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Concept vs Execution

I am only finishing up the 3rd issue now, so I guess I cannot confidently say I have a "way" or "method" of making the zines yet. Hell, even starting a sentence with "usually" seems a little odd, because again, the zine is just starting to take its first wibbly wobbly steps.

So let's go with a semi scientific classification and say that early experiments suggest- 

the first thing I do when I start an issue is make a big dumb document for all the content. If not multiple documents within a folder. 

I pick and choose and cut a lot before I even make my first print out. Then I make a print out and do some laying out by hand. Then I go back to the computer. Then I go back to the scissors and glue stick. 

then it's a mystery. I end up with weird blank pages due to layouts, sometimes I can pull in more content or collab for a spread. But when you have just one stray blank page what do you do with it?

no idea. I did this. 



I just started typing double spaced in black ink with all my negative thoughts, intending to fill alternating spaces later with maroon positive thoughts. Which turned into writing about what I was like as a kid, what I hoped and dreamed. I desperately tried to get a focal point in there and I'm sorry but my unimpeded handwriting looks like hot garbage. 

This has been a trend with me all my life. I get this good idea and I just dive in without thinking about it and it looks like garbage and I get so discouraged and question how I have ever done anything because everything I make looks like trash. (This would be the critical text.)

I tossed the page and kept the concept, redoing it to match the format of the rest of the zine where I'm using the maroon text to talk over the top of myself and provide commentary and insight to my own work. 


It looks so much better, so much more mature, while still completely and utterly conveying the same level of emotion and mixed feelings. 

Fittingly, the words I am working around are photocopied spent typewriter ribbon mostly comprising the first 20 installments of Memory Tourist (yes, expect that to stick around for at least another year, I have a lot of content for it) so it still captures the mood of talking over and around myself. 

This edition of the zine has seen me literally go page by page through the master copy over and over, redoing, adding, subtracting, snipping, folding, splattering, typing, tracing, doodling, pasting... I want any page out of context to be worthy of being a postcard or small print. Someday, when I organize the zine a little better and focus more on selling artwork, I want to be able to make a postcard collection of my favorite pages. 

If anyone wonders why I prefer to work predominantly alone on art and writing- I just got these visions that I have to chip and chip and chip away at. This is also why I haven't published any of my novels yet, I want each sentence to be as carefully composed as a short poem. I want every little detail intentional. Every typ ographical error and questionable use of language and metaphor and offhanded comment carefully composed. 

                        (and, for the record, the typo on page 25 of the zine is intentional. The others I will only claim they are if pointed out.)
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