Someone asked me if Dear Anonymous accepts poetry, so I thought I would clear that up here.
While Dear Anonymous is primarily made up of letters, that’s not the format that works best for some people. As long as you want to say something to [the world/the ex/the best friend/that awesome cup of coffee/the cat/etc], then do so in the way it feels best for you to express yourself.
I want to apologise to everyone who has submitted to Dear Anonymous 4.
I’m sorry.
There are submissions that I have been sitting on for ages, and I am so sorry about that. At first, it was because I simply needed more submissions. I got it into my head that if I didn’t have at least as many letters as I had in Dear Anonymous 3 (the biggest in the series thus far), then I wouldn’t start. I still don’t have that many submissions, but I could have started the zine months ago. What was all about the numbers became, if I’m to be honest, more about my anxiety. It was easier to blame the numbers than it was to face making something creative.
Just because you love something doesn’t mean it can’t cause you anxiety.
Again, I’m sorry for the delay. I truly am. To make it up to you, I will send *PHYSICAL* copies of Dear Anonymous 4 to all contributors. I’d decided to send out digital contributor copies after the cost of sending out Dear Anonymous 3, but I’m taking that back. Physical copies for all!
I promise you, as evidenced by the picture up top, I have begun work on Dear Anonymous 4.
Even though I am working on it now, Dear Anonymous 4 is still open for submissions. Please send your letters (to your boss, to your cat, to the tree outside your bedroom window) to theauthor at inkyblots.com ASAP!
As always, thank you so much for your patience.
Fly my pretties, fly! Dear Anonymous 3 contributor copies are flying out into the world. They have been delivered to the postal deities and will arrive at their destinations in 7-10 business days. I’m so glad they are. There’s not a lot that I hate more than missing a deadline when that deadline involves other people.
PS. I may watch Don’t Starve Together play videos while sewing zines. I don’t have a problem…
I had it in the back of my mind that this might happen eventually, but I didn’t give it too much thought because I didn’t think it would happen anytime soon. Alas, it has.
Yeah… Today I went out to the post office to send out contributor copies. Because there were so many contributors (I’m not complaining – it’s awesome!) there were not only a lot of envelopes but the zine also weighed more. As in over 50g. As in jumped up considerably for those mere grams extra.
I wouldn’t say anything, but the fact of the matter is that it was a complete fluke that I even had the money to send all this. Complete fluke. I know I should have figured out the cost going in, but I think I knew it was going to be a lot so I didn’t want to face it. (You can see why I’m rolling in the big bucks after being so financially savvy for my entire life.)
So… It’s with a very sad heart that I have to say Dear Anonymous 3 is the last zine for which I can offer physical copies for contributors.
Sigh.
I seriously did not want to have to do it. I’m sorry.
This lovely envelope of goodness comes from my friend Karley. Karley was one of the first contributors to Dear Anonymous, and she ran an awesome fiction/poetry/music zine called The Filth. She’s sent me a zine she likes that she thought I should check out along with a bunch of clippings from this and that for my various creative works.
Sweeeeet.
All ready to go into the mail tomorrow!
Eventually, I will stop being a workaholic.
Eventually, I will be strict and only allow myself to work normal hours.
Eventually, I’ll be able to say ‘no’ and.or ‘not right now’.
Eventually, I will learn to put the deadlines I set in my calendar. That way, when I say that Dear Anonymous 3 will be sent out to contributors at the end of January, Dear Anonymous 3 will be sent out at the end of January.
Hell or high water, these are going out to contributors on Monday. After that, I will actually stick to my commitments like posting up two reviews a week and engaging with other bloggers.
Do you want to know what this is? No? Darn…
Just kidding. I am so happy! This is a top view of Dear Anonymous 3! It’s finished! Kind of. I still need to make the master copy so I can put this away, make copies and print off the cover as well. But I’m very close to completely finished!
If I recall my numbers correctly, this is twice the size of DA2. I’m still going with the less protective paper to cover it, though, because I can’t find minty/sea green cardstock for the life of me. Grr.
Anyway, woohoo! It’s a touch after 11pm my time, and I’m happy about that. I was shooting for midnight.
I love making Dear Anonymous. The Perfect Pocket Guinness Guide might be the first zine I ever made, but Dear Anonymous was my first zine idea.
Whenever I receive a letter to put into the zine, most times I know exactly how I want to present it. The picture of what to do with the words, what art (if any) to include, pops into my head almost instantaneously. There has been one or two times when I have stared at a letter and come up with a big zero, but I shrug those off.
So, what’s up with the grocery list?
From my attempts at sketching in the first zine to this zine, my style has changed a lot. I use a lot more typing, more elements, etc. This grocery list? Well, I got it into my head that one letter for DA3 had to be a note on the front of a refrigerator. Don’t ask me why, because I don’t know. Not a clue. I just cut up the bits of paper, drew on them and taped them to the page…
So, because I’ve taken so long with DA3 and because I missed the reviews last week, I figured I would break my own rules and give you a full-page sneak peek of one of the DA3 letters. This is the original, so it will look different in the finished zine. I think you can imagine what the black and white version will be like.
I’m currently working on a fake yearbook autograph page for a background for another letter. It never lets up, this crazy mind of mine.
I walked into my work room this morning and found this sketch on an A5 piece of paper. I couldn’t help but smile, feeling glad that the sketch I’d hovered over before I went to bed last night actually looked good in the light of day.
I’m not very skilled at drawing, so I always hesitate to draw anything. But I’m also not exactly rolling in money, so I can’t justify buying stock images. This set of scales is mental to be a visual joke to go along with one of the letters for Dear Anonymous 3.
(Side note: Biggest issue of DA ever.)
It’s nearly always a pleasant surprise to see what I’ve left on my desk from the night before. I feel like I’m almost two different people. Morning and most of daytime me is much better with doing more buisness-related stuff, data entry, etc. Nighttime me is much more creative. Night is when I sketch, draw, work on the ‘art’ that goes along with the letters. If I know that I’ll have time during the next day to work on something that I’ve been tinkering away with at night, I’ll even leave creative/design notes for myself to read in the morning.
I’m not exactly sure what that makes me (besides a workaholic), but I like it. It makes me feel like I’m in tune with some sort of natural rhythm.
PS. No mail this week!
It is a hot and heavy 38C/101F in my local patch of Oz today, and my office is mighty toasty. But a fan on my desk and a bottle of cold water are suiting me just fine as I work on Dear Anonymous 3.
I love making zines, but DA has a little bit of extra special. I ‘let the muse take me’ when it comes to how I present the letters that are sent to me. The weird thing is that, with nearly every letter, an idea instantly pops into my head. Then it’s simply up to me to figure out how to put that image into the zine.
