How to Produce a Fanzine [A Bug's Life]

Four weeks to Worldcon. Not an unseemly time in which to produce a fanzine? [Pause for people to splutter tea out of their nostrils] I am rather bubbling with fannish enthusiasm.

If I were doing this at work, I would make a project plan.

1. Choose title. Obsessions.
The amount of writing I do seems to be inversely proportional to the number of outlets I have for it, so I'm combining a few. There will now be Obsessions#[number]:Subject, where Subject may include Squiggledy Hoy[letter]. This may get complicated ;-)

2. Choose subject. General, I think. I've been postponing Subject=Science because I really want to make it jolly good, and there's not time for that before Worldcon. In future I'd like to do Subject=Words and Numbers, and Subject=The Playing of Games.

3. All new stuff, or use some old stuff? Some old. I want to keep the same sort of layout and put in some old locs! Which leads to:

4(the biggie). Find old stuff and layouts. Hmm. Since my last issue I've moved house twice and hard drive once. This could take some time...

Ahem. Bridget? All this time you've spent writing about doing a fanzine, you could have been spending writing the fanzine. Hie thee hence to the keyboard. Which is not, on the face of it, a long journey.

But first, off to the gym. Now my back joints have stabilised with almost 5 years not eating dairy products, it's time to do something about their strength and fitness. I want to be able to hike with a rucksack. I'm going to get a new programme to suit my new goal, then have a review in 6 weeks to check progress, and then again in late September to change it to something that will fit in with my student's new semester timetable. It will be interesting to see if the instructors know what they're talking about or if they just give a one size fits all programme. It's not the best gym in the world, but it is 10 minutes walk from the house so I do use it.

major_clanger got signed up yesterday (after an all-you-can-eat Chinese meal). We plan to go together 2 evenings a week, which might help our motivation.

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Oh, that's a thought. I should do a fanzine for Worldcon. Then instead of actually talking to people, I can hand them a fanzine. ;-)

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Then instead of talking to you, I can read your fanzine! ;-)

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Exactly! It'll be just like when I was staying in your spare room, and we communicated by comments on Livejournal! ;-)

(Except with fewer hamsters.)

Consider yourself encouraged in that and, if trufan.net is correct, your TAFF candidacy.

Nice hat ;-) Thanks - the TAFF candidacy is indeed happening (which may explain my desire to walk around carrying luggage). I'm a bit taken aback by the speed at which events have overtaken me; I had assumed I could get through Worldcon before going official, and have time to get executively disentangled from the League of Fan Funds. Such a long campaign! It'll be 11 months before the votes are counted.

But I should get back on with this fanzine instead of wittering about interval training and Chinese food...

Will you be at Interaction?

Alas, no.

It will be interesting to see if the instructors know what they're talking about or if they just give a one size fits all programme.

If you want a second opinion feel free to post what they tell you and I'll let you know my thoughts.

It went pretty well actually, so your opinion would probably be "okay!". My original program was 3xcardio machines, press the Quick Start button and do 15 minutes. Very, very tedious.

I discussed my new goal (backpacking), history (weak back joints), and availability for exercise (loads of time until mid-September) and my new program is 3x10minutes on treadmill, cross-trainer, and reclining bike using hill programs and speed intervals, then some upper body weights, abs and leg presses with my mighty thews. The trainer monitored my level of exertion, gave me a less stressful back extension exercise on a ball, and gave me some handy tips on remembering to breathe when I got a bit dizzy! (The embarrassing thing was I got the dizzy spell when "overdoing" things on the shoulder press. With all of 2.5kg weight. "We'll need to do a bit of work on that," he said. I am such a gurrrl.)

It's a lot more interesting than the previous program, and I left feeling full of energy (which is nice). Should see results in a month or so.

That all sounds pretty good, so you were quite right! Does sound more interesting (god, your previous programme sounds deathly dull!). Initial results should be pretty quick - after all, you're already noticing the increased energy.

Best of luck with it all, and let us know how it's going!

Yay! to being strong enough to nike with rucksacks! and gym-buddies :-)

major_clanger needs to go to the gym? I thought that armed forces types
a) have to maintain a certain level of fitness as part of the job.
b) maintained said level on company time as it were.

a) Yes but it's not very high. 30 situps once a year and run for 15 minutes sort of thing.
b) Usually they get use of an on-site gym, but in this job he's working 4 days a week with a non-governmental organisation in Stevenage, so no gym. The one day a week he's in Henlow he'll use the free gym there. And they usually have to fit in their gym visits outside of core office hours!

He could maybe try to blag local gym membership as "expenses" but it'd come out of your tax dollars, young man.

Ooh, where was the all you can eat Chinese, and was it good? :)

It's the Lucky Thingybob on the Clifton Road leisure park, next to Cineworld. We've been there twice now, once at lunchtime when it is quite cheap and once in the evening when they have more variety. There was a great deal of variety going on yesterday, and the teppanyaki counter was open to cook dishes to order (I was a bit dim and thought I had picked up some noodles to go with my prawns - turns out it was squid). Light and airy, plenty of veg, lots of fruit, wish they did steamed rice as well as fried, jolly handy. Want to go one day?

The Leisure park is a place I only go if I want to go bowling, so I wasn't aware there was a Chinese place down there. I haven't found a good place to replace the cheap all you can eat place on Regent Street that burnt down a couple of years ago, so I'd love to try this one sometime. :)

I think it's very new (as in the last month or so); it's also not immediately obvious, as it is on the first floor next to the cinema foyer.

It's pretty good for what it aims to be, but AYCE is very dangerous when you're trying to lose weight!

MC

The gym thing sounds excellent, as does having a specific goal. Mine is "improve strength, and maintain or improve balance". Some of the gym staff assumed that it was "lose weight" or "lose weight and..." but when I told them "this is a strength-building program, not a weight-loss program" they had no trouble accepting and working with that.

The program of utter tediousness was a weight-loss one. It didn't work for that purpose, but was better than nothing. (The vegan chocolate flapjacks at my workplace shop were probably the main culprit. Never mind, I've eaten them all now, I'm safe.)

I am looking forward to improving my strength in the shoulder press!

Lunch and/or BBC Wildlife photographer exhibition at the zoological museum. It finishes at the end of July.

That would be good. I'm good for any day next week?

Tuesday would be best for me, any preference time wise?

A Bug's Life

How to Produce a Fanzine

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Just wonder if you have time for

Re: Just wonder if you have time for

Re: Just wonder if you have time for

September