Writing for Fanzines
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| Event | |
|---|---|
| Event: | online workshop |
| Participants: | Writing for Fanzines |
| Date(s): | Feb 19, 2003 |
| Type: | online workshop |
| Fandom: | |
| URL: | Workshop Notes;[1] Raw AOL Chat logs[2] |
| Click here for related articles on Fanlore. | |
Writing for Fanzines was an online workshop hosted on AOL chat on February 19, 2003. It was led by Jean Lorrah, Karen MacLeod, and Jacqueline Lichtenberg and was hosted by WorldCrafters Guild School of Professional Writing.
Excerpt written by Jean Lorrah:
"Thus the editing skills that I had learned from zine publishing carried over into my professional life in two ways: they made it possible for me to both content edit and copyedit material for Lorrah & Hitchcock and PANDORA, and they gave me the skills to work with the content editors of my own professional writing, and to do my own copyediting. On the latter, by the way, you'd better either learn to copyedit your own work or find someone as good as Karen MacLeod to do it for you. Otherwise, I guarantee that between you and the so-called copyeditor who will try to make your work say what that person thinks you meant, you will end up with a number of "doozies" in every book. Finally, zine editing was also my first business experience. Many a zine editor before me, with all the good intentions in the world, had taken pre-publication money, put it into her own checking account for safe-keeping, used the money in her checking account to pay for groceries, rent, and the emergencies when her car broke down and she sprained her ankle, and then found herself unable to pay for printing her zine when it was finally ready. Determined not to be one of those people, I started very simply by opening a separate checking account for fanzine money. That way I knew that everything in that account belonged to the zine, and was not to be mistaken for grocery, rent, or utility money."
From Karen McLeod:
"I'm fond of the paper fanzines, for the memories of freezing in winter, and roasting in summer to do the mimeographing. Let's NOT go there. We never made money on any of them... it was a labor of love -- and it broke my heart when you told me how many copies went into the recycling truck when you moved."
From Jacqueline Lichtenberg:
"Kraith was not the first writing I had ever done, but it was the first huge fictional project I ever did aimed precisely at the fanzine market. The main stories are homework projects for The Famous Writers' School course which I was taking at the time. And each of the skills demonstrated in those stories was acquired in a deliberate and concerted program to gain the skillls needed to create my first professional novel, House of Zeor."