Now that we are a couple months into gathering the pieces that will eventually be published in our second zine, I figured it was high time that we began posting little periodic updates in order to hold ourselves accountable. Thus, this post and those following will be done in such a way to keep everyone–no matter how involved they are in the actual zine process–up to date with how things are coming and what changes from previous zines have taken place or have been discussed.

Some of the things that we are looking at as changes from the previous zine:

• We have three new editors, and we plan to keep rotating editors between each zine as much as possible. David Leuenberger, Dylan Mounts, and James Zhao are the editors for our Second zine. We also are aiming for a publication to be released somewhere in Late Q3 or early Q4.
• We are now accepting art submissions for the cover of our zine and portions of the inside of our zine. This is in part to alleviate some of the last-minute stresses by having designs approved ahead of “crunch time” so that they are more easily incorporated into the final layout.
• Through trial-by-fire, we now have a designated design-lady. Katherine Arrandale has been absolutely wonderful in donating her time and energy during the awful “crunch time” that we had for the first zine towards producing a layout that most everyone else was too afraid to touch. Without her help during the last zine, the final designing process would likely have taken a good month longer. I don’t even know enough about layout to pretend to do an adequate job, so her stepping up into the role comes at a great relief to me.
• In preparation for an eventual print copy of the zine, we have set up a financial account with Paypal which we are looking to use for all of our sites’ financial needs. This eventually might help for reimbursing Aarin, who has been fronting the costs of site management and upkeep (as well as boatloads of time), but our priorities at the moment are much more focused on advertising, printing fees, and other unexpected fees that we might bump into. Part of why we haven’t made the Paypal account visible yet is because we are unsure what sort of return thanks we can offer those who choose to donate to our zine. While we can eventually offer print copies, we do not have the structure to offer print copies of our zine at this time.
• Back in May when we released the zine, we asked everyone to spread word of our little group. The rewards have proven to be greater than I expected, honestly. Total membership has grown by 22% since May, almost all of which post regularly on our forum and contribute to the community. As a change from the previous zine, we are actively looking for people interested in writing (or any art for that matter) to join and contribute to our community–as opposed to before, when we were simply attempting to find our feet.
• Finally, I asked Aarin to create a good variety of categories that I think fit each post and the posts we will be seeing in the future. This is simply to make for easier reading as we will no doubt be having more and more blot posts as time goes on. You can see the categories reflected for all of the previous posts.

All being said and done, I rather enjoy continuing to work with this community in order to promote our love for helping people improve their own writing (and in improving our own writing in the process). Thank you all for having contributed as much as you have, and I hope that you continue to feel inspired to contribute more in the future.

One day, not much longer than a week ago, a challenge was forged in the fiery depths of Mount Locution Forums by Marrowmeld. It read thus:

I challenge you all to write something creative every day for the next 30 days. Every day you will then post your creation in a blog for everyone to see. It does not have to be heavily polished, but it does have to be new work. The idea is just to get creativity flowing, which I know from personal experience can be a real bitch to do.

Now, there are many challenges in the Internet, some of which, granted, are to be taken quite lightly. However, this one sparked quite a bit of interest — in addition to the challenger himself, at least ten participants have decided to take their creativity for a walk every day for one month. It is still entirely possible to join in, of course. The dates aren’t set in stone; all that is required is 30 consecutive days of writing.

Why do this, then? Because the creative muscle, which according to the latest information connects the heart bone to the cerebral cartilage, is like any other muscle. In order for it to grow, or even just stay healthy, it needs frequent exercise. The quality of any life can benefit from creativity, but especially as writers we should exercise our creativity often. It is, after all, the tool of our trade.

The other reason is that although many of us frequently intend to start writing every day, it tends to just not happen. For those people - and I am one of them - there is nothing like a collective effort like this for a good prod in the buttock. And when you have been doing something for thirty days, if you want to, it’s easier to just keep on going. So if you want to get into the habit of daily writing, join our fellowship of the challenge (or create your own) and off you are.

Remember: a creative brain gathers no moss.

Participants:

J. Marrow
Eladnarra
Architectonic
Crihavoc
Fuchsia
Missedtarget
Tracer
Rouxinol
Meristele
Sarck
…and myself.

I agonized for over a month about this one blog post.  I could not, for the life of me, come up with a solid discussion of the zine that sounded even remotely professional or readable or even seemed accurate to the process of getting the zine together.  What I had expected of the blog turned out to be much more than I could ever have hoped to fulfill.

I didn’t really have much in mind for the zine when I began working on it, I just wanted to help create something that was enjoyable for as many people as possible.  In that goal, I think we have succeeded.  Although there were and will be a few mistakes in our process, I think that we have created a worthwhile read for a wide range of readers.  Since we don’t focus on a genre, we open ourselves up to publishing practically anything so long as we like it. If we enjoy a work, that provides a stronger argument for saying that other people might enjoy that same work as well.  Not everyone might agree with our choices, but that is part of why we switch out our editing staff every zine.  In addition to giving those editors who had poured many weeks and months of their lives and time into evaluating all of our submissions a bit of a break, different voices calling the shots allows us to maintain our unbiased search for any enjoyable work. Different leadership also helps us re-evaluate where we are as a group and as individuals.

We are not a professional organization producing a professional magazine for all to read.  That sort of torture is reserved for people who spent years upon years in their industry, for people who are paid for their work. While Locution certainly strives to look and feel like a professional magazine, the reality persists that we are hobbyists producing a collection of our best works to show off to each other and to others.  We use our love for writing in order to help other writers become better, to help other writers get a feel for how professional organization might work.  We are not the professional organization; we are the stepping stone on the way there.

Just the same, with every passing critique or evaluation, we do strive to become better and more professional.  We started trying to create a zine back in October and successfully pulled everything together for a release in May.  It took a lot of organizational building, but I think that we have a working structure that can be used and tweaked for the zines to come.

I am proud of the pieces contained in our zine.  I feel that they accurately reflect where we are as an organization and where some of the leading writers of our community are with their own writing.  Although we are hobbyists, we are always striving to become better at the things we love to do.  Locution is a vehicle for our passions, and I hope to be able to share those passions with others who also love the arts and also want to become better in their chosen craft.

If you’re as busy as I am, every little block of time that can be carved out for a bit of writing is precious. For those of us (like me) struggling to keep a roof over our heads and food on the table, the anxieties of everyday life often smother the flame of inspiration. We get so bogged down worrying about the price of gas and making it to work on time that our need to create and communicate is penciled in dead last on our to-do lists. Therefore, there are few things more frustrating to a writer with a day job then to find yourself with a free moment, only to come up completely dry.

So it was with high hopes that I purchased Poemcrazy, a book that, in its introduction, promises to help the reader “set up circumstances in which poems are likely to happen.” The book aims to put the reader in a state of mind that is more receptive to letting your creativity flow. Woven in between rose-colored anecdotes from author Susan Goldsmith Wooldridge’s personal life are quotes from established poets and personal friends, excerpts of poetry written by some of her students, and sections entitled “Practice,” which encourage the reader to experiment with the suggestions she makes.

The book itself, equal parts a guide to self-discovery and portable poetry workshop, is largely effective in its stated purpose. Wooldridge’s advice ranges from sensible (buy a notebook that suits you and it take with you everywhere) to whimsical (start a “word collection” by writing single words on the back of paper tickets) to impractical (“Practice silence. Spend an entire day without speaking.”) to downright nonsensical (“Go out in the rain. Drink rainwater from leaves.”) The overall tone of the book is one of innocent whimsy that can at times be cloying; those of you who aspire to write searing diatribes on the more brutal side of life may not find much help here.

Still, for the inspirationally-challenged, this book is a pretty good place to start, as its gentle suggestions at the very least encourage poets at any level to stop for a moment and look at the world through eyes unclouded by cynicism. And who knows? You may see something you didn’t expect. Maybe something beautiful.

Even those of us who have not personally perused The Elements of Style, the essential little opus of American English composition by William Strunk jr. and E. B. White, will probably have encountered a set of stylistic rules smithed by the latter of its authors. And it is generally a good set of rules, and one that bears repeating to any fledgling writer. Yet, in Spunk & Bite, Arthur Plotnik unceremoniously turns White’s rules upside down.

That’s because Spunk & Bite is not for the fledgling writer. As he states in his introduction, Plotnik expects the reader to already know the ropes. He then shows him how to jump them without ending up rooted in the ground face-first, because “Bending the rules can spring writers from ruts - get them out of themselves, out of the ordinary, and into prose that comes alive, gets noticed, gets published.”

“Avoid foreign languages”, says White. “Prefer the standard to the offbeat.” But books like Nabokov’s Lolita hardly succeeded in spite of the generous peppering of French and the rich, poetic diction the protagonist indulges in. Spunk & Bite devotes chapters to onomatopoeia, adverbs, intensifiers, fragmented sentences, striking locutions of all kinds. Everything is backed up with snippets from various successful authors. What’s more, Plotnik actively uses the very constructs he’s talking about in his text, smoothly and illustratively: “Readers love surprise. They love it when a sentence heads one way and jerks another. They love the boing of a jack-in-the-box word. They adore images that trot by them like a unicorn in pajamas.” It’s a uniquely wonderful way to get the idea across.

Of course, you’re unlikely to agree with Plotnik about the usability of every piece of advice he gives, or about the greatness of every work he quotes. I’ll be the first to recoil at injecting popular culture and “Writing for New Generations” (I loathed Catcher in the Rye. Make your own conclusions). But even so, the book is a thoroughly serviceable pickax in the jewel mines of writing. You just need to be able to tell the diamonds from the waste rock.

That brings us to one last thing that must be made abundantly clear: the cute, yellow volume, sporting an inking of a black dog between the words “SPUNK & BITE: A writer’s guide to bold, contemporary style”, is a dangerous book. In the hands of the cluelessly incompetent, it takes the form of a cauldron the size of the Kepler crater, filled to the brim with hot, bubbling disaster. But nevertheless, it is a powerful book. Provided, that is, you wield it like a rapier, not like a bludgeon.

While locution has a variety of members, I think it would be safe to say that most of us belong to this new generation. Some people call it generation Y or whatever mundane jargon, but I think people will one day look back and call this the age of Anonymous/Internet Memes, and I think a good deal of our writers are at least somewhat affected by internet culture.

Will internet culture affect the arts? Will it affect literature? I do not believe l33t sp34k to be really the matter here. I think it’s a stupid pretentious medium that doesn’t do very much most of the time, and I think it’d be unfair to brand this new generation with some silly quirk. What really affects us is the speed in which ideas communicate, and the way our everyday lives can be affected by random strangers on the internet. Random strangers on the internet are no longer mysterious possible pedophiles (anymore than a stranger on the street can be, in any case), but real people, and people have begun to truly accept internet as a medium of communication. For instance, I have never met a single member of locution, yet I see them as friends– real people.

And just to show that the internet really is serious business, I’d like to share a piece of ”internet phenomenon” that is quite close to my writer heart, first brought to my attention on the old forums.

John Dies at the End

So some guy (David Wong) decides to post parts of his serial novel up bit by bit on his website/blog. Fast forward: he gets a deal, and it becomes sold in paperback, with a movie planned.

Fuck, how come it never happens to me?

That said, this just shows the power of internet and viral marketting at work, and I am inspired by his success. For one, to realize that, yes, a lot of people still read. (I wonder whether he’s an active channer, because I can’t help but notice the comments about black people and friend chicken and so on, and the close-to-heart juvenile jokes.) But yes, to confirm that this new generation is still very much literate, thank God, is a great thing. Who else would be reading his work, anyway? IDK, MY BFF JILL?

But that’s really just my speculation, after all. The fact, however, is that he stayed true to himself (a good example, I think, of this new generation of people), continued to crack out his “penis jokes”, and managed to succeed. Maybe we can do the same. Maybe we can write the stories in our hearts, whatever they are, (whether or not they include 12-year old antagonist Gods with a foul mouth), and still suceed.

The story is a “comedy horror”, but I believe you can read the reviews or the story itself and find out yourself. My favorite part is the romance near the end. It seeps in so very subtly, yet feels so real. No exaggerated or glossed-over romantcism about unimaginable beauty, just real concern and caring that seeps into your bones slowly. You’d think a novel promoted for its raw insulting humor would be incapable of such subtlety, but I was quite surprised.

But that’s my take on it. Do check it out.

Well Locution is now moving onto the final phase for our introductory magazine, and soon we will be starting our propaganda. That is, advertisement, and thusly also submissions. Hopefully we’ll have out soon, and people can start sending in material.

Until then, have a Happy New Year.

I have found that engaging myself in such a project like this helps considerably at noticing things that I normally would not. In this week’s case, I noticed that PBS has been producing a special series through Newshour (with Jim Lehrer) on individual poets and the poetry scene within sections of the United States.

Specifically, this line of research led me directly to the poetry publishing company that the series has used to contact poets and to cover in general. The publishing company’s site actually offers a couple of essays for advice on being a poet and submitting poetry in general. I thought it was quite an interesting read, which is about all I can do with my rather feeble knowledge of poetry.

Also, though I haven’t done much research in the matter, the website allpoetry.com has been highly recommended by a few friends of mine who are quite active poets in my region as a good community for poets. Personally, I can’t see why you’d need it with all of the stellar people we have here, *cough* *cough*, but I just thought I would put out all the resources I could for prospective poets.

Zaijian.

Hello everybody.

Another rejection slip, another could-be $700 gone. It’s a difficult world. However, the magazine did send a rather interesting article they have for their contributors, and I thought I’d share:

Glimmer Editor’s Comments

I thought I’d start with some news first. You know, start in the action and all that. But anyway, hello, this is your coordinator speaking. We’re still private (at the moment I’m writing this anyway), so you shouldn’t even be here, but I’ll say hi anyway.

So hi.

This is our blog where we blog. What’s there more to say? We’ll provide litereture related news and anecdotes here. Speaking of which, the NaNoWriMo sign up has begun earlier this month and ends with the last day of October.

To be completely honest, NaNoWriMo is in general pretty ridiculously stupid. It’s basically fanfiction.net quality novels churned out by thousands of people who don’t really write usually (with perhaps the rare exception of aforementioned fanfiction.net submissions).

That said, it’s also very awesome (and there are probably quite a few good writers there, too), and I’m proud to say that I’ll be doing it this year (provided that nobody sees the result. I’ve learnt to never show a first draft.). It’s a good excercise sometimes, to be able to write. Procrastination is large problem for writers, or at least for me, and goal setting (and the once-a-blue-moon meeting of those goals) had been critical to my writing experience. I’ve once promised myself that I wouldn’t sleep until I’ve written a specific amount of words which I had already promised myself to write earlier that week (I ended up surfing wikipedia). I succeeded! Even if the day after (and the day after that) passed by with me barely alive.

Anyway, it’s a good idea to push yourself, and remember not to be KILL BY DEMONS.

-Shane Lee

We are live!

And with wordpress 2.3.

I’m actually a little jealous.