paper trail distro/ciara xyerra (![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} ciaradistro) wrote,@ 2007-09-17 14:50:00 |
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interview with jeff miller (2/6/07)
INTERVIEW WITH JEFF MILLER (posted february 6, 2007)
how did you get involved in zines/d.i.y. publishing?
In the fall of 1994 I was in the tenth grade and heard that some of the kids in grade 13 were going to start an independent publication. The year before, the school had censored all the content in the school newspaper and then cancelled it altogether. I went to the inaugural meeting in the backyard of one of the older students, there were about twenty of us and after some discussion we decided to start a zine. That was Saccharine. Although it was ostensibly an arena for us to comment freely on the goings on at our high school, we never wrote about school at all. Instead Saccharine was one of the million crappy zines featuring rants, record reviews and bad collage layouts that proliferated in the mid-nineties. Eventually those in the graduating class became more interested in their university applications and our zine petered out. One of the coolest things that came out of doing that zine was that it gave me confidence enough to ask Sloan's drummer if I could interview him. We sat out on the back porch and I wrote down what he said on bar napkins. All I remember is that he told me SST records changed his life.
I became friends with Adam, an older student who wrote record reviews for Saccharine under the nom de plume "Relic". He was the president of the student body but also into hardcore. We started going to shows at Ottawa punkhouse 5 Arlington. At this time our town had one of the best hardcore scenes in North America. Shotmaker, Uranus and the lesser known but no less mind-blowing Okara played every week. The bands were wicked, but I was equally inspired by the community around them. At every show people were selling zines and records that they had made. From the outside it seemed like everyone in the small scene had their role to play, everyone was doing something to make the greater whole happen. One of the first zines I bought at 5A was Mooh/Meuh, a bilingual political zine by two punks named Pete and Chantal. It inspired me to go vegetarian.
At the end of the summer of 1995, Adam left to go to University in Vancouver and by the winter 5A had shut down. I was lonely and felt that the Ottawa scene I took so much pride in was falling apart and that I needed to participate in it before it was gone. In March 1996 I published the first issue of Otaku, the zine that would eventually become Ghost Pine. A few months after I had sent them a copy, Heartattack published a really positive review of my zine. I would like to thank whoever wrote that review because it really did mean the world to me. I spent the summer after grade ten writing letters and sending away for zines, getting them in my mailbox weeks and months later.
why do you continue making paper zines in the age of the internet? how do you think the internet has affected the world of paper zines?
I make paper zines because it's all I know how to do. I'm not the biggest fan of the Internet but I do use it all the time. I've even been thinking about putting up a website with a few stories from the zine that people can sample before they make a leap of faith with their three dollars.
I think the Internet has radically improved the quality of zines. In 2007 the ratio of good zines to bad zines is probably the highest it has ever been. Before the Internet, the worst zines were always those in which the creator was not dedicated to telling a story but instead merely spewing their unedited emotions, wallowing in self pity or irrelevant name-dropping. Luckily the Internet has invented a medium that fits this kind of writing perfectly. Former editors of bad zines can now disseminate their bullshit in a manner infinitely more convenient than laying out, copying and collating a shitty zine. Blogs have really separated the wheat from the chaff.
what is your writing/editing/layout process like?
First I get an idea for a story. Next I think about it in the back of my head while walking around for a length of time anywhere from a few days to a few years. Then I write a draft in my journal. This sheer making something out of nothing is, of course, the funnest part. After writing a draft I type it up in my computer. I've found that it's a lot easier to keep track of stories if they get typed up sooner rather than later, even if in the typing up of stories you're forced to realize they weren't as good as you thought. I let the story sit in my hard drive for a while before coming back to edit it. Sometimes I write new parts to the story in my journal and then type them in. Editing is the bulk of my writing process and often the most painful. It takes forever, but is totally worth it. I've spent thousands and thousands of hours sitting with computers or pieces of paper editing stories.
Once a critical mass of stories are near enough to completion I kick it into high gear and spend all my free time editing for a month or so until I decide the zine is done. After this I print it out and do cut and paste lay out for a few hours. I chose to use a standard format for the zine because I don't like spending too much time cutting and pasting.
I used to hand-write the zine, but to spend all my time copy-editing on a computer and then make typos while inscribing it was too heartbreaking. Some may argue that hand-written zines are more intimate but my aesthetic criteria as a zine reader is based solely on the quality of the writing.
how do you think the zine community or the process of making zines has changed since you've been involved?
I think more people are reading zines than ever before. Writers have been taking their work seriously enough to produce amazing stories and, in the process, have created a loyal audience. As a result, zines now have longer shelf-lives through the proliferation of zine anthologies and zine libraries. In the nineties the average zine was a small ephemeral joke pamphlet, nowadays they're most often comprised of stories and art built to last.
I don't know if this is happening elsewhere in North America, but here in Montreal I've had lots of luck with giving readings over the last five years. Lots of people come out, many of whom would never pick up a zine. Audiences are quiet but know to laugh in the right places. I think readings are a good way for misanthropic zine writers to connect with the larger underground community. People are hungry for stories.
are you "out" to people in your life as a zinester? how do you explain it to people who don't understand?
My friends and family know, but I don't go around telling people that I do a zine. I'm more low key than that. My zine is a pretty soft sell to normal people since for the last five years it has been modeled on the tried and true medium of the short story collection. More difficult is explaining that the stories in my small collections are all true. People have a hard time believing something well written could also be true.
what do you like best about the zine world? what do you like least?
I'm somewhat of an anxious person so it's nice to have a reason to run errands and make to do lists. I really love the minutia of it, packing up letters and walking to the post office, going to the copy shop and fighting with the photocopiers, etc. I also enjoy the fact that my labours have made me a member of a secret society. My friends who began making zines ten years ago and are still at it today are connected to me in a way similar to blood relation. We've shared experiences that we can only talk about with each other. And of course it goes without saying that I love the constant stream of amazing writing and art that comes out the zine world.
I dislike that some zines take a narrow view of the world and its problems, finding easy solutions in the writings of Bakunin or bike repair manuals.
do zines play a political role in your life? are you involved in other d.i.y. projects? do they play a political role?
My partner, Spike, has tried to convinced me on numerous occasions that my zine is in some way political, but personally I don't see it. I certainly have no political goals in writing it.
While it's not a project per se, I've put a lot of effort over the last decade into editing other writers' work. As a natural extension of that, I recently helped found a writers group, the Soulgazers. After years of hearing people in bands talk about their music I've finally found a group of people who I can nerd out and talk about writing with.
My only other D.I.Y. project at the moment is GHOSTAPES, a tape label existing solely to document and distribute the ephemeral music made by my friends. And Spike and I put on readings sometimes.
what advice might you have for someone who is new to the zine community?
Order and read as many zines as possible. Then read books, read the newspaper, read everything you can. Also magazines. Be humble but brave. Write letters to people whose zine you like, they'll appreciate it even if they don't reply. Ninety percent of writing is editing. Get other people to read your stuff before you print it. Don't be angry if they give you criticism, you have to listen to them if you ever want to get any better. Be patient most of the time and frantic a little bit of the time. Learn by doing, no one in zines does anything the same as anyone else because everyone had to figure it out for themselves. It takes a lot of time.
what role do you think distros can/should play in the zine community?
I think the rise of really solid, reliable distros has played a huge role in raising the profile of zines. Distros make it easier to get a lot of different zines at the same time without doing a whole lot of work. I think it's great that people can now get zines without having to scour the review pages of MRR month after month, looking for something good. Also, it constantly amazes me that other people are willing to do a bunch of shit work to get my zine into the hands of others.
are there changes you'd like to see in the zine community or your own zine creation?
Kathleen Hanna wrote an article in Bikini Kill zine twelve years ago about how young punks who live at home with their parents and don't pay rent shouldn't be the ones who get to set prices. I just had to raise the price of my zine from $2 to $3, the first hike since 1998. I wish there was some kind of 'Central Bank of Punk' that set interest rates so whenever postal rates go up or the price of glue sticks, pens, or photocopies go up, we could adjust prices of zines accordingly rather than having to just lose money.
I don't mind supporting bands I like by paying to see them play or buying their record. I recognize the era of the $5 show and the $7 l.p. is long gone. Five dollars was worth a lot more in 1995 than it is now. I wish I could charge more for my zine without seeming to be a total sell-out. The strange thing I found about selling a zine for $2 is that people assumed it was worth even less and constantly tried to get me to give them for free or in trade for a cookie or something.
pick up jeff's zine, "ghost pine" through the distro.
INTERVIEW WITH JEFF MILLER (posted february 6, 2007)how did you get involved in zines/d.i.y. publishing?
In the fall of 1994 I was in the tenth grade and heard that some of the kids in grade 13 were going to start an independent publication. The year before, the school had censored all the content in the school newspaper and then cancelled it altogether. I went to the inaugural meeting in the backyard of one of the older students, there were about twenty of us and after some discussion we decided to start a zine. That was Saccharine. Although it was ostensibly an arena for us to comment freely on the goings on at our high school, we never wrote about school at all. Instead Saccharine was one of the million crappy zines featuring rants, record reviews and bad collage layouts that proliferated in the mid-nineties. Eventually those in the graduating class became more interested in their university applications and our zine petered out. One of the coolest things that came out of doing that zine was that it gave me confidence enough to ask Sloan's drummer if I could interview him. We sat out on the back porch and I wrote down what he said on bar napkins. All I remember is that he told me SST records changed his life.
I became friends with Adam, an older student who wrote record reviews for Saccharine under the nom de plume "Relic". He was the president of the student body but also into hardcore. We started going to shows at Ottawa punkhouse 5 Arlington. At this time our town had one of the best hardcore scenes in North America. Shotmaker, Uranus and the lesser known but no less mind-blowing Okara played every week. The bands were wicked, but I was equally inspired by the community around them. At every show people were selling zines and records that they had made. From the outside it seemed like everyone in the small scene had their role to play, everyone was doing something to make the greater whole happen. One of the first zines I bought at 5A was Mooh/Meuh, a bilingual political zine by two punks named Pete and Chantal. It inspired me to go vegetarian.
At the end of the summer of 1995, Adam left to go to University in Vancouver and by the winter 5A had shut down. I was lonely and felt that the Ottawa scene I took so much pride in was falling apart and that I needed to participate in it before it was gone. In March 1996 I published the first issue of Otaku, the zine that would eventually become Ghost Pine. A few months after I had sent them a copy, Heartattack published a really positive review of my zine. I would like to thank whoever wrote that review because it really did mean the world to me. I spent the summer after grade ten writing letters and sending away for zines, getting them in my mailbox weeks and months later.
why do you continue making paper zines in the age of the internet? how do you think the internet has affected the world of paper zines?
I make paper zines because it's all I know how to do. I'm not the biggest fan of the Internet but I do use it all the time. I've even been thinking about putting up a website with a few stories from the zine that people can sample before they make a leap of faith with their three dollars.
I think the Internet has radically improved the quality of zines. In 2007 the ratio of good zines to bad zines is probably the highest it has ever been. Before the Internet, the worst zines were always those in which the creator was not dedicated to telling a story but instead merely spewing their unedited emotions, wallowing in self pity or irrelevant name-dropping. Luckily the Internet has invented a medium that fits this kind of writing perfectly. Former editors of bad zines can now disseminate their bullshit in a manner infinitely more convenient than laying out, copying and collating a shitty zine. Blogs have really separated the wheat from the chaff.
what is your writing/editing/layout process like?
First I get an idea for a story. Next I think about it in the back of my head while walking around for a length of time anywhere from a few days to a few years. Then I write a draft in my journal. This sheer making something out of nothing is, of course, the funnest part. After writing a draft I type it up in my computer. I've found that it's a lot easier to keep track of stories if they get typed up sooner rather than later, even if in the typing up of stories you're forced to realize they weren't as good as you thought. I let the story sit in my hard drive for a while before coming back to edit it. Sometimes I write new parts to the story in my journal and then type them in. Editing is the bulk of my writing process and often the most painful. It takes forever, but is totally worth it. I've spent thousands and thousands of hours sitting with computers or pieces of paper editing stories.
Once a critical mass of stories are near enough to completion I kick it into high gear and spend all my free time editing for a month or so until I decide the zine is done. After this I print it out and do cut and paste lay out for a few hours. I chose to use a standard format for the zine because I don't like spending too much time cutting and pasting.
I used to hand-write the zine, but to spend all my time copy-editing on a computer and then make typos while inscribing it was too heartbreaking. Some may argue that hand-written zines are more intimate but my aesthetic criteria as a zine reader is based solely on the quality of the writing.
how do you think the zine community or the process of making zines has changed since you've been involved?
I think more people are reading zines than ever before. Writers have been taking their work seriously enough to produce amazing stories and, in the process, have created a loyal audience. As a result, zines now have longer shelf-lives through the proliferation of zine anthologies and zine libraries. In the nineties the average zine was a small ephemeral joke pamphlet, nowadays they're most often comprised of stories and art built to last.
I don't know if this is happening elsewhere in North America, but here in Montreal I've had lots of luck with giving readings over the last five years. Lots of people come out, many of whom would never pick up a zine. Audiences are quiet but know to laugh in the right places. I think readings are a good way for misanthropic zine writers to connect with the larger underground community. People are hungry for stories.
are you "out" to people in your life as a zinester? how do you explain it to people who don't understand?
My friends and family know, but I don't go around telling people that I do a zine. I'm more low key than that. My zine is a pretty soft sell to normal people since for the last five years it has been modeled on the tried and true medium of the short story collection. More difficult is explaining that the stories in my small collections are all true. People have a hard time believing something well written could also be true.
what do you like best about the zine world? what do you like least?
I'm somewhat of an anxious person so it's nice to have a reason to run errands and make to do lists. I really love the minutia of it, packing up letters and walking to the post office, going to the copy shop and fighting with the photocopiers, etc. I also enjoy the fact that my labours have made me a member of a secret society. My friends who began making zines ten years ago and are still at it today are connected to me in a way similar to blood relation. We've shared experiences that we can only talk about with each other. And of course it goes without saying that I love the constant stream of amazing writing and art that comes out the zine world.
I dislike that some zines take a narrow view of the world and its problems, finding easy solutions in the writings of Bakunin or bike repair manuals.
do zines play a political role in your life? are you involved in other d.i.y. projects? do they play a political role?
My partner, Spike, has tried to convinced me on numerous occasions that my zine is in some way political, but personally I don't see it. I certainly have no political goals in writing it.
While it's not a project per se, I've put a lot of effort over the last decade into editing other writers' work. As a natural extension of that, I recently helped found a writers group, the Soulgazers. After years of hearing people in bands talk about their music I've finally found a group of people who I can nerd out and talk about writing with.
My only other D.I.Y. project at the moment is GHOSTAPES, a tape label existing solely to document and distribute the ephemeral music made by my friends. And Spike and I put on readings sometimes.
what advice might you have for someone who is new to the zine community?
Order and read as many zines as possible. Then read books, read the newspaper, read everything you can. Also magazines. Be humble but brave. Write letters to people whose zine you like, they'll appreciate it even if they don't reply. Ninety percent of writing is editing. Get other people to read your stuff before you print it. Don't be angry if they give you criticism, you have to listen to them if you ever want to get any better. Be patient most of the time and frantic a little bit of the time. Learn by doing, no one in zines does anything the same as anyone else because everyone had to figure it out for themselves. It takes a lot of time.
what role do you think distros can/should play in the zine community?
I think the rise of really solid, reliable distros has played a huge role in raising the profile of zines. Distros make it easier to get a lot of different zines at the same time without doing a whole lot of work. I think it's great that people can now get zines without having to scour the review pages of MRR month after month, looking for something good. Also, it constantly amazes me that other people are willing to do a bunch of shit work to get my zine into the hands of others.
are there changes you'd like to see in the zine community or your own zine creation?
Kathleen Hanna wrote an article in Bikini Kill zine twelve years ago about how young punks who live at home with their parents and don't pay rent shouldn't be the ones who get to set prices. I just had to raise the price of my zine from $2 to $3, the first hike since 1998. I wish there was some kind of 'Central Bank of Punk' that set interest rates so whenever postal rates go up or the price of glue sticks, pens, or photocopies go up, we could adjust prices of zines accordingly rather than having to just lose money.
I don't mind supporting bands I like by paying to see them play or buying their record. I recognize the era of the $5 show and the $7 l.p. is long gone. Five dollars was worth a lot more in 1995 than it is now. I wish I could charge more for my zine without seeming to be a total sell-out. The strange thing I found about selling a zine for $2 is that people assumed it was worth even less and constantly tried to get me to give them for free or in trade for a cookie or something.
pick up jeff's zine, "ghost pine" through the distro.
