe in the center and want to make a substantial financial contribution to it.

I encourage people to think of this like becoming a member of their local art museum or NPR station; only instead of a totebag or coffeemug, you’re getting a whole shelf of special handmade, hand-numbered, high-quality original books, ten altogether plus free shipping if you purchase both subscriptions for a total of $140.

Thanks again for giving me a chance to talk about the center and everything that’s been going on; I hope this has been of some interest.

ClaritySol: You’re very welcome, Jason! This has been a wonderful peek into your exciting, successful company. Wishing you all the best success for the future!

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For more information about CCLaP, check out the installment at Clarity Solutions Google+ page: http://gplus.to/CstokesCS

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