Editorial Board

[Jeff Chon]

You guys are editorial board. Here are expectations.

I'd like to put up a book review/two book reviews next week. So far we have:

Charlene's review
Amber's review
Joel's review
Mine

Joel and Mike still have books out there to review. 

I think we put up reviews on Monday. We can go two this week, two next week, and then drop the issue (hopefully) at end of the month. 

PROSE: No more than 25 pages.

BOOK REVIEW: No more than 800 words (Seriously, Amber's piece is pretty long for what we want to do). 5-6 paragraphs and we're out. Let's edit for grammar/sentence level things only. All I want for book reviews is name of author, title of book, what book is about, what "shines" as Marilyn would say. I'd really like these to be built for speed. Let's remember that these are the reader's response to the piece, and not literary criticism essays.  I'd like to respect the author's response and leave it at that.  The shorter/quicker the process, the more reviews we can do. If we can help it, let's not get bogged down in minutiae. I'm very adamant on editing for sentence-level issues only. I think it's important that we keep things simple because we have a lot to do and I don't want anyone to get bogged down.

For short stories, I want very GENTLE edits. That means grammar and maybe wording. If we don't understand the ending or don't understand why one character disappears completely, the story has failed. We're not going to workshop any story, essay, or book review. The workshopping days are over.

FEATURES:
I'd like INTERVIEWS to be of authors, artists, performers in this area primarily. It's not like we're going to turn down an interview with George Saunders, but let's try to seek out people here. Let's work on getting a hold of Yiyun Li, Daniel Alarcon, let's talk about Jesse Michaels. I think I can get him. Op Ivy 4 life.

Otherwise, there's going to be DISPATCH, which is people writing about their lives in their own words. I think maybe Dispatch is something we can all generate together.  Maybe Jesse Michaels can do something here. Op Ivy 4 Life.

BOOK REVIEWS: See above.

I think this is pretty reasonable that everything in features falls in these three categories. Also, I think Daniel Clowes lives in Oakland. Alex, maybe you'd like to interview him?

Every issue will be 6-8 poems, 6-8 prose, 2-3 comics.  That probably means 7.  Let's try, within reason, to give equal representation here.  One of my frustrations working on journals was the lack of female voices.  This is something I'd like to work on a little more with this one.  I'm not running a quota system, but I want a little diversity here.  We're doing okay on the first issue, but hopefully things will get better. 

ART

I'd like to have artwork/photography to go with a few stories/poems. This will be an ongoing struggle, but it's something I think would be cool. Alex, if you have any artists, let's talk about it.

COMICS

I'd like comics to be one page short story/gag type deals.  If someone gives us a modern illuminated manuscript type thing, that might be cool as well.

So let's talk about it. 

[Alexandra Herrington]

I'll work on reading some of Clowes' interviews and generating some questions, and will try to get in contact with him.

I'm working my way through the Dropbox docs right now to get a feel for what we need visually. I'm definitely having difficulty finding folks who want to contribute art, but the search is ongoing.

You're doing a killer job organizing and delegating, Jeff. Thanks for all the support.

Op Ivy 4 Life,

Alex

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[Michael Caligaris]

Here's a kind of cool pic i'm throwin on the website here soon: 

[Alexandra Herrington]

Nice! Very into it.

[Maria Judnick]

Hi All,

Looking forward to seeing the site!  Mike, thanks for putting it all together.  Loved the image I saw this morning.

I was checking email this morning and had an idea (I'd see it more as a social media thing...but want to see what y'all think):

What if we did some sort of caption a cartoon / flash story contest to keep people clicking / posting / coming back to check results?

What I'm thinking is this:

-- Either we post a blank cartoon / photo / etc. OR the first line(s) of a short piece (poem, flash fiction capped at, say, max 100-500 words?)  and ask readers to come up with the best response.  (Before you say you don't want to read the dreck of random flash fiction, I am volunteering myself to pick, say, a top 5 y'all can decide from.)

-- As the "prize," I see a couple of options:

-- If we do the contest early enough before a new edition of the journal comes out, we could stick the captioned cartoon / flash piece somewhere on the release so that person gets bragging rights and we / they can link it back to our social media.  (Otherwise, we can post the results on facebook or twitter before the journal comes out as a reminder the full issue is coming soon.  We could also do runner-ups if any of 'em are good.)

-- If it's a cartoon, we can ask the artist to offer a copy / original of the image with the caption on it that we'd mail to the person.  (In that case, we might say no international applicants may apply).  [If you're thinking no cartoonist will want to do this...I say we hit up new and upcoming illustrators through the East Bay SCBWI Chapter.  A lot of them do commercial work on the side and cartoons... I also have a friend in my YA workshop who makes cartoons on the side who may be willing to do it for a "spotlight" of a local artist or something on facebook we can make up.]

-- Instead of the actual cartoon, we could send something cheap but quirky related to the East Bay somehow....like collectible shot glasses or some novelty thing. 

Awful /great idea?  Great way to bring out the trolls? (I can pull up examples of good moderation strategies from other journals/sources so we can contemplate that.)  Those of you into the social media side of things, what do you think?

For context: Heyday books does something similar with identifying photos of Bay Area landmarks they send out in their monthly email update.  American Scholar did a contest with finishing a poem which got some press...

Anyway, let me know. 
Maria

 

[Alexandra Herrington]

Hey Maria, sorry for the delay!

I'm not sure about a caption contest. It seems a little... magazine-y? If that makes sense. And I know that it's a lit MAG. So maybe I'm thinking it's slightly less "literary". I don't know if this is coming out right. But doesn't the New Yorker have that caption stuff on lock? Idk.

However, maybe it's something we could use for online content, like a fun little extra. That way we may be able to get more responses, since it would be easier for folks to participate.

I think at this point in the game, while it's important to keep ideas like this rolling, it may be more of a priority to get all of our loose ends tied, and establish ourselves as an actual publication. Once we have the first issue out, it'll be easier to breathe and add things like that.

If anyone else has any thoughts, please, just like in class, put me out of my babbling misery and chime in here.

Op Ivy 4 Life,

Alex

(That's for real my signature now. Bless you, Jeff.)

[Maria Judnick]

No worries -- it was a random thought I'd had and thought I'd throw it out to the group.  I do agree that we should establish ourselves first but it never hurts to start thinking ahead! -- Maria 

Sent from my iPad

[Michael Sakoda]

yes, alex is not a fish, but she is right that the new yorker has a caption contest for cartoons. i had a therapist that used to ask my opinion about his entries. and i also agree that right now, i want to focus on getting the site up, running and completed, and getting the first issue out so we can start working on collecting submissions for the second. 

but these sorts of ideas are definitely things that deserve consideration at a later date. so keep it on the back burner for now.

Michael