Make Something is a GO!

It's pretty much all I've been thinking or talking about these last two days, a cool magazine project called Make Something. I have set up it's very own Blogspot and have a few pages of content already. Also Weaponizer is running a little "contest" for the second issue, send them micro fiction in a Twitter burst to @Weaponizer and you can be part of their two page spread. Also did I mention the whole first issue's pages have all been taken up by very talented people? All of this in just a weekend. Hell we already have spots filling for the second issue. It's making me very excited and happy. Sure there's still some technical bits that need to be settled, but that's fine, and part of the fun. I also need to start work on my portion of the issue, I have a decent idea on format, but need to kick the content itself around a bit until it fits right.

And this has me thinking. I want to do more. I'm doing quick bursts of research here and there, making notes for after the holidays are done and the magazine's skeleton together so it will just be a matter of clicking all the pieces in at the end, but I have another idea that is peculating that I hope to get going soon. I'm in entering the talking the what if game with friends right now, which means it's getting close. Like I said, very exciting times.

Make Something Magazine Proposal

Inspired by the whole Get Excited and Make Things meme and just always having fun piecing together an eclectic project, I present for your consideration the Make Something Magazine (working title). The whole point of the thing would be to let people mess around with 2 or 4 pages in a magazine. Whatever the hell the person wants, goes in, photos, art, words, whatever. Since magazines switch format, topic, and style at the flip of a page, I think it should work out with little to no problems. Plus who doesn't like to be able to actually hold something in their two hands that they created? Flipping through just the other magazines on MagCloud the sky really is the limit here. The whole thing would have no mark up, it'd cost just what MagCloud charges and shipping.

Anyways, I'm looking for more people to pitch in. If anyone would like to contribute to this (or if it all goes smoothly enough, future iterations to this) contact me via makesomethingmag @ gmail or here, whichever. Or if you have questions or suggestions, also welcome at either. I do have a working list of page counts to hand out to hit the page total I'm aiming for (28 though that can scale in different directions).

Of course all work submitted is and remains owned by the creator, just want to give another outlet for creative work!

An idea on how to use MagCloud

MagCloud is this neat little website that lets you make your very own magazine, for free! It's a pretty neat service and I want to play around with it. So here is my plan/idea as I don't want to just create a magazine by myself.

I'd like to give out pages to people so they can do whatever they want with it, be it words, pictures, or both. I'd take a few pages to add things myself, try and give some room for an interview with someone who is creating things of their own, and maybe an opening editorial. When I have stuff and it's needed throw in stuff I created as well.

The whole thing would cost just the 20 cents per page and the shipping, no profit. I just want to create something and give others a place where they can show off what they create. I am still working out things and then will try to find people to contribute.

How did it escape me?

See two posts ago for my grand ambitions. They sadly fell away for the most part. I have still been a bit productive this month but not anywhere near as productive as I wanted. I quit NaNoWriMo a while ago with a decent 11k words to my name. I'm working on the story in bits and phases here, but I am struggling trying to get some of the other characters to do anything of interest. I have the mad scientist down pat, since well fuck he's a goddamn mad scientist and is awesome fun to write, but he's not the main character. So until I get some of the rest of the cast's voices down I must wait on it. Most of my writings dealing with it are attempts to nail a voice and personality down, usually they end up tossed. It is a bit tiresome.

I have signed up for schooling, and apparently my shitty year of no income qualifies me for a huge amount of grants, at least compared to the community college fees. They projected 6k for me online, classes will take about a thousand at MOST even with books. We will see how well I do with computers when it comes to schooling. Kind of wish I had gotten a chance to apply to grad school, but no money means I can't take the test or do the application fee. If I hate computer classes I apply a month in with my fat grant monies.

I have been drawing. Which is odd. Because I don't draw, not anymore. I've settled on wanting to fuck around and post things online once I get a bit more consistant in drawing the same thing over and over again. It won't be the best of art, but it's the internet, tons of shitty pieces of art get put on it every day. It also saves my sanity when I can't nail a damn character for a story I have outlined out!

Hmm what else? Oh Zombie Conversational will premiere in March 2010. Or I will personally set fire to the scripts we have. This has been agreed upon by the co-creator and co-everything else in the project. I concede the next month because he works retail.

Also trying to work out the details for an anthology project. Still hammering things out, including a list of people to contact. I have found I like collaborating with people on projects but always worried about approaching others about trying something out.

Hmm all things considered November wasn't all THAT bad, not at the point I was aiming for, but still a decent point none the less.

Thank you one and all

So it is very minor, but I actually have an audience. This is a very strange idea for me. I got a bit accustomed to some people stumbling upon my Associated Content articles and such but those are usually hastily written and on various subjects that someone on the internet will find them ammusing.

I mean that I post things on twitter and people actually check them out. Thanks to the lovely little tool of bit.ty I can tell how many people check out what I connect to. This averages around 12 people checking it out. I just think that is very neat. It's not huge numbers but I want to thank whoever those 12 people are for giving whatever I link (sometimes my writing usually something someone else created I want to share) a try. So thanks everyone!

In other news, I have an outline for NaNoWriMo. I need to get to working on it. I'm trying not to write after 8PM though. Which is a bit of a hindrance since I keep waking up so fucking late in the day. Sigh.

But I persevere anyways.

November is for creating

This month I am trying to keep on task. I have promised myself to work on some creative endeavorer every day of the month. This can be most anything. I have spent this last week working on coming up with t shirt ideas, messing with scripts for an online show, and being part of NaNoWriMo.

Thus far I would say it's been a success for me. I feel I'm accomplishing something and I have solid things to show for it. Sure most of them are typed words that need to be edited a lot for any other human being to lay eyes on them. But I'm accomplishing something in my time instead of just clicking across the internet and doing nothing.

Now I still have yet to reach a point of progress where I am content with continuing that output. I am wanting to get to the point where I'm dedicating 3-5 hours a day on work. And then take a day a week off and just putz around if I feel like it. Currently it's about an hour or two a day that I actually get anything done. My eventual goal is to have people actually look at what I've created and enjoy it. If I can make a little bit of money off ads or sales, even better. But first thing is the creating. Then editing and sharing, followed by tons of marketing. But Novemeber is just dedicated to creation.

This week I hope to get caught up on NaNo (I'm a bit behind after scrapping the 5 thousand words I had on day three), get the intro video for Zombie Conversational filmed so we can get that moving along, and have a rough draft for another show called Ask Lazul (until we come up with a better title). I will check in next week to report if I've pulled any or all of these off.

The Lovers, the Dreamers, and Me?

I am wondering if there is a way to make a living without anymore soul crushing shitty jobs. I did that for nearly a decade, do I really need to spend a few MORE decades living in dreary horror to get by? Lord I hope not.

Next month, in addition to looking FOR soul crushing work, and trying to get into grad school, I am going to be trying to complete NaNoWriMo. So my whole month will be working on writing a first draft of a novel, from scratch. Wow.

In addition, my friend and I will be filming episodes of Zombie Conversational. Which I'm a bit worried about. I (like you know, most people) am not happy with how I look or how my voice sounds on tape. So of course my biggest and really ONLY project that is in existence is something where I have to be on camera and talking. I'm not the most worried about it, but I'm sure I will hate a lot of what I do anyways.

I'm more excited about writing scripts, coming up with stories, and working on advertising the site. But there ain't shit to advertise until we have something filmed, which sucks. I'm VERY excited about the advertising.

Speaking of which, we did zombie day, filming a bunch of people dressed up as zombies for the theme song for Zombie Conversational. It was lots of fun and neat. There are tons of pictures! I'm done now, think I'm going to try and get on a normal sleeping pattern and actually wake up in the morning two days in a row.

Vonnegut's rules for writing

Just stumbled upon Kurt Vonnegut's rules for writing. What follows is completely and utterly HIS words, not mine.

1. Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.
2. Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.
3. Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.
4. Every sentence must do one of two things - reveal character or advance the action.
5. Start as close to the end as possible.
6. Be a Sadist. No matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them—in order that the reader may see what they are made of.
7. Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.
8. Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To hell with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages.

Saturday

This is actually what I posted on Whitechapel's Open Mic, but I wanted to keep it around for some reason. Don't ask me why... and stop looking at me like that! Don't judge me!!!

The future: Next week (weather permitting) we will be filming a bunch of people dressed as zombies for our new web show. And I now realize that I will be acting in a web series that I co-wrote. This is a bit scary, since I don't like my voice or how I look on a camera. I'm wondering why I'm doing this, then remember it's the one thing that has kept me very excited these last few months.

Also next week I go back to my school, or I guess old school since I graduated, and talk about graduate programs. Hopefully this will be more positive then I'm fearing, applying to places (namely jobs) hasn't been that good as of late so I have some fear applying for school.

What is pissing me off: Being a plague monkey for over a week. I keep getting close to being clear of this flu/cold and then boom something else just sits around and keeps me sick and not at 100% I want to fucking exercise so badly it's killing me, but no... I must be a plague monkey!

Filthy: The things I've hacked up being a plague monkey are disgusting and filthy. I thankfully have been in a fever induced haze to not really recall them well.

Where, who and will be: I'm outside St. Louis in my room. I want to be happy and succesful. I'd like to make enough cash to live by going to school and doing web shows. I want to make new things and make someone besides myself and my friends laugh. And I'd love to have a real camera, something I could take with me as I play tourist and really capture some of the amazing and beautiful things I see in those journeys.

Picture: I still need an actual digital camera and it is my planned first purchase if someone ever decides to pay me for work ever again. But here is one taken on my crappy phone camera. Here I am with the beard I've grown due to being lazy while dying of the plague.