helen lives in portland, maine, where she listens to a lot of heavy metal & writes the scathing political perzine "doctrinal expletives".
how did you get involved in zines/d.i.y. publishing?
I’m not entirely sure where I first heard of zines. I know I was about 11 or 12 – I think it was either from an issue of my mom’s Utne Reader or from Sassy‘s Zine of the Month. I made my first zine in fifth grade and it was absolutely godawful, but it was a great way for a bored adolescent girl in rural Maine to pass the time so I kept at it. It also corresponded with my growing interest in punk rock – my zines helped me meet folks who had interests similar to mine and could commiserate with me about being mocked for weird clothes and hair.
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 like that paper zines are tangible – I like being able to curl up in bed and read a zine. Maybe this is silly but it feels more intimate and personal than reading a blog or something. I also don’t like reading long or serious pieces of writing over the internet – I start getting a headache after about three paragraphs.
I like that the intertubes have made it easier to get zines – that’s important for kids who are growing up in crappy small towns and don’t know anyone who does a zine but still want to get their hands on one. It also gives people a place to put crappy dashed-off writing, so they don’t kill any trees expressing it. Then again, I have seen people whose zines consisted of copy-and-pasted Livejournal entries so maybe that filter effect doesn’t work for everyone.
what is your writing/editing/layout process like?
Usually when a particular issue has been on my mind for a long time, I decide I have to write about it because otherwise it’s going to bug me forever. And when I’ve been thinking about something for a while, I usually have a handful of phrases and ideas in my head about it and I just need to string them together in a coherent manner – sometimes this is really easy, other times it’s insanely difficult.
I either write it out by hand or on a computer. Usually I only write by hand when I want to include drawings or I have a pretty good idea of exactly how I want to phrase things – I prefer writing on a computer because I edit a lot as I go along, which is a real pain in the ass when handwriting.
My layout process is pretty lazy, honestly. I use pictures from discarded library books for page backgrounds and just cut up and rubber-cement my text and drawings on there. I usually just take whatI can get from library book sales but I prefer medical-type pictures or ones of dusty, crumbling ruins (I am so metal).
how do you think the zine community or the process of making zines has changed since you’ve been involved?
It’s hard to say because I like reading zines but I don’t really keep up with The Community (TM). I do know I have to defend zine-making a lot more now, to people who are like “So why don’t you just have ablog?” Grumble grumble.
are you “out” to people in your life as a zinester? how do you explain it to people who don’t understand?
I don’t really talk about it that much – not because I’m trying to hide it, but because it’s something I never think to mention for some reason. So no, I’m not “out” to a lot of people, but that’s not really intentional. Since most of the people I hang out with are punk kids, they mostly know what zines are already, but on the occasions when I get to explain zines to non-p-rock types I just say the usual: “It’s a self-published low-budget magazine.”
what do you like best about the zine world? what do you like least?
My favorite thing is pretty simple: I like getting feedback from folks about my writing, either from friends or total strangers. The stuff I write about is all stuff I like to discuss with other people,so it’s nice when I actually get to do that.
My least favorite thing is the cliquishness and the cult of personality that develops around “celebrity” zinesters sometimes – usually this is because their work is good, but it’s still annoying when folks are like “Oh, I got the new zine by THIS PERSON” and seemingly care more about the author than the quality of the zine itself. This is a pretty minor gripe, though.
do zines play a political role in your life? are you involved in other d.i.y. projects? do they play a political role?
I write about politics a lot in my zine, and I’ve used it as a way to get into political discussions with people, so it does play a political role in that way. I’m not involved in many other DIY projects at the moment, but that’s mostly because school is devouring my life, and hopefully once I’m done with that I’ll take on more projects.
I really like the politics of DIY publishing – the idea that your shit doesn’t need to look professional or whatever, it’s just important that you’re speaking for yourself. I really want to remind kids of that whenever I see a distro table that’s like 10 Crimethinc pamphlets and nothing by the kids themselves – I don’t want to read another copy of “10 Reasons Capitalists Want To Sell You Deodorant”, I want to hear what you have to say! I named my zine after a song by Carcass that’sabout the dangers of living your life through someone else’s words and letting other people speak for you – don’t let that happen! Do more zines!
what advice might you have for someone who is new to the zine community?
Read a lot of zines. The zines I did got a lot better once I read other people’s work and saw the cool stuff they were doing – I didn’t directly imitate it but it opened my eyes to all the fun possibilities of the zine medium.
what role do you think distros can/should play in the zine community?
I like distros a lot. I move pretty frequently and I can be bad with answering mail so they’re definitely a good thing for me and other zinesters with the same sort of issues. They’re also good for folks who are just getting into zines and want to get a whole bunch of them at once – the first zines I ever got were through someone’s distro and it was a good way to see a broad cross-section of what was going on in the zine world at the time. Having my zine distroed also allows it to go to places that I do not have time or cash to travel to. So yeah, I think distros play an important and useful role.
are there changes you’d like to see in the zine community or your own zine creation?
I wish I had a better work ethic – my output tends to be pretty sporadic. Also, I wish more people in general did zines – even when people do pretty terrible zines they tend to get better over time. That’s about it.
