A zine a day... my idea

I've been concerned about staying creative in the face of full-time work. I made a deal with one of my friends who studied creative writing with me to exchange a chapter per month of our novels, which was a great idea--it made us both accountable. It worked for the first month; then Lids' kitchen burnt down and threw our schedule hopelessly off course. Today was the day we were meant to make our second exchange, but I have to begrudgingly announce that I have written absolutely nothing over the past month (and nothing whatsoever of mine has burnt down, so I have no excuse). I guess knowing that Lids would be out of whack and not waiting to receive my raw prose was enough to eliminate any drive I had.

Last night, however, I jumped online to watch the following YouTube clip by SamProof, which I'd come across probably 18 months ago.



After watching it I folded, chopped and composed a cutesy little zine on black paper with white ink for EJ. It took about 10 minutes.

You see, the Sydney Writers Festival is on in May. Last year I went to its Zine Fair and while some of the content was less than impressive, the drive that some of these writers had to keep producing zine-able work amazed me. Ever since making Fervourography I've wanted to keep self-publishing but I've yet to complete any writing that I deemed worthy.

What If I skip the middle-man? What if, instead of waiting until I have a piece of writing I feel is 'ready', I commit to actually making zines and spend less time worrying about the content? It will force me to find a topic and write a tiny bit every time. Channelling creativity at this stage may be more important than meaningful content and besides, these little 6-pagers are just a bit of fun.

So I'm thinking of starting another blog: azineaday or mydailyzine or zinedejour, or something along those lines. Yes, I'm falling into step with the many bloggers who say they're going to take on some task every day for a year. Why not? Committing to you, an online audience, will spur me to keep my promise - it is extravagantly unlikely that everyone online's kitchen is going to burn down at the same time and let me off the hook!

Any thoughts would be welcome. In the mean time, I'm off the stationers to get some paper.

~Eyespiral