thinking out loud
Mar. 22nd, 2006 08:06 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
solarbirdI still haven't come up with any good ideas for the daily Norwescon newsletter. I always build it as a concept project, up from first principles, usually around the convention theme in some way. The Norwescon people would mostly be happy if I repeated Mr.Cranky's Disruptive Newsletter - the only Norwescon daily newsletter ever to have an extra issue because people would not stop sending in contributions - every year, but I hate standard jokes and go so far as to refuse to provide new ones, tho' the gods know they'd be happy to let me.
It's actually rather difficult for me to communicate what makes a good 'zine idea. One of the things I absolutely refuse to do is pre-write articles. It has to be something that can, should, and, really, must be shaped by things that go on at the convention. If it's something consisting of articles you can write up beforehand, you've got it wrong. Those should go, I dunno, in the programme book; things written before the convention should be published before the convention. The at-con newsletter should be a creature of the event, not of the convention committee or pre-con planning.
I've seen newsletters that have gone the other way. They haven't been pretty.
It's kind of similar to coming up with an RPG environment, I guess, instead of coming up with a short-story that's already written and which you plug in as you go. Or, as![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
spazzkat put it, I want to build a platform, not an application.
Using a handy example: at last year's NASFiC, CascadiaCon, I set up a world where the Republic of Cascadia was real; I made up a history and a bunch of laws and customs and maps, and then the convention ran - from a newsletter standpoint anyway - in that context, and news and the like reflected that. (Issues here: http://solarbird.net/FaxCascadia/ if you're curious. Whenever I do a 'zine, the ones 2/3 of the way through tend to be the best, since that's far enough in to the con that I've gotten the hang of the event but haven't gotten too tired yet.)
Hm, now that I think on it, this is probably what has me coming up with more RoC stuff like I posted just recently.
risu has suggested doing something that invokes Heribert Illig, who thinks that the early Middle Ages never happened. He is crazy and that is good, as crazy is generally directly proportional to funny. (Not always. Otherwise the time cube guy would be the aleph1 of funny, when in fact he is not even actually of infinite funny, merely a very, very large but finite set of funny.) She also suggests involving a Rain of Jaguars, which is also generally good.
Meanwhile,spazzkat suggests travelogue entries from terrible, horrible places, in which there's something, but I don't know what yet. The catching point there is the pre-written-article trap, which I avoid at all costs. But there's something in it, given the NWC29 theme of "Journeys, Adventures, and Quests of Fantastic Fiction."
Hm. Hm hm hm hm hm.
Also, if you're going to be at the convention, I function much better with an editorial pit than without one. I can come up with a decent share of the funny on my own, but I'm also pretty good at refining funny that pops up from other people into stronger, more durable funny. This time spent would count as volunteer hours, too, so you could get volunteer credit and get into the volunteer's pit and the gift drawings and all that. Talk to me if you're interested, but not if you can't stand being edited, as you would be. There are a disturbing lot of prima donnas in fandom and I have no time for that. It'd be evening work, usually from 10:30-Midnight(ish) for the morning edition.
It's actually rather difficult for me to communicate what makes a good 'zine idea. One of the things I absolutely refuse to do is pre-write articles. It has to be something that can, should, and, really, must be shaped by things that go on at the convention. If it's something consisting of articles you can write up beforehand, you've got it wrong. Those should go, I dunno, in the programme book; things written before the convention should be published before the convention. The at-con newsletter should be a creature of the event, not of the convention committee or pre-con planning.
I've seen newsletters that have gone the other way. They haven't been pretty.
It's kind of similar to coming up with an RPG environment, I guess, instead of coming up with a short-story that's already written and which you plug in as you go. Or, as
spazzkat put it, I want to build a platform, not an application.Using a handy example: at last year's NASFiC, CascadiaCon, I set up a world where the Republic of Cascadia was real; I made up a history and a bunch of laws and customs and maps, and then the convention ran - from a newsletter standpoint anyway - in that context, and news and the like reflected that. (Issues here: http://solarbird.net/FaxCascadia/ if you're curious. Whenever I do a 'zine, the ones 2/3 of the way through tend to be the best, since that's far enough in to the con that I've gotten the hang of the event but haven't gotten too tired yet.)
Hm, now that I think on it, this is probably what has me coming up with more RoC stuff like I posted just recently.
risu has suggested doing something that invokes Heribert Illig, who thinks that the early Middle Ages never happened. He is crazy and that is good, as crazy is generally directly proportional to funny. (Not always. Otherwise the time cube guy would be the aleph1 of funny, when in fact he is not even actually of infinite funny, merely a very, very large but finite set of funny.) She also suggests involving a Rain of Jaguars, which is also generally good.Meanwhile,
spazzkat suggests travelogue entries from terrible, horrible places, in which there's something, but I don't know what yet. The catching point there is the pre-written-article trap, which I avoid at all costs. But there's something in it, given the NWC29 theme of "Journeys, Adventures, and Quests of Fantastic Fiction."Hm. Hm hm hm hm hm.
Also, if you're going to be at the convention, I function much better with an editorial pit than without one. I can come up with a decent share of the funny on my own, but I'm also pretty good at refining funny that pops up from other people into stronger, more durable funny. This time spent would count as volunteer hours, too, so you could get volunteer credit and get into the volunteer's pit and the gift drawings and all that. Talk to me if you're interested, but not if you can't stand being edited, as you would be. There are a disturbing lot of prima donnas in fandom and I have no time for that. It'd be evening work, usually from 10:30-Midnight(ish) for the morning edition.
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Date: 2006-03-23 04:22 am (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2006-03-23 03:31 pm (UTC)Not sure how close any of these are to the con, but IIRC they run from northern CA all the way up into Canadanada.
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Date: 2006-03-23 07:55 pm (UTC)