A monthly zine prompt to spark creativity.
Other zine writer/publisher resources I found this week:
Sleep gets in the way
before I've hardly started
time is quicksilver.
I wrote this haiku this morning.
I often feel so many things, people, etc take over the time you have, the need for sleep being just one more of those. I love the time I am immersed in something. Learning something, sorting out something tangled, or reading a book with a good, deep story. There are always interruptions. Sleep is at least from myself, my body and brain needing physical care. Still, I resent it, a divider of days. "You can't stay up all night". But I can and I have. That early morning time before most people are awake, when the sky is a dark purple and the birds are warming up for the day. It's wonderful. It's quiet and a bit chilly and private. Only seconds, maybe minutes and then there is a sound in the house. Someone else is awake and its gone. That little bit of time, outside the world, family and things to do. It's something that is still fully mine. But it pops like a soap bubble and is gone.
"Have you ever wondered why children are no longer taught to write in cursive?" And no, it is not by chance that they tend to use it less and less. Writing in cursive means translating thoughts into words; it forces you to not take your hand off the paper. A stimulating effort, which allows you to associate ideas, link them and put them in relation. Not by chance does the word cursive come from the Latin "currere", which runs, which flows, because thought is winged, it runs, it flies. Of course, cursive has no place in today's world, a world that does everything possible to slow down the development of thought, to fill it. I think cursive was born in Italy and then spread throughout the world. Why? Because it was compact, elegant, clear writing. But ours is a society that no longer has time for elegance, for beauty, for complexity; we have synthetics but not clarity, speed but not efficiency, information but not knowledge! In general, we know too much and too little because we are no longer (generally speaking) able to put things into relation. Most people can no longer think. This is why we should go back to writing in cursive, especially at school. Because this is not just about recovering a writing style, but about giving breath to our thoughts again. Everything that makes us live, that feeds the soul, that sustains the spirit, is connected to breathing. Without breath, as the ancient Greeks said, there is no thought. And without thoughts there is no life. Source: Vivian Parra.
Posted by my Aunt on Facebook, I've saved it here.
Working with the University of Guelph.
Our archive showcases over 200 Ontario diarists from 1800 to 1960. Discover and Meet the Diarists are good places to get acquainted with these people from the past. Learn how to unlock the riches within their daily entries and escape into the past. You can read and Search through typed nineteenth-century diaries. Help us Transcribe other handwritten ones online to make these valuable sources accessible to all.
Think of a fanzine you might have written. (Maybe you even did write one). After all the issues, the community you may have found, the new things you learned as you published about your favourite TV show, celebrity, type of fruit, grocery store chain, etc. How would you finish it all, a final goodbye?
I thought this was such a great creative writing idea. Writing sort of a eulogy for your creative passion once its wound down. Maybe you ran out of things to say. Maybe you got tired of it. Maybe your opinion about the whole thing changed. Maybe it got to be too expensive. There are lots of reasons a small, self publication, a fanzine, would close down. Would that be part of your final issue, or would you leave it for people to guess at? Leave them wanting more?
You might make a final grand statement, an epic summary of everything you have found and learned. I think I'd try to do that then change my mind when I couldn't make it short enough, or be sure I hadn't forgotten something and then want to write another final issue.
Of course, if you've never written a fanzine this could be your one and only. The one and only fanzine about wilted lettuce... giraffes... bicycle lanes... the evolution of Sunday shopping... there really is no end to the range of ideas and topics. They don't even have to take themselves very seriously.
