/lit/ - Literature

>>1761058
>>1761066
Hey there wildweasal, long time no see

>>1090850
>i'm glad you have a graphic artist on the team now, but not glad you didn't implement the suggested layouts i posted in the last release thread. why, pray tell, not?

I'll give you a completely honest reason why:
We ran out of time. Literally.

I work at a school, and the elementary kids come tomorrow. I have been completely swamped with work and have not had sufficient time to devote to doing proper layout and actually improving the overall structure. Now that we have some more help on board, it's something I hope to address, but this month has been hell for me getting anything done non-job related.

Also, as you may have noticed, this is our smallest issue yet - there isn't really enough content to make it truly shine right now. I really hope we can drum up some more submissions.

>>1090827
Thanks for the tip. Looks nice enough. I'll download it and play around with it, see how it works out.

>>1090816
We have agreed it is necessary at this point to start expanding our reach a little bit. Our steady stream of submissions is starting to trickle a bit.

>>1090766
If you can name a legitimately free font we can use that meets this criteria, I'll check it out.

I'm all for it.

I just want to clarify a little bit, since this discussion has gone massively downhill.

We generally only reject things that aren't really worth reading. Now obviously that's a very subjective measure, but if all the editors agree a story isn't worth reading, we're probably not completely wrong in our decision.

We have no objection to distasteful or adult elements - but only if they're used contextually in the purpose of a story, and not just gratuitously for the purpose of shock value. A story about a girl tied up in the basement and force-fed feces until she bites her own tongue off - well, if it's well written and actually interesting to read, despite being distasteful, would probably get published.

We're not trying to turn into some sort of literature gestapo - we generally say that anything goes as long as it's worth reading, and if all of us think it isn't worth reading, then we're not going to publish it.

>>994884
I'm sorry it really hasn't worked out. Based on the reactions, it's pretty clear we won't be doing it that way again.

I would like to point out that at the website listed in my original first post, there is a link to the full version and the plain-text only version, which removes just about all of the artwork.

In the future, we will be less liberal with artwork. What we would really like is for some graphic artists to actually handcraft some stories with artwork that we can put in to make it look good. We had some good examples of this in Issues 5 and 6.

Unfortunately, all of our graphic designers who did this before have left and no longer help us out. And neither Prole nor I are graphic artists, and neither of us are particularly good at Photoshop. So a little assistance would be welcome, and our letters from the editors constantly reflect that we'd like more graphical assistance.

>>991179
I'm unaware of any formatting issues with that poem. Could you please email the changes you'd like to see to us at zinewritersguild@gmail.com? I'll make sure they get done.

>>990846
I would like to point out, in my own defense, that there are two, just TWO of us doing the entire publication compilation. We have a number of editors doing line-editing and proofreading, which is absolutely critical, but Prole and I are the ones who generally create the final product.

We've worked with various graphic artists and designers who've submitted work, and then for the most part have disappeared and no longer respond to us. We have an IRC channel that we publish (irc.freenode.net, #zwg), we're in there very often, and we have a wiki up.

Neither of us are professionals, this is just a side hobby for us - so please cut us some slack. We've never done this before, and we don't have any professional training, and we both have other jobs. We're doing what we can while we can, but we only have so much to work with.

Every thread, we request anyone with professional experience who'd like to help to do so. Guess how many have taken us up on that offer and stuck around?

>>990827
Done.

There is a plain-text only version of the latest issue that is all of 3 MB. All background images have been removed. Every single one of them.

You can also find it here:
http://zwg.wildwestwaffles.com/ZWG_-_Issue.7.pt.pdf

I will upload a text-only version shortly.

>>990612
>>990603
>>990595
I'm inclined to agree with you, but then when we did that, a number of people complained it was too boring with too much black-on-white and not enough color.

So, we don't really have a lot of middle ground here...

>>990537
Thank you for your feedback. We're continually working to improve, so we'll take your complaints into consideration.

Here's a question for the audience: what text would look better for the Table of Contents? I agree that the green isn't ideal, but we couldn't find a text color that was readable on the background.

>>990553
I believe the author's pen name is NaCl.

Which is also the chemical name for table salt.

COINCIDENCE?

>>990465
The smoke makes it hard to see from the thumbnail.

ZWG issue #7 is out now!

Download at http://zwg.wildwestwaffles.com/

Thanks to everyone who submitted and thanks to all our readers.

I apologize because this issue is a big one again - it's a 60 mb download. A smaller text-only version will be available hopefully tomorrow.

>>947742
You can submit as much as you want. We'll fill in space as we need, generally. If we have enough material, it's unlikely we'll put in more than one or two stories (depending on length) per issue.

We also try to keep to a limit of around 3000 words per story. We find our readers tend not to read anything longer than that.
http://zinewritersguild.wikia.com/wiki/Submission_Guidelines

>>947726
We used to do twice a month, but we just didn't have time to get it all done. We ended up releasing an issue that had tons of problems that should've been caught by proper QA and proofreading, and we decided not to have that problem anymore.

>>947718
The /lit/ zine. We release a monthly collection of stories and poetry submitted to us from the readers.

http://zwg.wildwestwaffles.com/

Our release schedule is typically the last day of every month.

Our current estimated release date is July 31.

>>860404
Send your story via email to zinewritersguild@gmail.com.

Please clearly label the title, author, and content of the story.

We prefer a standard office document - such as .doc, .rtf, or even .txt. Sending it to us via PDF or other formats may result in some difficulty incorporating it into Adobe InDesign properly.

>>857976
>I'm saying the magazine has no critical articles. No reviews, no interpretations, no arguments, no theory.

We'd sure love for someone to submit some. Why don't you provide some of your own?

>>857946
What do you mean 'concerned with criticism'?

Also, yes, the point of this is indeed for amateur writing. This isn't a professional publication, and as far as I know none of our authors so far are professional writers. This was never meant to be "professional" - it's mostly just a project for fun and exploration.

Besides, what sane person calling themselves a professional would want their work to be involved in anything that came out of 4chan? That'd be like an artist putting up the Mona Lisa and then someone would photoshop dicks onto it and then apply image macros so people can laugh at each other over the internet.

>>857626
So noted.