Lots of people are making their own games these days — point-and-click tools like Scratch and GameMaker are making it more accessible for non-programmers, and it’s easy to get your game out there via the internet. But wouldn’t it be even cooler to get you and your friends’ games out there on an old-school arcade cabinet?

The old cabinets are generally made to play one specific game, but you can re-fit it with a PC and a display and wire up the existing controls to make playing new games possible. Many people have been doing this to run emulators of the classic games – MAME cabinets can run hundreds of old games on a single cabinet. The Hand Eye Society, Toronto’s videogame culture collective, wanted to do a similar thing, but with locally made games. They debuted the Torontron, which plays six hand-crafted games by Toronto indies, at the last Canzine. Jph, who did the retrofitting, takes us through the steps he took.

Step One: The Cabinet – Retrofit or built from scratch?

First I began looking for an old cabinet that we could stuff all the gear into. In Oakville, Ontario we found The Original Pinball Exchange Club, offering various scrapped amusement vending machines for sale. I visited the shop and chatted with the proprietors. Walking through their stores of machines – and machine parts — I was amazed, and was fully inspired.

The hardware we got was old and unique — it originally played an Italian clone of Centipede. It worked for our purposes because it was not recognizable as any specific machine shape and the graphics printed on it were also generic enough that we would not need to change them. The down side of getting a machine that was built in 1982 is that it is almost 30 years old, and though the build quality was reasonably good, some parts of it where quite worn and broken. If I were to do this again I would consider just building the box myself since the reconstruction needed inside to make sure it held the display properly was extensive. However there is something nice about the nostalgic old machines as well. If you plan to use a retro cabinet be sure to measure your display and check that it will indeed fit in the box. This will greatly depend on the orientation of the display and where it will sit in the box.

I got a cabinet with simple controls — one joystick and buttons — but you can get cabinets with more elaborate or specialized control schemes. If you plan to use the original controls (as opposed to buying new controls) then make sure the games you plan to run on them just need those controls to play.

Step Two: The CPU – Find a computer someone’s throwing out.

I used a laptop that was being thrown away, but any old PC will do, as long as it will run the games you intend to play on your machine. Our machine is intended to travel so the ruggedized nature of a laptop was desirable. If you intend to keep your machine in the basement/garage for your own use then a standard desktop PC will work just fine.

Step Three: The Display – CRT or LCD?

Next we need a nice display. The tube-style CRTs are easy to find these days on garbage day as people upgrade to flatter LCDs , but you have to take care in mounting them within the cabinets — they’re heavy. (Seventeen inch screens are very common but look a bit small in a full sized cabinet.) I went with an even heavier option, an old 21″ Trinatron TV with an S-video in that I connected directly to the laptop. Although this would limit us to 1024×768 resolution, and it’s a bit blurry at that, it does provide a proper, large and bright image that is more authentically “arcade”. But the weight and fragility of the old TV has made moving it difficult when we don’t have a vehicle big enough for it to stand up in — setting it on its back has caused the TV to come loose in the past. So it’s a trade off.

Step Four: The Controls – Buy a kit or rewire the original controls?

Since I wanted to use the original controls that came with the cabinet, I got a USB controller, opened it up and then soldered the outputs of the original controls to the corresponding buttons on the USB controller. You could also consider purchasing all new controls since two new sticks and 20+ buttons runs around $40. Then you could replace the original controls and plug them directly into your CPU via a USB gamepad interface for another $40. $80 would have saved me many headaches indeed.

Step Five: The Mounting – Securing the display, CPU and speakers.

By reworking the old monitor mounts – the wood planks that held it at the right height and angle — and adding some new bracing to work with the oddly shaped and situated TV, the TV was mounted inside. Adding the TV monitor had the added benefit of making the whole box more solid. The TV speakers, which we removed from the TV, were mounted where the original single speaker was in the cabinet and wired in, giving us some nice stereo sound. If the display does not have sound, a pair of computer speakers could also do the job.

The old marquee light did not work and was replaced with a simple under counter florescent fixture and was wired in. The laptop fit in the coin box area, and everything was plugged into a single power bar mounted near the back of the box.

Step Six: The Interface – How to launch the games?

Windows XP was what we used as an operating system, but anything that runs on your hardware and the game(s) you want to play would work. I used GameMaker to build a menu that lets the player select and launch between the six games. The menu keeps running, and when a game is exited, goes back to the main menu so the player can select another game. We used six games in the Torontron and we had all the game creators make a version of their game that conformed to our control requirements, such as quitting when the red button on the coin box was pressed.

Step Seven: The Glory – Is there anything cooler?

As with any hardware/software proposition, there’s a lot of work and a lot of testing required to get it looking and acting like an arcade machine of olde. We had particular trouble with the controls which are inclined to be glitchy. But once you get it working right, it’ll inspire spontaneous high-fives and many exclamations of “awesome!”

~~~

Jph Wacheski and the Hand Eye Society are hard at work making five more arcade cabinets to be presented as an indie arcade at the TIFF Bell Lightbox for Nuit Blanche 2010 on October 2. Want to help out with the Arcadian Renaissance event? Drop them a line at info@handeyesociety.com.

Got any questions? Additions? Suggestions? Add them in the comments below.

One of the things we did differently with this book was research, and so I’ll take this opportunity to write a bit about that.

I’m a big believer in the notion that just living a varied life is a valid kind of research, and most of my creative work has pretty clearly drawn from my life in one way or another. (I have to rely on my recent history because, frankly, I have a pretty shitty memory — I’m envious of writers who can dip back into their childhood with ease.)

I’ve never liked research because it felt like homework. Obligatory. But I definitely needed to do it for Sword — I’d only visited Detroit once very briefly and I didn’t want to fuck up my characterization of that troubled and unique city. And it really helped — not only did it make me feel less fraudulent, but it gave the book a thematic core and direction I wouldn’t have hit upon myself.

Here’s five approaches to research that worked for me.

1. Choose a research subject that you’re fascinated in — not just something you think would make a good story subject. I’ve been interested in Detroit ever since a brief visit in ’94, but despite it only being 4 hours away I’d never visited again. Writing a book set there was a great way to spend some focused time learning about the place. Even if I decided not to write the book it would have been time well spent.

2. Talk to people. Let everyone know what you’re researching. Talk to experts & enthusiasts alike. On the phone or in person — email interviews are just work for people. Be social, have some fun, meet some characters and see how far a conversation with a stranger can go.

3. Go places. There’s a million details that even a gorgeous photo won’t expose you to. Get a list of places of interest you’d like to visit and maybe go with one of the strangers from #2. Research as adventure! Shannon and I went to Detroit twice for a few days — she got tons of photo refs, and I got lots of story and character ideas.

4. Niche websites and blogs are good starting places. Especially when they can connect you with people and new places to go. For me it was a good starting point for cultural touchstones like scrappers, 8 Mile, political corruption.

5. Read some books in a style you enjoy. Long form non-fiction generally makes me glaze over (which allows me to daydream about the subject at hand, so admittedly still useful) so I went with some more entertainingly written books. While a bit sensational, Devil’s Night: And Other True Tales of Detroit by Zev Chafets was a compelling read and gave me some ideas about the racial dynamics that are still relevant today, 20 years after it was written.

Final thoughts: in excess, research can be a procrastination method with diminishing returns. But for someone like me, who is more on the make-it-up-as-you-go school, it’s helped bring a richness in ideas and specificity in detail to my recent work — and has been enjoyable to boot.

Comic artist and former No Media Kings intern stef lenk received a Xeric grant for her illustrated booklets TeaTime 1 and 2. Whether you’ve got a project that you’re submitting to the next Xeric deadline at the end of this month, or if you’re just interested in hearing about the nuts and bolts of comics publishing from printing to promotion, you’ll find stef’s opinions and experiences in the article below food for thought. UPDATE: Canadian comic self-publishers will want to check out this Gene Day Award.

A Self-Publishing Comics Primer
by stef lenk

BEFORE YOU START
Someone wrote in another Xeric testimonial that you should not attempt self-publishing and all of this business unless you have no choice. This is really true. It’s a tonne of work, there’s no money in it, and trying to put comic books out there for public consumption is another full-time job on top of doing the actual (creative) work. I have tried to get rid of my bookish compunctions from every possible angle. I went to art school to learn how to make stuff to put into books. I talked emptily about potential book projects for years. I took a course in book publishing so I could make other peoples’ books. I’ve read a million books looking for one that hasn’t been written or illustrated yet. And yet all of this has still brought me here.

These days, I pay my rent through work in book/magazine publishing/design, I draw obsessively, and I still have many many unfinished book projects. But the more of your own work you do the more focused you become, and the easier it gets, at least to be confident enough to start a project, to see it through, and to learn a thing or two about it and yourself in the process.

For those of you up for self-publishing, here are some of the things you’ll need to think about.

TIME

Writing/storyboarding/drawing the book takes time. For me, this reigns in at approximately 200-250 hours per book — including storyboarding, reference material, final drawings, and tonnes of mistakes/second/third/fourth tries.

YOUR DAY JOB

Don’t quit it. No one else does and survives (well). Freelancing is an ideal complement to self-publishing ventures, but the stress (and the effect it has on doing your artwork) shouldn’t be underestimated either. Be nice to yourself along the way.

If you can stockpile cash and then take time off, do so. If you can marry rich, that too is a good option. If you are already rich, you must email me immediately so we can discuss this further and in great detail.

TELEVISION

Get rid of it.

ART SUPPLIES/STUDIO

If you are waiting to start your project until you have a new MacBookPro or a fully equipped studio space in the East Village, don’t. I know a few people who spend alot of time collecting toys and very little time actually using them. This is unfortunate. Use whatever you can get/whoever will let you. Preparation is the easiest form of procrastination.

GRIEF/GUILT RELATED ANXIETY THAT YOU ARE NOT WORKING HARD/QUICK/WELL ENOUGH

Inevitable, but NOT helpful. Try to override these thoughts with great expedience and fervour.

EDITING

If you know anyone with this skill who will be willing to help you, you have struck gold. Honestly. Having an editor=Creative GOLD. Allow them to criticize, Listen to the criticism, Act on the criticism.

PRE-PRESS

Books are offset-printed (should you be choosing this format) in 16-page increments called signatures. This is due to the folding process necessary to make sure all pages have a reverse-side, and can therefore be efficiently bound/stapled, etc. If you have decided to make a book that is, say, 18 pages, you must be prepared to pay for 24 pages, and have a bunch of blanks. 1/2 sigs are a possibility, which means you can have 20 pages (the magic number is 4 in folding pages) but you will likely still have to pay for 24 pages and they will be trimmed after printing, which wastes both paper and money. Obviously 16/24/32 page booklets are all magic increments.

If you know a bit more about your printers, such as how large their press-beds are and what the max size of paper they take, there are ways to cut down costs even more. My books are just slightly smaller than conventional ash-can size; this is so they get printed on one sheet and reverse on the other side to create two books per sheet. (the process is called print-and-tumble, which means that the whole book is printed on one side then they turn the page over and rerun it with the same plates reversed. This cuts down HUGELY on costs.

Colour is more expensive than b/w. To print in colour, the printers have to make four plates for each page and ink colour — one for cyan, one for magenta, one for yellow, and one for black, which are the four staple inks in colour printing. This might be evident to any of you who have home printers with separate cartridges in your inkjets. The pages of your book then have to be run through the press four times (one for each plate) which ups your man-hours for the job. And there is ever a hassle with proofing and colour correction, which is much trickier, I’ve found, than b/w. Overall, if you are printing in colour, be prepared for at least double if not quadruple the cost quoted for a b/w project.

The way printers refer to colour is related to how many plates are needed to print either side of the page. For instance, ¼ (stated as “1 over 4”) means, b/w (or one colour) on one side, and full colour (4 plates) on the other. 4/4 means full colour on both sides of the page. If you want to get fancy, some printers may allow you to print your one colour other than black. That is called a spot colour, and if you should choose/be allowed this option, it means ALL your text will be this colour (or shades thereof).

Paper stock is an issue. Coated paper is the shiny stuff, where ink sits on top of the page and looks shiny and lovely. Like most magazines. Newsprint is the other end of the spectrum — like newspapers, it’s thin, ink soaks in and dulls, but is cheap cheap cheap.

Your printing costs will break down (or at least mine do) into three: paper, print, and binding. Bind, the third of these, can be stapled (called saddle-stitch) or perfect bound (glued together like most trade paperback books). If there is any way you can handle any of this stuff yourself, you will cut down on billable-man-hours there.

DIGITAL PRE-PRESS

I try to avoid tweaking in Photoshop all together, but do find that I need to do a bit to make all pages consistent in terms of levels/gray-scale tones, etc. This takes time and some Photoshop skills, or at least basic knowledge of the program. Or someone else who can help.

BLEEDS

For gods’ sake read up on “bleeds” if you’ve never published before, and intend to have artwork that reaches (past) the edges of your book. Bleeds are your necessary margin for error when the book is trimmed. The amount of reworking and redrawing I’ve had to do because I didn’t have properly trimmable edges around my drawings has been highly frustrating. (This will not really apply to artists working in panels with white edges, by the way; leaving white borders is another simple solution to bleed/trim problems.)

PRINTING COSTS

These can vary of course, but my booklets cost approximately $1200 for a print run of 350-500, keeping in mind they are 16 pages each (plus cover) and full-colour. See pre-press for more info on this.

You CAN opt for photocopy/zine-style, but just know that these days desktop publishing is ubiquitous and the standards are getting ever higher, so it’s harder to grab peoples’ attention with the cheap photocopy format, except for a very specific niche market. In the end, the more seriously you invest in your work, the more seriously your potential audience will invest in it.

Screenprinting, letterpress, are other options, and beautiful ones; printmaking is, however, a separate affair.

BOOK FAIRS

There are a tonne of them, that vary in cost/efficiency. The bigger festivals are curated. If this is your first book, do as many as humanly possible. At book fairs you get to keep all profits from book sales, but this occasionally at the price of malevolent glares by bargain hunters who can’t fathom why you would charge $8 for what could be construed as a rather elaborate-looking brochure. Many people will not understand. Be prepared for this. The people around you also selling books WILL understand. Love and respect them accordingly.

A couple of years down the road you can start doing a cost/benefit analysis (so to speak) of which fairs to do/which fairs to skip. The experience is fantastic for making a niche for yourself in the comics community, meeting publishers, and having your work evaluated. The people are AWESOME. But again, you never sell quite as many books as you had hoped, and the prep work shouldn’t be underestimated. Tables also cost money. If you can find someone to split the cost with, by all means do so.

Some of the book fairs/comicons I’ve done/know of.

Toronto Comic Arts Festival

SpeakEasy Comics night (Toronto)

OCAD Book Arts Fair (Toronto)

Word on the Street (Toronto)

Canzine (Toronto)

Expozine (Montreal)

Wayzgoose book arts fair (Grimsby, Ontario)

SPX (Washington DC)

MoCCA (New York)

BD Angoulême : the MOTHER of all festivals, and the best Best BEST one out there EVER! A DREAM! Comic exhibits in the town church. No joke. Not to be attempted, though, unless you are planning a vacation in France already, you speak at least basic French, have a lot of extra money (or a very liberal credit card!) and can plan way ahead of time so you can get cheap place to stay.

Book fair math is always helpful if you are feeling discouraged about money. After every book fair my friends/fellow book-makers sit back and evaluate: “This time I made back the cost of the bus ticket to get here!” “This time I made back travel AND the cost of the table!”, “This time I spent every penny on other books, but Christs’ toes, LOOK AT THIS STUFF!”

Consider postage/shipping costs if you are doing book fairs outside of your own country. Bringing them over the border could be questionable at customs, so this is an extra cost/inconvenience.

ONLINE SALES

Consider Etsy, it’s free and awesome, and you can direct anyone you want there. They sell your books, and take a nominal fee for it. There is a tonne of stuff up there though, so drawing attention to your page can be another challenge in and of itself. Your own website is a great help, but building one is a challenge. Blogs also work — Blogger or WordPress are the most popular and the former is the easiest to use/no website skills necessary.

Nothing online will be too too helpful, however, unless you have a way of driving traffic to the site. Facebook/MySpace can be helpful publicity, but to get beyond your immediate circle of friends you will need other tactics.

ADVERTISING/PUBLICITY

If you have a knack for design/some basic skills in InDesign and/or Quark, it will be of great help in this venture, as you can make posters, postcards, etc to give out. People always want free stuff, so anything you can give them to take away/remind you of their work is — awesome. Websites (as stated above) will save a tonne of postage costs (in terms of submissions) and give people immediate access to your work. Associated costs should be factored in: printer ink cartridges; labels; book stands/table signage, as well as promo postcards and business cards.

EMAIL PROMOTIONS/MAILINGS/PRESS-RELEASES

You can do as much or as little as you want, and see results accordingly. Once you’ve self-published a few things you will want to have built a bigger fan-base than your close friends, or the cost/momentum is going to be harder to sustain. Consider a mailing list: letting people sign up for it and sending out announcements when you have new book/events. Also put together press releases and send them to the weeklies/comic blogs/ etc. in advance of your official launch. Double check the timing on this, it varies with each publication.

SELLING BOOKS ON CONSIGNMENT

Personally, I find that accounting makes me feel like a fat man going uphill on a children’s bicycle. DIY distribution, inventory and selling books on consignment, however, makes me feel like a fat man with no legs running a 200-metre dash, rife with hurdles and a full bladder. Once you get the hang of it all, it’s strangely edifying, and a great peephole into the world of business that will inevitably surround you the deeper into publishing your books you get.

Consignment is not a great way to recoup costs, but it is the best way to have your books available/visible on a day-by-day basis. Check out bookstores in your area, specifically ones that sell small-press stuff, and offer books on consignment. Typically for a 40/50% take, these shops will stock your books and you play your own distributor, stopping by occasionally to restock/get paid for any sales.

Be aware of the profit (“profit”) margin: Here’s the math on one of my typical consignment books that a customer pays $8 for:

$8=retail price per book

print run cost=$1200 therefore unit price per book= $3.42

consignment fee=40% of the purchase price (another $3.20),

profit=a resounding $1.38 per book.

When approaching stores try to accept that your books will possibly be tucked into a milk-crate on a back shelf somewhere, where likely they will only be found accidentally by customers hoping for a cheap score in a carefully hidden smut section. This is, alas, how it works. But you get to know book-store owners (who are Awesome), you get to put your books in the company of all the stuff you read yourself (Awesome and Gratifying), and you are broadcasting to the world with increasing dedication that you are not just drawing these things for yourself, but you are searching for an audience (Yes!).

Also, check in frequently. ESPECIALLY if your book has been reviewed, written about, or excerpted. No one is ever going to love your work as much as you are, so you have to take care of it, even once it’s left home. Salespeople/bookshop proprietors have bigger distribution/inventory issues to sort out and rarely-to-never keep up with their consignment. There is also so much consignment material in any given bookshop, this section is usually in great disarray. Make sure your work hasn’t been lost, trampled, or moved to the staff washroom to be used as reading material, or worse.

DISTRIBUTION

Eventually the charm of zooming around on a bicycle to stores throughout the city so they can sell 4 or 5 of your books every six months will wear off, and you will have a wall of unsold books cluttering up your home.

Distribution is a good idea. There are many people who can help with this. At this point, I am not one of them: I am still investigating what the possibilities are out there. It seems like having work accepted to comic distributors is no small accomplishment. And there are fees. And unsold books shredded. And such. Be warned.

GRANTS

Writing grants is another job/financing possibility for this whole process. The more applications you write, the clearer your project ideas and focus will be. It’s a great exercise, and also a humbling one. Don’t be discouraged if you don’t get one. Collect rejection letters. And keep writing them. It is so valuable to teach yourself to explain what you are doing to complete strangers. I have yet to master it. And there is luck involved.

Submissions, press-releases, and queries (to publishers) are also really helpful in honing your ideas and evaluating which ones are worth seeing through to completion.

SUBMITTING WORK FOR REVIEW

Google comic books/journals, read the specs, submit your work. All attention is helpful. Tell/show anyone who will listen. And be thankful when they do.

SUBMITTING WORK FOR PUBLICATION

Probably at some point you will get tired of being a one-(wo)man band with all this self-publishing. Submit excerpts for consideration to magazines, publishers etc. Best way to figure out who to submit to is to look at your own bookshelf. If you like reading them and the work they publish resonates with yours, chances are you have found a good publisher/venue for your stuff.

ALTHOUGH

I don’t suggest skipping the self-publishing part. There is no better way to gain respect for the people you will be working with in the future. It’s a tonne of work, but there’s something fascinating and holistic about the process, you’re actually involved with your books from the very beginning to the very end (their sale). No part of publishing is easy, whether it be publicity, marketing, editing, or sales, and getting high and mighty about your artwork with the people who are trying to help you put it out there is just lame.

THAT’S ABOUT ALL. GO FORTH, SELF PUBLISH, RINSE AND REPEAT.

stef lenk is a freelance artist/ illustrator presently living and working in Toronto. She spells her name all lower-case. You can read her Xeric award winning books and check out her blog here.You can purchase the first five episodes of her graphic-novel in the making (which include Teatime 1 and 2) at steflenk.etsy.com.

You can read other Xeric winners’ articles here.

Other than actually writing, the most important thing to do as a writer is get your writing out to readers. You get feedback from readers, connect with fellow writers who share your sensibility, & you get a sense of closure that allows you to move on to your next project.

Some people think that getting published by a traditional book publisher is the only way to get your writing out to readers. There’s a real bottleneck here — even though there’s some benefit to the publishers in this circumstance, I would argue that writers don’t benefit from it, readers don’t benefit from it, and neither does our writing culture. This perception of the editor-gatekeepers just creates a tense and risk-averse climate.

So, I’m going to detour around the bottleneck and focus on the diversity of methods writers can use to get their writing out there. The ten things I list are often considered different mediums and require collaboration and/or different skillsets, but writing can be central to them.

1. ZINES

I started publishing my work almost 20 years ago, when I was 17. I photocopied my stories and rants in an independent magazine or zine and sold them at punk shows and through the mail. I moved from that to publishing short story collections and a novella, digest and saddlestitched (folded and stapled 8.5×11). It’s cheap, it’s immediate, and it’s tangible.

Quick Tips:
-there’s a vibrant, fun community: hundreds of zinemakers and zine readers meet at the annual Canzine (Oct 26th)
-print still rules: you can give a copy of your zine to someone at a party or on a bus and they can read it right away

2. BLOGS
Everybody knows about blogs at this point, and probably a lot of people who would have started zines ten years ago are blogging these days.

Quick Tips:
-the great thing is that they’re easy to start and easy to find; but almost because of that they almost have less weight. Because you have to seek zines out, and people have had to put a lot of work into them, they engender a more loyal and more responsive readership. Hypothetically, it should be much easier to get thoughtful feedback via online comments, but you’re more likely to get it in an actual postal letter.
-there’s a neat project by a local called Monster, Monkey or Spaceman? that allowed people to choose what kind of story he wrote via an online poll, which is obviously easier to do on the web.

3. WEB COMICS
While not that many people read prose fiction on the web, comics are entirely a different story. While in my opinion it’s just as good to photocopy your writing as it is to post it online, I wouldn’t say the same for comics — going online with your comic allows you to do something that’s still too costly for most indie publishers: full colour.

Quick Tips:
-you get an inkling of Ramon’s talent here in b&w but if you check out the colourful lush dreamworlds of his online comic Kukuburi you’ll be in awe
-obviously this is an easier option for you if you can draw, but there’s many examples of really popular comics that get by without drawing talent — XKCD and Dinosaur Comics are two that have cultivated huge readership on the strength of their writing, the latter by local Ryan North

4. AUDIO DRAMA
So did you ever listen to Theatre of the Mind on CHUM FM? Audio drama was really big in the ’40s and ’50s when radio was king and beyond its retro appeal has developed into an art unto itself .

Quick Tips:
-they’re easy to distribute nowadays via podcast — there’s some folks nearby that keep the oldtime spirit alive at Decoder Ring Theatre, which alternates new serials on the Red Panda, Canada’s Greatest Superhero, and Black Jack Justice, private eye
-audio drama is a great way to bring your writing to a different audiences and work with actors in a less complicated way than with…

5. LITTLE MOVIES
Making little movies is really fun — get Celtx, a free open source script writing application, pound out a five or ten minute screenplay, borrow a camera and make it happen. There’s tons of online and indie festivals that are running all the time.

Quick Tips:
-notice I say little movies — start small and make it something you can produce. I wrote and produced a lo-fi sci-fi feature last year but it was seven interconnecting shorts, so it only depended on each of the directors for 12 minutes
-writing scripts that never get made sucks, so make them scripts you can make
-having stuff online is fun, but seeing people watch your movie at a screening is even funner — try both
-but don’t go spending money on upgrading/gadgets/”enabling tech” — that’s a mug’s game. Borrow until you wear out your karma, and then barter. Every dollar you save translates into time to make stuff.

6. TEXT ADVENTURE VIDEOGAMES
Anyone out there play Zork as a kid? Or any text adventure games? Go west, Take sword? They were a type of videogame that was entirely text, and is also known as interactive fiction. IF is an amazing thing: a videogame you can make without programming or graphics skills.

Quick Tips:
-there’s a community of people who write and play these games, and they have a competition each year that often attracts more than 50 new games (one’s happening now! Download and vote!)
-and thanks to this community, there are now tools that make it possible for non-programmers to write these games, one in particular is called Inform 7
-the audience for text games is small but intense
-it’s kind of like poetry in that there’s no money in it, and the audience for it is small, but if you were affected by it in your youth you keep coming back to it — some people had a slim volume of poetry and I had The Lurking Horror

7. MUSIC
Talking about poetry, I’m not much of a fan of it except when it’s sung. My favourite poet is John K. Sampson of Winnipeg’s the Weakerthans (listen!). It’s a little extra effort, to learn how to rhyme and get an instrument, but it definitely makes poetry more accessible.

8. STREET POSTERING
I did a talk at Active Resistance, an anarchist gathering that happened in ’98, about whether it was possible to combine a political activism with science fiction writing. From that, Nalo Hopkinson, Emily Pohl-Weary, me, Renee North and David Findlay formed the Science Friction Action Heroes. We put one page stories on poles – Kensington Market 2020, Queen St. W 2020 and U of T 2020. It was a way to directly become a part of the city in a very tangible way.

9. INDEPENDENT BOOK PUBLISHING
But at this point, you might be saying to yourself, putting stories up on poles? That’s what crazy people do. Jim, I want a book. I want to hold a book in my hands that I wrote. I totally understand, I have five books myself so obviously I think it’s a good way to get your writing out there.

Quick Tips:
-I have a ton of information on every aspect of do-it-yourself publishing here and here
-My one piece of general advice to everyone publishing for the first time is to do a print run of 500 books. It’ll be tempting to do 1000 because it won’t be that much more expensive, but it’s better for your ego and the environment and your storage space not to have ten extra boxes lying around. It took me a few years to sell my first book’s print run of 500

10. CORPORATE BOOK PUBLISHING
Obviously this is an option, but I wanted to put it in is proper context among one of many way to get your writing out there. For many writers it really is a good fit — so long as you don’t feel like it’s your only option. Getting a book deal with a big publisher is like Las Vegas. For some people, Vegas is heaven. I found that although it had a few surreal charms, the legendary free food and drinks were nowhere to be found, and I don’t get excited about gambling, so I don’t think I’ll be going back any time soon… but it was good to see what it was like for myself.

Doing market stalls probably won’t make you rich or sell a truckload of books. Our best market day ever made about $750, mostly we make a lot less than that. Beer money, really. But even if you don’t sell a lot you’re still spreading the word and marketing your product, which is important in the long run. We learned what kind of markets work for our particular books and what sorts of places just don’t. The only way you can figure this out for yourself is by getting out there and trying different markets. Here’s some tips for running a successful market stall.

• Get the word out. Help promote the market or zine fair and let potential customers know you will be running a stall. You can do this by your email list, posting it to your blog or making an event on myspace/facebook. The more people who know what’s happening the busier the event will be.
• Make your table pretty. We have a tablecloth and spent a few bucks at the Reject Shop buying plate holders to display our books. Take a look at the table from the front when it’s set up to make sure it looks appealing to passers-by. Keep tidying your table so it looks neat all day. Free cookies or lollies will draw people to your table.
• Be friendly. You have a better chance of selling stuff if you engage with the people who stop at your stall. Start a conversation, ask a question or make a comment about a particular item that they are looking at. This was quite hard for Locus at first because we’re not super-salesy people, but after a few goes we got much better at doing it and now it comes naturally.
• Keep starting conversations. At a non-book market or zine fair, people often won’t even stop to look at your table; books aren’t for everyone. This is when initiating a conversation is really important, because once they know that the books you have are recipe books or graphic novels or a literary magazine, they might remember that they have a niece’s birthday coming up and she’s into that sort of thing.
• Have one or two lines ready to describe your stuff when someone asks ‘what’s this?’. This can be surprisingly tough but after a while you get a feel for what works and what doesn’t. For example, with one of aduki’s books, Stick This In Your Memory Hole, we mention the cultural commentary aspect of it rather than drop the P-bomb (politics); with Mini Shots it works best to open by saying it’s a new concept magazine series rather than that it’s a short story magazine.
• Encourage people to pick up your books and flick through them. Again, something might catch their eye. If they buy, give them a fresh copy that hasn’t been thumbed through by a hundred people.
• Offer a discount. We sell all our stuff cheaper than retail price at markets and zine fairs. Tell people that everything is on special or put the old price and the sale price on clear display. Even if it’s only a buck or two, it can help to sway a decision to buy.
• Take loads of change. It’s the one commodity that’s always in short supply at a market and you don’t want to miss a sale because you don’t have the right change or have enough change. A receipt book can sometimes come in handy too.
• Keep a tally of how many of each item you are selling. If you have a busy day it’s easy to forget exactly how many copies of a certain zine or title you sold.
• Have small items for sale. Locus make badges to sell for $1 or $2. Many people just don’t buy books or don’t have the $10-20 cash on them to buy your stuff, but will drop a few coins on a little item that catches their eye. We spend our badge money on lunch or use it to cover stall costs.
• Have a business card, flyer, free chapbook or magazine (Emily uses aduki magazine, Lisa uses business cards) to give away. Again, people might not buy your book there and then but might be interested in finding out more. Giving them something with your web address means you might make a sale further down the line.
• Have a signup sheet. If you send out email newsletters have a sheet so people can put their email address down if they want more information.
• Have a variety of things for sale. If you’re an individual with one book, team up with someone else or stock other titles if you can. Having a few things to look at means people will spend more time at your table and there’s an increased likelihood that there’ll be something they’re interested in.
• Charge a commission. If you do stock someone else’s titles, don’t be shy to arrange a commission or fee with them to help you cover costs. After all you’re the one doing the work on the day.
• Take food and water. It can be surprisingly tiring standing around for hours talking to people and selling your stuff. If you don’t know what’s going to be available to eat, take food so your energy doesn’t flag halfway through.
• Keep track of what you sold versus what you paid for the space. Some markets are free, which is great, and others are cheap but may be quiet. Paying $50 for a table at a busy inner suburban market might seem like a lot, but if it’s really busy or an affluent area there’s a fair chance you’ll make that money back. Know when to give up though – if you’ve been to the same market two or three times and had a dismal result, it’s fairly likely it’s just not your market. Likewise, if you find a good thing stick to it.
• Don’t lose heart. Some market days are awful and you can sit for hours without selling anything. Other days you don’t cover costs. Doing markets with someone else is always a bonus in these situations, because they will help keep your spirits up (and watch the table if you need to go pee).

Sticky took the pictures. More indie press news and tips at Emily and Lisa’s blog.

“How did you get a book deal?”

The first couple times I thought it was a fluke, but having made four book deals with three different publishers over the past decade, I feel somewhat qualified to discuss it. But of course it’s limited in that it’s one person’s experience, hopefully people will comment as their experience differs, and questions are welcome.

THE SHOTGUN APPROACH

Most publishers, to slow the flood, say that they don’t accept unsolicited manuscripts. With my first full length novel, Flyboy Action Figure Comes With Gasmask, having self-published before and curious about being published by other folks, I ignored this. I sent out 50 packages with a sample chapter, a bio and a synopsis as laid out by a book called Be Your Own Literary Agent by Martin Levin. From this I received five requests for a complete manuscript, and in the end HarperCollins offered me an advance of $2000, which they eventually increased to $2500.

What had happened on the inside at HarperCollins is that an intern, between her duties answering the phone, had thought the manuscript might appeal to someone. He was a guy who had been doing foreign rights and had recently moved into domestic acquisitions. He was fired soon after I signed the deal, and was probably in the position to get my book published for all of six months.

This is why I suggest sending it out to any publisher with an address, or The Shotgun Approach, over a well researched and considered submission tactic (let’s call it The Sniper’s Gambit). Maybe it seems like a good idea to only submit to the publishers who put out Your Kinda Stuff, but the editor there that was publishing YKS this season may have bombed with that list and feel like a change — or may have moved to another publisher causing your cleverly calculated submission to miss entirely. I also suspect that for some people The Sniper’s Gambit is a way to limit the pain of rejection, but really, fifty rejections doesn’t hurt ten times more than five: suck it up and cock that double barrel to give yourself a fighting chance.

The publisher at HarperCollins also sold the US rights to Avon, after a modest bidding war (see The Agent Question, below) with Tor that doubled Avon’s original advance offer to $15,000. I was so happy and stunned by how my work had doubled in value because one editor at another house had liked it that I forgot to ask for mutual agreement on the cover in the US contract, and consequently got stuck with a cover I didn’t like. (More on that in Ask For the Rights You Want, below.)

WHY INTERNS ARE YOUR FRIENDS, PART II

With my second novel Angry Young Spaceman, I decided for political reasons to leave HarperCollins and publish it independently. While this allowed me to sell the same amount of books and make more money off it in Canada, I had no plans to publish it in the US as I felt that it wouldn’t be as successful as having a US publisher put it out. (This was later proven with the dismal sales when I published my fourth book in the US as well as Canada.)

But one day I was flipping through Locus and I noticed an ad for publisher Four Walls Eight Windows, who published political books and science fiction. Hey, I write political SF! I thought, and sent a copy of the Canadian edition of Angry Young Spaceman to them along with a handwritten note — something to the effect of “I put this out here, maybe you’d like to put it out there?” It was opened by an intern there, who really enjoyed it and put it in front of the publisher, who made me an offer not only on that book but my subsequent book, Everyone In Silico. Instead of being put off by my DIY style of publishing and touring, he was supportive both philosophically and in funding the US tours. The advances were small (somewhere in the $2000-$3000 range, I forget) but it was a good match while it lasted.

MY ASHCAN’S HISTORY

Going into the comics industry with my graphic novel Therefore Repent! I was, in some ways, back at square one. The artist and I put together an ashcan (almost as encouraging a word as “slushpile“) that sampled the first chapter or so of our graphic novel, and blew the dust off my shotgun. I was pleasantly surprised at the responsiveness of the comics publishers as compared to the prose publishers: many of them emailed positive rejections in a prompt manner. One of the companies the artist had worked with had expressed interest, but when I explained that I’d be publishing an edition for the book trade in Canada (as I had with my previous three books) they said they’d have to try to convince their distributor to allow this.

Months passed by. I noticed that my pal Cory had set up a deal with a company called IDW that worked with his Creative Commons licencing. I thought to myself, they sound forward thinking and flexible! and I shot off a package. A while later I got an email from the president, and despite having the same distributor as the other guys he was able to put together a deal in a few weeks that allowed me to publish my edition in Canada.

One big difference between my deals with literary prose world and the world of graphic novel publishers is that the lit publishers generally give an advance on 10% royalties up front — meaning after selling 3000 $20 books you’ve earned out a $5000 advance and are due $1000, dig? If you only sell 1000 books, and don’t earn out your advance, then you don’t have to pay it back — the publisher gambled and lost. Now with the comics publishing deals I’ve seen there’s no advance but it’s a much higher split — 50%-50% to the publisher and the author — after the initial publishing costs (printing, promo, etc.) are earned back. So it’s a different model, and I’ll see how I feel about it in a year, but for now I’ve been impressed with the much greater feeling of partnership I have enjoyed with IDW — down to input on the print run quantity and the per unit cost.

ASK FOR THE RIGHTS YOU WANT

OK, so maybe you don’t have my specific needs of needing to withhold certain territories. But there’s probably something that you feel strongly about: don’t let it slide. The classic is the book cover. Authors complain all the time about the crappy covers they have. It sucks to have spent so long working on something to have someone slap a boring, unreflective, or cheesy cover on it ’cause some kid in sales thinks it “pops”.

You may have a great relationship with your editor, who has promised to faithfully shepherd your book through the process — but it takes years for books to come out, and by then they may have been let go or otherwise be unable to follow through. Get it in writing.

And get the right words in writing. “Consultation” doesn’t mean shit. It has no teeth, legally. In my experience, the magic words are “mutual agreement between the author and the publisher” on the subjects of cover design, sales material and back cover copy, which I’ve gotten whenever I’ve asked for it. I wouldn’t suggest the author should have absolute control over it any more than the publisher should: I’ve heard editors recount horror stories of authors who come in with their “precocious” child’s pencil scribblings as a design. But consensus is not that hard, once you’re committed to it, and really, both of you are invested in getting the book out ASAP and with as much chance of success as possible.

There’s a great article (“Paperback Nabokov”, McSweeney’s #4) that shows via his letters how embarrassed and mortified Vlad was with the dumbass covers he got stuck with abroad, so there’s a long history of this. But it seems pretty arbitrary that authors still have little control over their covers — musicians are way more involved in their album covers, for instance. So if you’re inclined to feel it’s important, ask for it: the one time I didn’t ask for it was the time I didn’t make the deal myself, and sure enough I ended up with a cover that annoyed me.

In the unlikely event you kill a deal just by asking for stuff you’d like in a reasonable way, then it’s probably better off dead. In general, that’s a good rule of thumb for a lot of this. The people who’ve been accommodating and understanding before the deal was made have also been accommodating and understanding after the deal was made. And also keep in mind that after the deal is made you still have a fair amount of leverage, should you choose to use it: you’re partners in this endeavour, after all, and if they expect you to promote, tour, talk up the book once it’s out there then they’re going to want to keep you happy. Speak up, be clear and reasonable about your desires, and they’ll probably be met.

THE AGENT QUESTION: ARE YOU BRINGING A GUN TO A KNIFE FIGHT?

I’ve talked to a bunch of different book agents, and although I have one for my film option rights, I’ve haven’t had one for books yet. It’s not so much the 15% cut they get that makes me hesitant — it’s entering into a relationship I don’t feel I necessarily need and feeling beholden to someone for what they may or may not have done to get me to where I am. However, there are pros and cons. I’ll start with the cons, which are mostly for new writers, and end with the pros, which are mostly for writers who are a known quantity.

It’s hard to find an agent who’ll take you on. I always advise unpublished writers to spend at least as much energy approaching publishers directly as they do approaching agents — it’s more empowering, you’ll learn more, and if you make it happen agents will be more interested in you once you’ve published something if you choose to go that route with your next book. I also think that while there’s editors who will ignore anyone who’s unrepresented, there’s also people in the publishing world who thrive on “discovering” people. Those are the people who’ll champion your book.

It’s even harder to find a good agent. What I mean by that is one who’s suitable for where you’re at and what you’re writing. Some agents will take on everyone who looks vaguely shiny and then not really have the resources to help each individual client, save the one or two who gather some momentum on their own. I’ve always felt that I don’t really want a nice agent, someone who I can pal around with and really relate to: because then I have to ask myself, what can this person do that I can’t do myself? I need someone with thicker skin, a different skill set and a specialized knowledge of the industry — I need someone who’s as alien as possible to me without being completely monstrous. I haven’t found that creature yet, but I’m always keeping an eye out.

Why? Well, because despite having been able to sell the US rights, I haven’t been able to sell any other foreign rights to my books. And while I’ve managed to find one publisher who’s into publishing the book, it’s much better to have two interested, as the publisher at HarperCollins who sold the US rights to my book demonstrated. Publishers will pay as small an advance as they can get away with, to reduce their risks, so a bidding war will increase your advance and probably the promo push they put behind it to recoup.

So I definitely see a value to having an agent in that their access to and broader knowledge of the publishing industry can help in these cases, provided they’re sufficiently motivated. And except for those rare agents who are in it for the nurturing and the long term relationship, taking on a new writer and getting a couple hundred dollars for landing an average advance isn’t much motivation. So generally, you have to make the call as to when, if ever, the scale of your writing operation justifies taking on an employee/partner.

Download the MP3 here.

Keep reading to hear about the other amazing cons I went to this summer, as well as some tips for enjoying them!

Think GalactiCon is a brand new radical left science fiction conference started by people inspired by Wiscon, a feminist SF con I wrote about a while back. It was held in a grand old university building in downtown Chicago, and the panels were small and less about listening-to-experts and more focused discussion groups, which makes sense given the con’s anarchist leanings. We got to talk about a lot of race/ class/ sex issues but all through the filter of fabulist fiction, which defuses the potential grim seriousness. This heavy/light mix is my idea of fun! Plus it was nice that I was a special guest and people made me feel important.

As a good reality check, at Defcon I was pretty much a nobody. It’s a hacker convention in Las Vegas that attracted 7000 people interested in computer security — both corporate people running defence and those on offence. Craig and I had been invited to present Infest Wisely for movie night, essentially entertainment after the important stuff, but it was awesome to be able to dip into the subculture. It’s a pretty diverse scene, with lockpicking contests, parties you had to solve cryptographic clues to get into, and talks on how to social engineer by overflowing the brain’s buffer.

If you haven’t already tried ‘em, conventions are fun. They’re great places to make friends with like-minded people from all over and spend a focused couple of days really getting into what you’re into: call it a thinktank, call it geeking out, whatever you prefer. Here’s some things I’ve figured out since Wiscon got me hooked on going to cons 5 or 6 years ago.

1. The more specific the better. Bigger is not better: I generally find generic cons to be pretty boring. Sure, you should be able to find lots of folks on the same wavelength at a bigger con, but it’s harder to find them.

2. Look at old programs. Panels descriptions from last year’s con is a better reflection of the kind of discussion that goes on than, say, the content on the website. Many great cons have crappy websites, probably because they’re focused on making the real life experience happen.

3. Go with or without friends. Don’t make it the deciding factor of whether you’ll go. Sure, it’s fun to have some folks you know — it can get kind of lonely without them. But the flipside is that you’ll be more approachable and more likely to chat with strangers when you’re alone.

4. Unless your body/mind is saying NO, say YES. It’s easy to feel ambivalent about a trip out of the hotel or an invitation to play a game, but unless you’re exhausted or totally burnt out, just go with the flow — you can be a homebody at home. Things happen that you don’t expect.

5. Read about it. Especially if you’re into anime, check out Svetlana Chmakova‘s Dramacon, which is a manga series based in an anime convention: it does a good job of re-casting conventions in a more nuanced light than the Trekkie cliches.

6. Participate. If you’re creative, you don’t have to be a featured guest to express yourself. Make something to give to people, a minicomic or a zine or whatever is an extension of your self. You will meet people who will nurture and support you.

7. Be conscious of the opportunities away from the con, but don’t feel obliged. I didn’t really care enough to visit Caesar’s Palace, for instance, when we were in Vegas, but the chance of firing machine guns was too good to pass up. I chose an uzi, picked the Canadian guy target, and posed shame-facedly with it afterwards.

It was quite nerve-wracking. Even with the sound cancelling headphones the noise still made me jump, and the recoil was significant (though not nearly as bad as Craig’s AK-47). How did those Columbian drug lords do it? They must have made them quieter back in the ’80s.

8. If you enjoyed yourself, go again. It feels a bit like the first day of school after the summer, except you only have to go to the classes you want and crazy parties are part of the curriculum.

Make a Fool of Yourself
I like publishing because it is possible to survive one’s mistakes.
–Michael Joseph

If I stayed home with the curtains drawn until I’d written, rewritten, and polished to perfection each precious line of the next Great American Novel, I wouldn’t be famous enough to get it published. As it is, when I do produce my finest masterpiece, folks will say, “I always knew Ariel Gore had it in her,” and the New York Times will admit that I’m a genius, and I’ll be even more famous than I had to be to get the thing published, and I can die a goddess.

Until then, I’ll publish what I’ve got.

Most lit star’s first publications were straight-up embarrassing. This is as it should be. You live and learn. The humiliation of a bad poem doesn’t truly hit home until your ex-husband has submitted it in family court as evidence of your total mental incapacity.

I will not write such a poem again.

But even the embarrassment is good practice. If you’re going to be famous, you’d better get used to humiliation. There is no dignity in celebrity. When I finally got the L.A. Times–my grandmother’s hometown newspaper–to run a big color picture and proclaim me a lit star, they also mentioned that I’d once slept with a man for money. Thank you.

“The unread story is not a story,” Ursula K. Le Guin says. “It’s little black marks on wood pulp.” So make your little black marks live. Let a reader turn them into a story.

Look around. Great people are always kicking themselves for failing to reach impossible standards of perfection while the mediocre ones run around doing this and that and seeming never to feel the least bit bad about themselves.

So your first published piece won’t be in the New Yorker. So what? Maybe it will be in a small community newspaper published out of someone’s dirty kitchen and the only way you’ll get them to print it is by volunteering to do the dishes. It might be in a niche magazine or a small-circulation nation zine called I (heart) Amy Carter, it might be in a self-published chapbook. It doesn’t matter. Get used to publication. Get used to writing for strangers. Get used to the stupid things those strangers will tell you about your work. Get used to the awesomely heartening things they’ll tell you. Get used to the fact that as a writer, you may never know who read your work and whether or not it had any impact on them at all. Get used to imperfection. Get used to the typos that make it past copyeditors. Get used to publication. Short stories. Articles. Blogs. Columns. Blurbs. Poems. Whatever you’ve got. If you want to write for strangers, get it out there so those strangers can see it.

A lot of glossy magazines won’t even read your stuff if you don’t have a resume. But here’s the good news: You can publish the first issue of your zine for $50. If you’ve got access to the internet, you can start a blog for free. Once you’re publishing stuff yourself, you’re not just a writer, you’re a writer-publisher. If you publish other people’s stuff, too, you’re a writer-editor-publisher. You can join the club. And the listserve. You can go to potlucks with other writer-editor-publishers. You can offer to review books and write fillers for their zines and journals and websites. And voila! You’ve got a resume.

When it comes to writing a book, just write it. If the book is nonfiction, you might be able to write a proposal for it and get a contract before you write the whole thing. More likely, if it’s your first book, you’ll just have to write it. And what when it’s done? Try to get an agent. An agent can try to sell the book to a big press and get you a little money. And what if you can’t get an agent or don’t want one? So what? I know a few people who’ve spent years-coming-on-decades trying to find an agent who’ll sell their book to a huge press. They won’t even consider going for a medium or small press. This is madness. I don’t understand it. Maybe they’re hoping to impress their parents. But I can tell you that if you’re parents are not proud of you as an unpublished writer, they will not be proud of you as a published writer. If they are picky, critical people, they will find fault with your book regardless.

Maybe these developing writers want to make a lot of money. If so, they ought to learn a trade. Big presses are great, but they’re not the only game in town. Start with a humble book at a humble press. Start with your own press. Make 300 copies. Call a local bookstore and set up an author event. Invite all your friends. Make flyers about it. Send press releases and review copies to relevant media. Sell your 300 copies. And use the money to print more. Now you’re a published author. Onward!

Your first published pieces will be incomplete and imperfect. Who cares? It’s better to make a fool of yourself in front of a small audience than it is to steal from the world the light of your coming brilliance.

Write for Strangers

Like most writers, I started out writing for myself. I kept messy, irregular, emotional diaries. I meditated, pen in hand, across pages lined and blank. I free-associated and rambled on. But eventually, journaling to become a writer started to feel like playing with buckets of saltwater to become a surfer. Sure, had to get used to the elements I wanted to work with, but freewriting can only take a writer so far. So I started penning letters to friends, writing poems and posting them on telephone poles, and then, finally, writing short articles and profiles for Sonoma County Women’s Voices, a small community newspaper where the editors were kind enough to give me an internship.

Occasionally when I’m stuck on in a story or a chapter now, I’ll open a notebook and scrawl stream of consciousness to empty my mind and let the universe fill the vacuum, but when I’m stuck it’s usually more helpful to take a walk, have sex, paint a portrait, lift weights, go out for a drink. Freewriting helped me recover from too many years of formal education, but it’s no longer a super-effective tool when it comes to waking my creative brain.

If you want to write just for yourself, that’s fine. Get a good journal. Archival quality. But if you want to write for strangers, too, you’ll have to publish. I’ve had teachers who warned writers not to publish until they’re “ready.” This is silly. What’s ready? I started publishing my work long before I was ready. Start publishing. Start right away. And don’t be afraid to start small. Set yourself up with a public diary at livejournal.com. Print poetry on stickers and post them around town and in train bathrooms. Print short short stories on well-designed bookmarks and convince local booksellers to display the freebies on their counters. Print your words on anything you can think of — paper, walls, or the pages of cyberspace — and distribute freely.

Start Small

As Marc Acito says, it’s not who you know in this business, it’s who knows you–or rather, who knows your writing. So don’t be afraid to start small.

I might need a famous author to blurb a new book. I might find that author’s website and send them an email introducing myself and asking if they wouldn’t mind taking a look at my manuscript and consider endorsing it. And that famous author might write back saying, “Sure, I know you. You wrote that weird short story in Fly By Night magazine six years ago . . .” This is exactly three trillion times better than trying to get that same famous author to remember that we shook hands once. No agent, editor, publisher, or writer has ever said to me: “Sure, I know you, we met at such and such literati cocktail party . . .”

Even if no one who’ll be specifically helpful to you ever reads your weird short story in Fly By Night or your column in the PTA newsletter, you’re taking your craft and your genius into the world now. You’re getting used to seeing your words in print. If you have an editor, you are learning how to be edited–how to revise when asked, how to let the little changes go, how to fight for your original words when they’re truly important to you. When you read your first articles in print, you may notice that they seem to have a different rhythm and tone to them once set in type. A story on a magazine page has a different feel to it than a story on the computer. That’s because written words and stories are living things. You can’t always control the editing or the subtle transmutation that takes place when a piece is printed, but you can get used to the process and begin to work with it. If my first published work had been a book I’d spent years working on, I probably would have had a nervous breakdown. As it was, my first published article happened to be a 600-word story about a local First Nation farm struggling for survival. It took me a week to write. The subject matter was important to me, but not deeply personal. And so I began to learn to publish and be published not with a huge splash, but with a small offering, by lending my still-shy voice to an unseen community treasure that needed every voice it could get.

Check out more excerpts at Ariel Gore’s website or buy it online.

The next day, we did an eight hour shoot and it was rock solid and sounded sweet — when I was perched on a rusted-out catwalk high above an abandoned factory floor, I was glad I didn’t also have to worry about the mike falling off.

Of course this is almost ridiculously specific to Rode VideoMic owners living in Canada, but it’s too neat a trick to keep to myself. For some more generally useful DIY Sound tips from my sound guru Carma, keep reading!

Hertz So Good: a beginner’s guide to audio production for video
by Carma Jolly

Ah yes, sound. Elusive sound. Refine your lighting, exposure and mise-en-scène as much as you like. Your video will not attain all the incredible heights of impact and engagement without an excellent soundtrack. Work with me here for a moment. Close your eyes for ten seconds. C’mon. That wasn’t ten seconds. Close ‘em again. What did you hear that you didn’t hear before? What did your ear focus on? What did it let recede to the background? Now know that microphones are completely incapable of making those distinctions! They are equal opportunity sound collectors. The hum of a refrigerator. The buzz of fluorescent lights. The rumble of a bus outside. All of these waves will register along with your intended target. Welcome to yet another painful and heartbreaking aspect of video production: good sound.

Hey now. Don’t let it get you down. By this time you are used to painful and heartbreaking obstacles in the making of videos. Overcoming these challenges is what makes the whole thing worthwhile. N’est-ce pas? And there are few simple things you can do to capture sound cheaply, efficiently and eloquently.

Sound on the Scene

Here’s the simple truth: the closer your microphone is to the sound source you want to capture, the better that recording will be. I know what you’re saying: “Well, duh.” But this simple truth is quickly sacrificed when you are out there doing your creative thing. I know. I know. It’s tricky in videomaking for a couple of reasons. If you are using your camera’s onboard mic, the desired location of the camera does not always match proximity to the sound source. If you are using an extra mic with your camera, you may not want it to appear in the shot. Here are some solutions:

1. Check the area for ambient noise. Close your eyes and determine what extra sound present. If the air conditioning is on, turn it off. Get as clean a sound environment as possible.

2. ALWAYS WEAR HEADPHONES! You would be surprised at the things that can get in the way of a good sound recording. Mic noise. Hums you didn’t hear before. Letter “p” popping in human speech. Headphones will allow you to monitor the sound exactly as it is recorded to tape.

2. The more mics you have to choose from, the better. Microphones come in two basic types: omni-directional and uni-directional. Omni-directional mics capture sound from all points around them. Uni-directional mics will capture sound from a specific point and isolate sounds outside their focus. The onboard mic on your camera is likely an omni-directional. Great for capturing ambient sound in a scene. If you can get hold of a uni-directional mic as well, then you are in fine shape. The most all-purpose ones are called “shotgun” mics. They are long cylinders and will capture sound in a direct focus, even from far away. Think of them as binoculars for the ears. Great for capturing human speech.

3. Try to have an extra person along so you can wire your mic to a long cord. Use your sound person to get the mic away from the camera and closer to your sound source. Don’t be afraid to create makeshift booms by taping a mic to a broom handle or a hockey stick. Watch the coordination of movement between you and the sound person…

4. If you are capturing human speech in an interview setting, hold the mic about two inches below the chin and two inches away from the chest. Point the mic slightly to the right or left of the mouth to get rid of “p” popping. It’s best for you or your soundperson to hold the mic rather than letting the interview subject hold it themselves. This is to monitor and correct mic noise and other interference.

Adding Sound in Post-Production

Here’s another nifty trick. Video editing programs let you add .wav’s, .aiff’s, or other compatible audio files into the mix. You can add music, sound effects, or speech that has been recorded by other sources. One easy thing to do is to buy a cheap mic for your computer and record directly into your machine. Some things to watch out for:

1. Make sure your audio files are all of the same quality and settings. You can set your audio settings for sound on tape when you import your video. Note these settings down. When you save audio from sound editing programs, make sure it has the same settings before you bring it into your video editing software. At this point, you should work with the highest quality possible. I work with .wav files at 44,100 kilohertz, 16 bit, stereo. If they are not all the same, you will experience gut-wrenching and mysterious problems when you export your movies.

2. When you are layering sounds, pay careful attention to the resultant audio levels. Somewhere in your video editing software, there should be a sound level indicator. You never want your audio to distort (except for artistic reasons!), as this will produce crappy audio that is difficult to understand. Also, take some time to finesse the fades in and out of audio tracks and the transitions in between. This is where attention to detail in the audio world is most rewarding.

3. Eloquence over abundance. This tip is simply a matter of opinion. Too many sounds effects and other novel noises will suck. Simple as that. When you are tempted to add that comic slide whistle, conjure up images of desktop publishing in the eighties. We all know the effects of too much clip art and too many fonts.

Compression Settings

Here’s where all that hard work is going to break your heart. Compressed audio can often spawn a horrid and evil twin of the beautiful waveform you have so lovingly crafted. As with video compression, you want to push for the highest quality under reasonable file size requirements. Your options depend on the video editing software you are using. A rule of thumb: bare audio files like voice only maintain tolerable quality under high compression. Complex audio files with a lot of sound and b.g. music need lower compression in order to maintain the subtleties in sound. The best thing to do is to experiment with several different settings and see what you can get away with. Don’t be afraid to make the audio into a mono file. You really only need to maintain a stereo setting if you have edited your soundtrack to move between the left and right soundtracks. Apart from that, try to keep the settings as close to those of the original files as you possibly can.

Enter into the Audiophonic Abyss

These tips really and truly are only the beginning. There is much more to know and learn. All of this I have gleaned through repetition, error, screaming and near electronic bloodshed. However, in the end, I was utterly and permanently seduced by the medium of the ears. SOUND ROCKS!

~~~

In a magazine article, Carma Jolly was once erroneously referred to as a DJ. In fact, she hasn’t spun any vinyl since 1978 when she played “Bad, Bad Leroy Brown” 13 times in a row on her Fisher-Price record player.

If you liked this, you might like to check out our other Do-It-Yourself Movie Articles on animation, shooting, scriptwriting and more!

Home Screenprinting Tutorial
by Shannon Gerard

1. Choosing and Preparing Your Screen

What you need:

~ A screen with the right mesh count for your printing surface

~ Mr. Clean or any water based degreasing agent

The first thing you need when setting up a home print shop is the screen (I know, weird). Screens with aluminium frames last much longer than wooden frames which warp after repeated washings. Aluminium screens are usually only 10 dollars more than wooden screens of the same size, so even if you plan to use your screen more than one time, the extra money is definitely worthwhile. A sturdy aluminium screen will continue to lie flat on the printing surface after multiple uses and the mesh is pulled much tighter around an aluminium frame which produces a crisper printed image. They’re also a lot easier to wash out than wooden screens.

The other major factor to consider is mesh count. The mesh count refers the tightness of the weave in the mesh fabric of the screen. A higher mesh count means the fibres of the mesh are closer together and a lower count means the fibres are more loosely woven, so more ink can pass through the screen. If you are printing on paper, you want a screen with a mesh count of about 230 for really optimal results. A screen that tight will allow you to print images with finer details and thinner lines. Since fabric is generally more absorbent than paper, you need a screen that lets through more ink when printing on t-shirts, totebags, or anything cloth. For fabric printing, you should use a screen with a mesh count of 110 or 160 (those tend to be the standard counts sold). I use 110. A lot of folks also opt for a mesh count of about 180, which allows printing on both paper and fabric, but there is an obvious loss of fine detail if you print onto paper at that count.

If you live in Toronto, the best place to buy screens and related materials (it’s the cheapest too), is G&S Dye and Accessories at Dundas and University. Dixon, who runs G&S, knows everything about fabric printing (I almost believe he could bring about world peace) and is also very helpful about supplies and advice. His website has very detailed information about printing including some in-depth tutorials and awesome diagrams of home set-ups.

Once you have bought your screen, the first important thing to do is wash it out with cold water and a degreasing agent (I use the unfortunately gender-specific Mr. Clean, the concentration a little bit weaker than what you would put on the
floor). Getting any grease out helps the emulsion to bond with the fabric which gives you a crisper stencil.

Also important is to understand the orientation of your screen (not the gender specific kind). The flat “back” of the screen which sits on the printing surface is called the “print side” or “paper side” and the “front” of the screen, recessed inside the lip of the frame, is called the “squeegee side.”

paper side squeegee side
2. Preparing Your Artwork What you need: ~ Original artwork with a high contrast ~ Transparency film Screen printing is a very “flat” medium, so images that are starkly contrasted work best. When preparing your artwork to be burned to the screen (to create the stencil), work in black and white only — grey tones and the subtleties of photographic images will not produce a workable stencil. If you start with a photo, as in the example below, reduce the information to a line drawing, or apply a filter or halftone screen in Photoshop which will reduce the image to a series of dots.
I used the photo on the left as a source to produce the drawing on the right, but I liked the red colour of the boxing gloves and wanted to include that in the final print. You can print in any colour you want, but the artwork used to make the stencil must be black. I coloured in the glove shapes, making sure they remained registered correctly to the drawing:
Every colour you want to print requires a separate stencil. Once you have the artwork prepared, print or photocopy it onto transparent film, and you will be ready to produce the screen stencil. It is very important that the black areas printed on the transparency are completely opaque, so hold it up to the light and make sure all the black lines are totally dense. 3. Burning the Stencil What you need: ~ The screen ~ Emulsion and sensitiser ~ A scoop coater or squeegee ~ Rubber gloves ~ A rubber spatula ~ A darkroom and photosafe light ~ Black bristol board, or black cloth or felt ~ Transparencies containing your artwork ~ A sheet of glass ~ A light fixture with a 250 watt photo flood bulb ~ A timer ~ A spray bottle full of cold water ~ A shower head, spray nozzle or garden hose This is the most intensive step in the screenprinting process, but if you take a little extra care when making the stencil, the printing process will go super fast. The first thing to do, after your screen is degreased and completely dry, is to coat the screen in emulsion. Emulsion is the photosensitive goop that will make the stencil on the screen. In areas where the emulsion hardens, the screen is blocked so no ink can pass through. In areas where the emulsion is kept soft and eventually washed out of the screen, the ink will pass through to produce your print. Emulsion is hardened by exposure to light, so you need to conduct this entire process in a darkroom using photosafe lights to see by. I use the extremely ghetto mechanism of a Blessed Virgin Mary (BVM) night light with a red christmas tree bulb inside (witness the shame below) and coat my screens in our windowless bathroom (it gets worse).
Emulsion comes in two parts, the emulsion proper and a small bottle of sensitiser. Working by the red light of your own BVM, mix the emulsion with the sensitiser (each brand comes with its own set of instructions on the label). Once sensitised, emulsion is good for about 3 weeks at room temperature, or about 3 months (tops — it gets iffy at the end of those 3 months) if refrigerated. Always wear gloves! when handling emulsion. Those photo-chemicals are nasty! To coat the screen, you can invest in a scoop coater (about 14 bucks) or can use the slightly grosser and less controllable option of a squeegee or wallpaper smoother. A scoop coater is a very easy-to-use trough which holds the emulsion and deposits a nice even, thin coat on the screen. If you’re using the squeegee or smoother option, use a spatula to spread a line of emulsion along one end of the screen (See below) and then, pressing very firmly with the squeegee, drag the line of emulsion down or up the screen until it is evenly coated with emulsion. It is very important to have a thin, even coat of emulsion on the screen, uninterrupted by drips or blobby areas that could mess up the clarity of your stencil. I always double coat my screen by applying one coat to the paper side and another to the squeegee side. You must double coat all in one go while the first coat is still freshly wet.
emulsion and sensitiser coating the screen
Leave the coated screen in the dark to dry for at least 2 hours. Some tutorials say one hour, but I always have bad results with that timeline because the emulsion is not ready. The important thing is that the emulsion is completely dry before you expose your image. No stickiness allowed. Once the coated screen is dry, you can expose it. It is easy to set up a home exposure unit by arranging materials in this order (from bottom to top)– 1. black cloth or board on the bottom to absorb the light and prevent it from bouncing back through your image area; 2. screen next with paper side down (against the black board); 3. transparencies against the squeegee side of the screen, oriented so that you can read them normally from left to right; 4. a sheet of heavy glass on top of the transparencies to hold them down as tightly as possible to the screen surface; 5. a lamp situated about 1 or 1.5 feet above the glass top with a 250 watt photo flood bulb installed (any good photo store has these for about 8 bucks a bulb).
Don’t forget to set up this exposure unit inside the darkroom! Also, make sure there are no obvious dust particles or other matter in between the transparency and the screen or the glass and the transparency. Any material that blocks the light from getting to the emulsion will show up in your stencil and will interrupt your print. The other big thing to keep in mind here is that the outer two inches of the screen area (closest to the frame on all sides) are unprintable. Because the tension is so high where the fabric is stretched around the frame, you can’t get a good print out of the border areas of the screen. Make sure your image does not go closer to the frame than 2 inches all around. Once you have the unit set up in the dark, turn on the flood light for about 15 minutes and allow the emulsion to harden in areas that receive the light. At the end of 15 minutes, you can turn off the flood light and work in the regular light of the room (no more darkroom necessary). Remove the glass and transparency (you will probably be able to see a ghost image of your design at this point, but if you don’t — it’s okay) and immediately, thoroughly spray the entire surface of the screen with cold water. You have to do this right away and wash the screen out before the emulsion gets hard where your design is. Use a spray nozzle in your shower (how convenient that my exposure unit is in the bathroom) or sink, or use the garden hose to spray down the the screen. Gently pass the spray across the whole surface of the screen until your design is completely washed out. Hold it up to the light to make sure no cloudy areas remain inside your stencil. If any pinholes show where you don’t want them, paint them in with left over emulsion and leave them to dry in the sunlight. Now your stencil is done! Let the screen completely dry before printing.
4. Printing the Image What you need: ~ One set of two hinge clamps ~ A large flat surface ~ A big sheet of acetate (at least 2 feet square) ~ The finished stencil on the screen ~ Packing tape ~ A rubber spatula ~ Appropriate ink for your printing surface ~ The right squeegee for your printing surface ~ Whatever you plan to print on (t-shirts or paper) ~ A hot iron To set up for printing, you need a completely flat table or counter top with two hinge clamps installed at the far side and a large piece of acetate or velum (at least 2 feet long — much larger than the paper or fabric you are printing onto). Tape the acetate down firmly at one end so that it will not budge. You need it to be perfectly fixed at one end in order to properly register your print.
hinge clamps acetate for registration
Fasten the screen into the hinge clamps with the squeegee side facing up and make sure you can move the screen into an upright position in the clamps without it falling back down to the printing surface.
Use packing tape to block off any open areas of the screen that you don’t want to print.
Prop the screen up slightly with your roll of tape and apply a line of ink onto the surface of the screen about 2 inches above the image to be printed. Flood the image with ink using your squeegee. Make sure you have the right kind of squeegee for the material (paper or fabric) on which you are printing. If printing on fabric, make sure you use fabric ink, otherwise your image will wash off in the laundry.
inking the screen flooding the image
Make sure the acetate is between the printing table and the screen. Lower the screen to the table surface and print the first copy of the image onto the acetate. Immediately flood the image with ink to keep it from drying out. Raise the screen to an upright position in the hinges.
Use the acetate to register your image in the right spot on your shirt or paper by orienting your shirt or paper underneath the acetate.
Remove the acetate (just move it out of the way, don’t detach it from the table!) and lower the screen onto your shirt or paper. Print the image by holding the squeegee at about 45 degrees and applying even, strong pressure to pass the ink through the screen.
Ta da!
Remember that this ink dries to plastic. Any area, however small, where it dries in the screen will become unusable in the future. In between each print, flood your image. When you’re done printing, wash the screen of all ink right away. Mr. Clean (or any non-gender specific water based cleaning agent) can be used to wash out ink (if necessary) without degrading the emulsion. Screen ink dries very quickly, so if you are printing in many layers on paper, you can print the second layer on top of the first within about 20 minutes (I wait longer just to make sure no colours bleed together, but you can do it in 20 no problem). If you are printing on fabric, let the image dry for at least an hour (I wait 2) and then iron over top of the image on the hottest setting for at least 1 full minute. Ironing the ink makes it colour fast in the wash. Easy huh? Here’s what the printed shirt looks like, and here’s what the same image looks like, in two layers, on paper:
~~~ Thanks again to Shannon for writing this amazing tutorial — check out her art on shannongerard.org.