Why did you do the things you did do and did you do them right?

This question depresses me too much to answer properly. I used to do lots of creative things (fanzine writing, short stories, painting) that I've felt too busy or paralyzed by lack of confidence to work on in a while. Now I'm starting to get some of that energy back, but until I've finished something it will make me to sad to think back on the things I was doing.

I set up a writing magazine thing on the internet about 3 years ago because lots of my friends were writing amazing stuff and didn't seem to be able to find anywhere to put it. I'd wanted to do a print version for ages - and then the internet seemed like a great way to do it on the cheap (that's its worst point as well of course).

Success or failure? Well, the original monthly format meant I was having to take inferior submissions to fill space; I am lazy; my web design buddy isn't always available; I now hate the design anyway. BUT it was exciting when I got good submissions from people I didn't know, from all over the world. And some people liked it, I think. It might be exciting again one day I suppose, if I can get off my arse.

The further back? Hm!

Writing in general is my outlet, and I've always used it really to entertain myself first and foremost. It may sound strange to call the initial record reviewing I did 'creative,' perhaps, but I think there's a place for it, and what I did do at UCI's newspaper starting in 1992 was create and standardize a music review section and area for discussion, even if I was the only one writing it for a number of years. The feedback I got most on it was a touch curious -- everyone told me that I was the best thing about the paper all around, but barely anyone knew what I was talking about! ;-)

But what I think the most creative thing I did with it when I became the editor of the whole section was to expand it. By the mid-nineties I was well aware that what I covered didn't match well with what a lot of people listened to on campus, and that was hip-hop and r'n'b. So I was looking for a writer who could bring that passion and spirit to writing about it for the paper, and I lucked into one, a great guy named Raymond Lie. He started covering it and we started alternating our columns so he could become a regular, and when I left grad school he kept up with the column through his own graduation.

Now the paper has a regular music column every week from someone, switching around between reporters. It's my own little legacy, I like to think, and I'm glad of it. It may not be 'creative' in the sense of doing something on my own, but I think I've found that some of my best work isn't from the ground up, but in pre-existing frameworks, arenas where I think I can contribute something and hopefully do. Even my novels are like that, since I use the NaNoWriMo framework to actually force myself to get words onto the page, and I think that's very important.

It's fanzines that leap to mind for me, but comics. I started off imagining that I would help to promote the wonderfulness of comics, to show that it was quality art for all kinds of people, but I grew out of that pretty quickly, partly because it was obvious that only comic fans bought comic fanzines, but also because adult respectability started to seem less desirable. As time passed, the intent became to try to help to improve the critical language and apparatus available to us, to understand them better, and to help promote the good and discourage the bad, within the field. I don't think my contribution to that was particularly huge either, but I do think it moved things, especially in Britain, a little bit in what I still think was broadly a useful direction.

Aged 16, I used to write long, high-concept essays on pop music and cultural / political history. They're written in a more plodding, less fluid style than I would use now, but they were important and necessary, because I don't think I could have written most of Elidor if I hadn't got through that phase first.

Now my political rant-songs of the time are another thing entirely ...

I recorded some songs, and got a good review and played on the radio.

I painted some pictures and they got put on Tangents, and one is on display in Dunedin.

Why? Because the process was fun and relaxing.

I co-wrote and co-directed a play once. We did it for the laugh, when we were in college, back in the late '80s. It was set in the then current Soviet Union and was meant to be funny. I don't know if the intention was to change people's lives or anything, but it did have jokes in it I still look back on fondly.

Ah, great days.

but they are over.

as is customary with the past.

(c) DV and WWhyte.

I perdsieded a friend (whose Dad had a small business and a photocopier - this was about 1983 so that was serious tech) that we should start a fanzine when I was about 13. Why? 'cos I saw someone else's zine and thought I could do better. Reckon I did too. Did it improve anyone's life - well it always got good reviews in other zines to the point that at list one guy said he wanted his zine to be more like ours.

It improved our lives 'cos doing creative stuff is an end in iteself.

Around 1992 or 3 I got band together which was cool - until the rest of them became more interested in getting loaded.

So on the ten yearly cycle basis I should be due something creative again soon.

I appeared in a play once. We did it for the laugh, when we were in college, back in the late '80s. It was set in the then current Soviet Union and was meant to be funny. I don't know if the intention was to change people's lives or anything, but it did have jokes in it.

Truly I am a man for all seasons.