I used to publish a fanzine. A science fiction fanzine. My original fanzine was called Barmaid and I loved doing it whilst I was at home with my kids. I even had a semi-regular publishing schedule. Then I went back to work and I didn't have a lot of spare time to lovingly craft bijou sentences about interesting topics so the zines came out less and less often. After a time I realised I wasn't publishing a series of coherent fanzines, more occasional, stand alone zines without much relationship to each other. For a while I published one off zines including 'Talking Shit' when I worked in the sewage industry, 'Adverse Camber' when life was all uphill and trying to throw me off the road, and so on.
I missed the regular zines, and the Nova Awards, so some years ago I tried to get my act together to write more regularly and called the supposedly new regular zine Joie de Vivre, more in hope of a bit of joy than actual experience. I achieved four zines in this series over about four years and gave up again.
Ever hopeful, once my masters was complete, and I had more time on my hands (hah!) I introduced iShoes, a sparkly new fanzine with covers featuring my fabulous shoe collection and an intention of writing about some of the environmental issues that were giving me cause for concern.
My biggest problem with producing a consistent zine is a complete lack of organisational ability. I once bought a book called something like 'How can you save the world if you can't find your car keys.' I can't tell you the exact title of the book because I've misplaced it. And that was what I did with my pieces of writing. Scattered around my house I have envelopes with half baked ideas scrawled on them, note books with introductions and excuses, buried on my laptop I have similar out-of-date scribbles. There were very few coherent fanzines produced. iShoes, in paper form, came out three times.
Friends have suggested that I get a Live Journal, or Facebook or any other new fangled IT fad that comes along and I have resisted but, some little time ago now I started producing a blog for the company I work for, ECUS. This has been fun, if intermittent (there is no pattern here, move along now), but it was the face of my company and could not be frivolous, extreme or rude. Which leaves my writing urge somewhat unsatisfied. Therefore the iShoes Blog. I envisage this as both a place to indulge my writing cravings and somewhere to store my writing that is accessible so that I can maybe think about flinging the best bits into a paper fanzine. Maybe.
So lets see how it goes.
