Meaningful Work: My experience producing a print zine

by Stephanie Shenk

1. Ideas

It began in a bar, like many good ideas do. I said, "I'm going to do a zine," and Kim said, "Ooh! I'll do an article on Britney!" and Shane said, "I'll do one of my political tracts." I said, "Wow, cool—I could be, like, an editor!" And that was that.

Of course, it had really begun several months before, when I attended the Portland Zine Symposium, hoping to learn tips for the Seattle Writergrrls online Zine and finding zillions of tips and tricks for paper zines instead. Or several months before that when my new boyfriend bought me a copy of Urban Hermit #11 and I fell in love (my boyfriend said, "I've published zines before—I could help you make one!") Or, to go furthest back, when I was a freshman in college and fantasized about publishing an "underground newspaper."

So of course the Portland Zine Symposium wasn't the first time I'd ever heard of paper zines, but it was the first time I'd encountered the paper zine culture in-depth. On the Portland State University campus, college kids and 20-something hipsters and anarchist hippies met in the spirit of do-it-yourself (DIY) publishing. They showed off their paper wares: two-by-three–inch matchbooks filled with letter press poetry; quarter-page typed zines on how to fix bikes; half-page, hand-written zines that read like the inside of an anarchist hippie's diary. The theme of DIY permeated everything, from making your own paper to Xeroxing your own copies, to expressing your own ideas.

Contrary to the predominant population of the symposium, the Pacific Northwest punk culture doesn't really have the corner on the concept of paper zines. In fact, as I learned in the "History of Zines" seminar, "zines" is short for fanzines, through which mailed publications fans of sci-fi and other media formed a sub-mass-media community, or subculture. Thus, it's a perfect medium for the counter-culture punks—or for anyone else interested in self-publishing ideas that might not make it past those with the power, money, or mass consensus otherwise.

I think their underground nature is what attracts me to zines in general. Done super-cheap, by hand, and outside of commercial and traditional publishing avenues, zines allow me to be a writer, designer, editor, and publisher. Zines also aren't sold for much profit—they're more for communication and community, which resonates with me because I've always thought that mixing money and art sullied the process. To me, it's about sharing and pure ideas, about how each person's soul adds a twist to cultural thinking that helps us realize our own individuality and community at the same time—it's not about trying to figure out what my audience wants, or worse, what they'll pay and how much.

Back in college, I never published my underground newspaper. Years later, I dreamed about being the creative writer of an intensely personal and fascinating journey through the gutters of life, making world-changing observations embedded in delicate poetic language. You know, a la print zine goddess Sarah O (a.k.a. Urban Hermitt). This hasn't panned out either as I'm such a social butterfly that I can't stay alone long enough to complete any lengthy writing project.

So that night at the bar was actually a great revolution in my quest to make a zine. Here was my college underground newspaper dream come true, complete with ready-to-submit contributors, and I wouldn't have to write anything lengthy myself in order to achieve my dream of publishing a zine. And, unlike my vague college plan, this time I had an idea. All summer I'd been frustrated by friends grinding some ax or another and not seeming to do anything about their concerns. Now, I could give them a medium for action—I could share my friends' ideas with the world by giving them a voice. So while it was really just the start, I had a few things going for me that, as I've been given to understand, make all the difference in completing projects like these. First, it sounded doable to me; second, I had submitters I could count on for contributions; and third, I had a title: Grind that Ax!

2. Experience

From conception to publication, it took me probably three months to publish my zine, and I haven't even distributed it to any great extent yet.

I began with the two article ideas from Kim and Shane. I figured my boyfriend could do one, I could do another, and a Writergrrl friend of mine, Eve, could be relied upon to complete another one. So there I had five articles, which I figured was about right.

Secondly, I wanted to figure out my editorial policy. What would I consider unprintable? What was I interested in printing? I decided that I wanted to allow my writers discretion as to voice and format, offering editorial services if they wanted them, but being hands-off otherwise. And I didn't want to discriminate against any ideas, so I decided to allow commentary that might appear sexist or orientationist.

I also decided that typos and other grammatically incorrect material was allowable—even fun—because one thing I enjoy about some zines is how they emphasize that they're not mainstream-published. Words are misspelled, slang is completely common, curse words appear, the text slants off the page. Sure, some zines are perfectly neat in appearance and grammatically correct. I just like the slight incorrectness and messiness in mine. Call it personal style.

Next, I sat down with my zine mentor boyfriend to decide on overall size and format. I used a traditional format—standard 8 1/2-by-11 pages folded in half—for two reasons. I wanted it to be easy, and I wanted the words to be loud and clear and not obscured by format. For instance, I considered quarter pages to be too small for comfortable holding and reading for a period of time, and half pages folded in half lengthwise, while offering some very neat options in production, too narrow and also less comfy and book-like.

For articles, I allowed authors to do their own layouts. Kim gave me hers all written out on half-pages of paper, with illustrations and everything. Dominique and I wrote ours out on half-pages as well. Eve sent me hers as a book-layout Word doc, and Shane gave me a traditional vertical whole page format, so I cut it in half and ran it sideways. Once I had collected everyone's articles (I gave them a due date of September 15, on which I was of course pretty flexible), I started working on my own. This took me quite some time to get to, since right around that time I started working again after being unemployed all summer.

Once I did get mine written, however, I finally went over to the copy shop and spent over four hours messing around with the machine, finalizing layout, and manufacturing filler pages so as not to have a page unintentionally left blank. Eventually, my boyfriend collated the near-finished product while I stapled. After paying something like $30, I walked out triumphant and zine-laden (with about 20 zines). I mention the money because, to be honest, it looks like a decent number of punk zine kids use "ripping off Kinko's" as their business plan. Things like that seem to be a part of that segment of zine culture. I admittedly thought about it, but my Midwest upbringing won out.

Finally, I was ready for distribution. (I'm still working on that.) Of the original 20 made, I gave copies to my contributors and passed out quite a few to folks I knew might be interested. Beyond that, my larger distribution plans are to send a few to some zine distros (slang for small groups that distribute zines in the mail), to send copies to some friends around the country, to see if Fallout Records will sell some in their store, and to carry some around with me to give to people that I meet. I'm interested in seeing what results, if any, come from each of these approaches. That way I'll have a better idea of how I want to distribute the next issue.

Because I'm definitely interested in doing a second issue, and maybe more—who knows?

A great comprehensive resource for this is Stolen Sharpie Revolution! It was used at the Portland Zine Symposium as the text for the "Basic How-to" seminar on zines. Find a copy (and much other DIY and zine-related information) at Microcosm Publishing.

My experience producing a zine may or may not be typical. At the Portland Zine Symposium, I certainly didn't feel culturally typical—I wasn't very punk and didn't have stories to tell about train—hopping across America. Fitting my meaningful work into the cracks of a money-centric society might be typical, however. Paying jobs sucked up a lot of my creative energy and time, so the production lasted many weeks longer than it would have otherwise. Of course procrastination is typical, too, so I'm told. The zine might've gotten done faster and more effectively if I also wasn't playing around so much with boys, moving, life. But in the end it was about doing something I thought was important, and about entering into and becoming part of the community of ideas in the world. It was about getting to do work I find meaningful.

Stephanie Shenk produces Grind that Ax!, a paper zine that gives voice to grievances, opinions, and sometimes not-so-popular viewpoints. Want a copy? Have an Ax to Grind yourself? E-mail Stephanie at stephashenk@hotmail.com Submissions can be up to 6 half pages, you design the layout.