DargonZine
Volume 15, Number 7 |
Distributed: 9/2/2002
Circulation: 659 |
 |
DargonZine is the publication vehicle of the
Dargon Project, a collaborative group of aspiring fantasy writers on the
Internet. We welcome new readers and writers interested in joining the
project. Please address all correspondence to
<dargon@dargonzine.org>
or visit us on the World Wide Web at http://www.dargonzine.org/, or our FTP site at
ftp://users.primushost.com/members/d/a/dargon/.
Issues and public discussion are posted to newsgroup
rec.mag.dargon.
DargonZine 15-7, ISSN 1080-9910, (C) Copyright September, 2002
by the Dargon Project. Editor: Ornoth D.A. Liscomb
<ornoth@rcn.com>,
Assistant Editor: Jon Evans
<godling@covad.net>.
All rights reserved. All rights are reassigned to the individual
contributors. Stories and artwork appearing herein may not be reproduced
or redistributed without the explicit permission of their creators, except
in the case of freely reproducing entire issues for further distribution.
Reproduction of issues or any portions thereof for profit is forbidden.
|
Editorial
f you're reading this editorial, you've probably read a few of
them -- enough to realize that I've usually got something to pontificate
about. I take pride in the quality of DargonZine's editorials, so I
always try to share unique insights about the Internet, writing, and how
our writing project works.
But after more than 120 editorials, it has become a lot more
difficult to come up with interesting new topics. Sometimes an issue
will be delayed while I stare blankly into an empty text editor window,
waiting for the ideas and the words to come.
That's a feeling that many of our writers can sympathize with: the
tyranny of the blank page. Over the past month, the primary topic of
conversation on our writers' email list and our monthly interactive
chats has been writer's block and how to overcome it.
Unlike my editorials, where the underlying problem is the need for
a constant supply of new ideas, many Dargon writers find themselves
inhibited by doubt over whether their story will be as good as they hope
it will be. Through their natural desire to write a great story, they've
allowed their internal critic to overpower the creative urge that led
them to writing in the first place.
DargonZine can, of course, be a difficult place for the writer who
isn't secure in his or her craft. When an author's story is posted to
our internal writers' list, each draft is critiqued in exacting detail
by a dozen or more reviewers. Although we do our best to make our peer
reviews as painless as possible, it can still feel very threatening. Our
reviews force us out of our comfort zones, challenging each of us to
overcome our complacency and forcing us to write our best work. But at
the same time, that can intimidate writers and inhibit them from ever
starting a story in the first place.
Of course, none of us want to discourage our contributors.
DargonZine's goal, after all, is to encourage amateur writers. One of
the ways an author can get past this fear is to silence their internal
critic. It's great to have that voice inside your head during the
editing phase of a work, but he has no business kibitzing while you're
writing your first draft! By separating the creative and the editorial
functions, you are telling yourself that it's okay to write garbage. You
can relax, because you know that you'll be polishing your story later,
which frees the other half of your mind to run with the enthusiasm of
the creative impulse.
Interestingly, there's another Internet site that, like DargonZine,
encourages amateur writers to grow and learn through collaboration and
practicing the craft of writing. However, whereas we elect to emphasize
the quality of our prose and struggle with the resulting fear of not
measuring up, they focus exclusively on letting the muse run,
irrespective of the quality of the result.
The site is "National Novel Writing Month", and the basic premise
is that you get thirty days -- the month of November -- to write a
50,000-word novella (that would fill three and a half DargonZine
issues). That's it. No restrictions, no expectations, no support, no
anything -- just go write it. The one thing they do encourage is for
participants to get together and share the experience, but that falls
far short of the kind of close (and often direct) collaboration that
DargonZine encourages.
The differences between DargonZine and "NaNoWriMo", as they call
themselves, are many. NaNoWriMo's goal is to help people who have never
written a lengthy work, to show them that it's possible. In that sense,
NaNoWriMo is a temporary lifestyle change to show a novice writer what
is possible, whereas DargonZine's contributors view writing as an
inherent, ongoing part of their life.
Another difference is that NaNoWriMo doesn't support aspiring
writers beyond their first rough draft; instead, they ride the crest of
a writer's enthusiasm and creative impulse. DargonZine, in contrast,
tries to show writers how to balance the spontaneity of writing with
careful planning and an eye toward the quality of the result. We also
take writers through critiquing and editing, which are essential skills
for any fiction writer. As one Dargon writer recently observed, "Quality
is in revision", and our extensive peer review process teaches that.
Of course, one of the benefits of NaNoWriMo is the autonomy you
have; no one is going to limit what an author can write about. For some
people, including a friend of mine who has participated in NaNoWriMo,
that freedom is important, and precludes writing for DargonZine because
of our requirement of setting stories within our common milieu.
In the end, our two projects appeal to different groups of people
who have different needs. NaNoWriMo serves the would-be novelist who
hasn't made writing a large enough part of her life to enable her to
realize that dream, and who can benefit from meeting others in the same
situation and having a concrete deadline. DargonZine serves authors who
are confident in their ability to get the words down, but who want to
improve the quality of their work and can benefit from meeting others in
their same situation.
In both cases, our goal is to give aspiring writers direction,
confidence through practice, and a supportive community of peers. I'm
sure that NaNoWriMo's writers could learn a lot from us about quality
and the revision process. At the same time, I think they could teach
DargonZine's writers about how to set aside our internal critics and
just write. Perhaps something in their approach could help us nurture
our creative enthusiasm and set down our stories without the inhibiting
fear of them not being up to our expectations.
I'm pleased to say that over the past two a half months, we've been
able to print a new issue every three weeks, bringing you four issues
since the end of June, and one issue every month since March. That's a
dramatic improvement over our erratic performance last winter. On the
other hand, we've printed so many stories that we've virtually tapped
out our pipeline of new works. Our writers are hurrying to fill the void
so that this winter won't be as quiet as last year's, when we only
printed two issues over six months!
One of the writers whom you'll see a lot of this autumn is
perennial favorite Dafydd, who begins a new chapter in his lengthy
Talisman series. Talisman Nine 1 is actually the 30th installment in
this storyline that has been running for three and a half years. I think
I'm allowed to tell you that there's an end in sight, but I won't
divulge any more than that. For a little background on this series,
peruse the interview I conducted with Dafydd in DargonZine 12-6.
Rounding out this issue is the conclusion of P. Atchley's excellent
"Malice" series. Writing an effective mystery and keeping all the
threads together is a difficult chore, and I hope you will join me in
congratulating the author on her work.
As always, thanks for your continued interest, and enjoy!
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