hi everyone! our cover design and overall look of the magazine have been finalized! woohoo!
wanting to put out a call that interactive articles are needed! think of them like code jam entries, like this essay i wrote for the 3rd code jam. “interactive” doesn’t need to be too complicated, but definitely need more!
we have about 5 low-media articles confirmed. please let me know if you can code your article into a lil’ interactive page! <3 (same deadline: march 15th!)
What topics are best to write about?
I ask so as not to duplicate someone else’s topics
here’s the topics section of the submission guidelines:
Articles can either be sourced and journalistic or first-hand accounts and personal stories. Since our magazine is geared towards hobbyists, articles should not be aimed at those who do not already own personal websites or are not interested in web design as a hobby. (We like to use the term “webweaving.”)
This magazine is celebration of a hobby we already partake in rather than trying to convince folks to create their own websites. Our audience includes novice website-building dabblers, coding beginners, intermediate web developers, and seasoned coders, as well as artists; not necessarily professional programmers and web developers.
Ask yourself questions when deciding on an article topic. Is it noteworthy or newsworthy? If it’s not timely, controversial, relevant, or interesting, then it likely shouldn’t be an article topic.
Some appropriate article topics include:
Your idea doesn’t have to be on this list! Consider what website owners might want to read about their hobby, and you likely have an article topic that works. If you’re ever unsure, reach out to the editor and ask, especially before you write the piece.
We’d like to take a page from WIRED:
For best results, pitch us a tale you’re going to tell, not a topic you want to explore. What central chronology are you going to reconstruct? Who are your main characters? What scenes are we going to be able to see? You don’t have to know the full narrative arc of your story when you pitch, but you should be able to give some indication that it’s going to be a satisfying one. Also, be able to convey your tale’s larger implication or importance.
sent in private messages
I finished the first draft of the article I’m going to submit! Who else has submitted something or is working on something to submit?
I sent it a long time ago, but I can’t tell you what the article is about))
Of course not, I’ll see it when it’s published - same as everyone will see mine! 
I’m really looking forward to this. I’m planning to get more than one copy and give one to my public library.
I still have massive writers block, do you have any tips?
I’m expanding on this blog post.
I’ll probably do it the night before the deadline, like everything else I have ever submitted for publication. 
(I’m only exaggerating a little.)
is it creative block on picking a topic, or a block on putting words down?
Picking a topic… I’ve never written professionally before
in order to write something good, you just need to write a lot, without thinking about whether it is good or bad, you will find out later, when you make edits and throw out the unnecessary.
always check the facts, this is important
when you have a big article of 5 thousand words, remove the fluff, shorten it to two, this is not a Mexican TV series, no one will read that much, it is the 21st century))) there have always been few thinking people, but now we are convinced of this thanks to the Internet.
in order to write something good, read a lot of good and interesting things, erudition helps to write. you will use more words, more synonyms, more comparisons, and speech patterns are cool.
write with humor, life is complete shit, and a glimmer of something good and funny is never superfluous.
try not to moralize, let the reader decide for himself and draw conclusions. morality is needed only if something is in the past, you summed up the existence of something that no longer exists, or this morality is directly related to your personal experience.
remember - a professional is someone who gets paid for a specific job (a writer for a book, a journalist for an article, and so on). a professional is not someone who graduated from a university in their profession. you can be a history teacher by education, but work in a pizzeria, which means you are a professional pizzaiola. that’s all you need to know about the profession.
and yes, by the way - I always ignore at least one of these rules, so that I have something to criticize. if the reader finds something and is like “ahaaaah! you didn’t guess here! and here it’s not like that at all, it wasn’t like that, but like this!”, and that’s also good, the reader read, thought, analyzed, conducted analytics, or simply checked some data in Google. it’s symbiosis.
and now a little about what you SHOULD NEVER WRITE ABOUT under any circumstances. articles in the style of “elon musk is o/ somewhere out there, and what would happen if he did it more times, for example, he would go on tour, because everyone is so interested in it.” in fact, no one is interested in this, interest in such crap is generated by social networks, and if it weren’t for them, you wouldn’t even pay attention. in the same way, they slip politics under your nose, and politicians in particular. I try not to involve politics in the constructive at all.
there are always reasonable topics: inspiration, presentation, design, technology, personal experience, development, self-development, art, and much, much more
do it because you can, and not because you have to
From someone who writes professionally a lot (and hopes this is useful): With the deadline less than a month off, I’d recommend trying to find something you’ve already written/blogged/created somewhere that fits the call for submissions, rather than waiting for inspiration to strike from scratch.
It’s what I did, anyway. I pitched a couple ideas to the editor, both of which were based on things I’d already written or had in progress.
Since they seem to need interactive pieces, maybe you have a blog post floating around that could be adapted/expanded with some cool images, links, etc?
Also: don’t get too bogged down in what you could do. or on finding the “perfect” piece. Pick one that makes you happy to work on, and run with it. There will be future issues to submit other things to!
Um… i don’t really have any good “blogs” ive written
That does make it a bit harder. Did you read down the list of topic ideas in the submission guidelines? Did any of them pique your interest? Did any of them pass tangentially close to something you have opinions about?
Alternately, you could wait to see what sorts of things fit in the first issue and work on something for the second instead!
Maybe the one about like coding tutorials or asthetics? idk ive never written before
All right! If those interest you, then try writing about them 
You can target this issue, or the next one if 3 weeks turns out to be too short for you to get your ideas into words.
i always dreamed of making little illustrations for someones articles like in mags from the 2000s but im not sure if its needed or if my style fits, but in case anyone is interested heres my gallery of last year: the human finny
i think im using the wrong reply button lol, please ignore anyone ive bothered w/ that ahah
i am officially putting out the call for art! <3 now that we’ve got some topics, here are some art piece themes/subjects that would be amazing to have:
these can be abstract or in any style you want! :) can even be a collage. please let me know if you’re interested in doing this (a la a verbal commitment of sorts) and submit by march 15!!!
ccing @humanfinny @candycanearter07 @versipellis @st4rdr34mz @Manatee @Leilukin @patchworkghoul @lxrinchan @Finel @frugalgamer