Interview

[Diane Sawyer takes her seat, turns on her tape recorder, and straightens the lapel on her blazer. She takes a sip of coffee. We are at Starbucks. A homeless man is looking at her, and she's a little unsettled. But she's a professional; she shakes it off]

Diane Sawyer: I'm fascinated by this idea. How did you come up with it?

Brian: Well, we were sitting around one day.

Carolyn: You were sitting around. I was working.

Brian: I was sitting around. And I decided, why not make my own job? Why not start a literary magazine? Then Carolyn came up with the nuts and bolts. The concept.

DS: What experience do you two have with the magazine industry? Or publishing?

Brian: None at all. Which, is already coming back to haunt us. I learned that most literary magazines are bound, and have covers, and that's news to me. I mean. I didn't know.

Carolyn: I used to subscribe to New Letters, back in Kansas City, but yeah, pretty much in the same boat there. Whoops. Kinda blew the whole binding and cover thing.

DS: So it must be difficult for you. What do you find most difficult?

B: Well, uh...

C: Um, maybe building a following? Getting people to read our stuff when all they really want to do is cry about the failing of the US Economy...but I'm getting a little preachy there.

DS: Fair. Next question. What are you feeling as you near production of your first issue?

B: Pressure. Enormous Pressure.

C: And not the good kind.

B: Yeah, not the kind that pro athletes feel in the locker room. This is more like being slowly crushed by a freight elevator pressure. I mean, we have three subscribers now?

C: Yeah, three.

B: We're being interviewed by Diane Keaton

C: Sawyer

B: Sawyer?

DS: Yes, Diane Keaton was an actress in Woody Allen movies.

B: Whatever. I'm just saying. Fame came on us pretty quick. It seems just yesterday I was walking to this very Starbucks, and a homeless man asked me to buy him a sandwich. And I told him that I didn't have any change to spare. And I still don't have change to spare. But. I'm a famous editor now. I've..well...we've created this great product. 3 subscribers. Almost 60 Facebook likes. It's different. I'm different.

C: We're talking Malcolm Gladwell's Tipping Point here. One second we're not tipped, the next second we're tipped.

B: Without a doubt.

[A Ruckus in Starbucks. Homeless man tries to steal Diane Sawyer's tape recorder. He trips over a laptop cord. A man in skinny jeans hands the tape recorder back to Diane Sawyer as the thief scrambles down the street.]

DS: So what's next for the editors of Kindling

B: We have a few new ideas

C: Yeah, but they're probably really far off.

B: We'd like to make a magazine with poems printed on toothpicks. You know like they do the names on the grains of rice?

C: We've also been toying with the idea of just having blank pages. But we can't really figure out how to make it look like we're not just selling Moleskine's or whatever.

B: You can lead a horse to water, and all that.

DS: Right. Well, that's all I have.

[Diane thanks everybody for their time, and hops back into her Helicopter that takes her back to ABC's news desk]