Leaves & Flowers

Hee hee

Woo! Sorry for the long absence -can't believe it's almost Wednesday already (my day off. Aka the day I spend writing and drinking too much coffee [just like every other day, I guess, except I don't go to classes]). That was a ridiculous sentence. Back onto my point -long absence, I'm back now, regular updates start TODAY.

Leaves & Flowers is the official (so far) name of the literary magazine I am creating. Tomorrow there will be a whole bunch of information on it available for your perusal. Please please please pass any and all information along to the creative types in your life (whether it's you, your mom or some hobo you meet on the corner wearing one of those apocalyptic sandwich boards). I will be including pretty much everything you need to know except the details of the submissions, which are only available upon contacting me, whether that's with an e-mail, a phone call, a Twitter follow or whatever -get in touch with me, and we'll be buddies.

For the first issue of L&F there will be no rejections. Revisions? You bet your ass I'll be asking for some, or at least permission to do weird things with the text, but I won't reject anything (unless it deserves it). I may someday be creating a website for all of this, too, so stay on board with it and we'll see where it goes. I am incredibly excited to be working on it, and getting other people interested is proving to be really fun.

BOOKS!

My awesome boyfriend Jonah let me borrow a copy of Clive Barker's book of three plays, called Incarnations. I am used to Barker's novelizations, and so the play "atmosphere," if you will, is very different -until you start paying close attention. Then you realize it's absolutely true of Clive Barker and his style and his oeuvre -that is to say, this book is rocking my socks off. And I'm only like 45 pages in. I love it.

I'm also reading (well, just finished reading) Frankenstein for the first time. Sad, really, that I'm 20 and have never read it, but I'm also glad that I hadn't read it before -going through it with Van Winkle as my teacher has been an incomparably fun reading experience. It's very hard to capture Dr. Van Winkle in words...he's a brilliant, exuberantly weird man, and being in his class is absurdly fun. I find myself laughing at all of his little comments, even if the rest of the group sort of sits there with a collectively glazed look on their eyes. I think his eccentricity is what makes the class so much fun, whereas a lot of other people are apparently weirded out by him (not that he isn't weird -I just think he happens to be a cool brand of weird).

What's everyone else reading these days?

Skipping Class

This is what my brain does when I get worked up about stuff. Which can be good or awesome, depending on the situation. ;)

You know, generally skipping class is not a good thing to do. It's generally considered kind of scummy to not show up for class -it's sort of disrespectful to the teacher and the subject. But that, of course, assumes the class itself is earning that respect -and the necessity of the student's presence. In the case of the class I'm currently skipping, it just isn't so. All of the notes (I mean ALL of the notes -notes on the notes, annotations, extra links and information) are online. Nothing else is done in class except watch the occasional video, which, we are told "is not going to be on the test."

My question becomes, "Well, what IS?"

The teacher of this class is genuinely nice. But she seems to be more interested in making sure no one is challenged even a little tiny bit by the material than teaching us anything.

So I don't go. I challenge myself in other ways during class time. I'll show up for tests and maybe once a week otherwise and do all my projects and work with people when necessary, but otherwise, I'm not going to be there. I'm getting more out of my class by not being in it.

I am, in fact, seeking out more writing gigs. Kind of. I'm not looking for writing for me to do (well, that's a lie -I'm always looking for writing for me to do); right now I'm trying to find people who will be willing to write for my literary journal. Know anybody? Are you somebody who would like to write (or take pictures or draw or make a sculpture and send me a photo of it)? Because I need you. I want you. (Not in a suggestive way.) I want all of the creativity I can get for this baby. I want to make it happen, and possibly happen long term.

I'm falling in love with publishing, you see, more than I ever had before. I want to make this an integral part of my life. But I need writers, thinkers, artists, etc. to help me get it off the ground.

So if you know anybody/are somebody, send them my way. Right now. Comment on the blog, e-mail me with "Leaves & Flowers" as the subject line (it's the working title of the mag right now) and I will fill you in on the aesthetic I'm looking for and what types of submissions I will accept.

Skipping class is totally valuable. ;)

I probably won't be around to update again today or tomorrow since I'm going to a concert tonight and going home for the weekend after that, but I will check periodically to see if I have comments or e-mails and I will respond promptly, I promise!

Book Project

I have previously mentioned my literary editing class and the awesome-tastic final project we're doing. Namely, creating some kind of literary journal/magazine/anthology/thing. I've been having ideas, ideas and more ideas and every time I end up in class I think of more things I want to incorporate into this project.

I'm still trying to decide if I want to do just a print book, but I'm starting to move away from that a little -I want to incorporate the internet into it. I'd like to see if there's a way I can create an e-book that would still be available as a print on demand sort of thing, just without the internet function (obviously. I can't do magic).

As much as I love print journals and books, technology is opening up a lot of formatting avenues for me that I wouldn't be able to have in a more traditional format. Another possibility I'm considering is just creating a print on demand journal that utilizes non-traditional formatting and design. This option seems most realistic to me right now, especially since I only have 8 weeks to work on it.

I'm starting to think that I could make a small amount of money as a result of this though -whether through self publishing or starting my own little publishing company. I don't know. I'll have to look into the legal side of things, especially if I use the work of other people, but it's something I'm going to be thinking about in conjunction with this project.

As for the aesthetic mission of my project, I think I've finally started to formulate the beginning of a workable idea. I still want all the pieces to be focused around a similar concept (namely finding the magic/joy/love in the everyday, even if the "everyday" isn't exactly normal), but what I'm thinking about doing is writing a simple, generic sort of prompt and giving it to all interested writers...and what comes in comes in. Writing from a prompt, I know from experience with Power of the Pen, can lead to amazingly creative stories and ideas. I also want illustrations, photographs and other forms of expression included in the design; I want to represent the aesthetic differences and similarities that can come from a lot of people finding inspiration from the same source.

I think that will be a LOT of fun. I'm going to start trying to find interested writers (etc.) ASAP. If you are a writer (etc.) and you're interested in getting in on this (and helping out a broke, starving, pathetic college student like myself) let me know! I want talented work -that doesn't mean I'm looking for Hemingway. I'm looking for legitimate creativity, that's all. I'll have more information on prompts, the functioning aesthetic of the publication and other bits and pieces as I progress through the class.

It's getting really very exciting for me!