unwritten: crossing the threshold
I’ve spent the past six months working with a crew of writers to put out … a zine!
The opportunity presented itself when I was catching up on threads in Paul Millerd’s pathless community. Paul shared a conversation about creating a physical project with a group of creatives, but didn’t have the bandwidth to spearhead the project himself.
I had an increasing desire to create something tangible and had prior product management experience, so I volunteered. The whole thing was a huge experiment in writing, art, and distribution. Six months of work later, we’re proud to announce Unwritten: Crossing the Threshold, on Metalabel.
reflections
Post-release, I wanted to share some of my thoughts on how the entire process went.
I had a difficult time figuring out the speed versus quality tradeoff for this project.
Knowing myself, I knew if I took too long on it, I would lose momentum and energy, which would show up in my demeanor and affect others in the group, so moving fast was a priority. For me, it was suppressing the desire to be flowery and crazy and instead, get to a “minimal viable product”. Paul pushed me to set a very high bar, and that convinced me to make authoritative design decisions to swing the pendulum to the quality side. It wasn’t easy though, and I struggled in some parts, especially editing.
I overestimated my abilities as an editor, both for content and clarity.
I’ve never done editing in any professional capacity, but it was probably the skill that was most lacking in terms what a zine producer should have. The content needed to be excellent.
I found myself correcting grammatical errors when the essay itself could have been improved in terms of clarity, content, and explanation. Most of this was my fault, I was too complacent with the established storylines in the essays, citing drastic changes as things that should be left up to the writer’s discretion. Maybe I got caught up in the balance between leader and dictator — one draws the best from someone, the other forcibly makes changes. Maybe it’s not so black and white.
Seeing how Paul edited essays was akin to that Tim Ferriss experience when he talks about getting his papers back with more red than black. This is a skill I for sure want to work on, mostly because it’s good for my own writing (and future projects).
This is also where I failed as a PM in the tech industry. I didn’t push the boundaries or break barriers enough, I didn’t want to hurt feelings, and didn’t particularly like bumping shoulders. And you need to do that kind of hard stuff if you want to create something out of nothing. So, maybe a great PM for some dying internal product, but not good enough for world-smashing stuff. Can this be changed? 🤷♂️
Self-paced creative work is hard.
There were long periods of disconnection where my brain would marinate on some idea or design, or drafts of others’ essays. Those days would be contrasted with days where I was working for 8-10 hours and hardly notice the passage of time.
Perhaps it’s less of a gripe and more that creative work takes a different pace than “traditional” work, where you’re expected to show up everyday and create output.
Remote work was hard with this kind of project.
Herding cats and raising heads was difficult in the way that the back and forth was sometimes a little slow. This is not to say that being in person would’ve been better, in fact, I think having writers in different places leads to more interesting experiences, better stories, and higher quality content in the final zine.
Plus, this was a volunteer thing for most, if not all of us, so we did have full-time lives.
The last point I’ll say is that lots of color, feeling, and context can be lost in text and email. There were times I was like “wow, I’m doing a horrible job”. We got through it though.
I got really lucky with photography and design.
With modern tools like Canva, making a B+ publication requires almost zero-effort, taste has a lot more to do with it than the tool. There are plenty of premium and custom options out there for those who are looking for specific textures, colors, and photos. I will most likely become one of those custom people in the next iteration.
My partner is the photographer of our lives, so having plenty of pictures to choose from helped make the essence of the magazine (the taste thing). The writers also provided assets but it wasn’t mandatory.
Years ago, when I did some food science writing, I drew my own pictures on an old Lenovo Thinkpad. I use Procreate nowadays for quick sketches, but that’s an interesting path I’d like to take in the future.
I don’t think I set the rest of my personal brand up for success, given there would be more eyes on who I was.
This is more of a “taking advantage of attention” type of thought, although it wasn’t the point of creating a zine. If anything, it’s opened my eyes to what it actually takes to make something really good.
I wouldn’t be keen to recommend my newsletter immediately, only because it’s full of random stuff right now. Who knows, maybe people like that, but with this release, I am a little embarrassed that people would land on my Substack and look at the wide array of mess here. Too late, I guess — welcome 🤗.
Metalabel made distribution really easy.
The entire experience was filling out a couple of simple forms, uploading some assets, figuring out the contributor split, submitting for approval, and then sharing the project page to get the word out.
If you wanted to do a physical copy like us, you’d have to find a publisher (we used LuLu), and then provide them a list of addresses to sent physical copies to when the release date hits.
Like I said, easy tools to use for creatives, and it makes working in a group so much easier.
I would do it again, and dial things up. Get crazier, more creative, more quality, more craft.
I’m not sure what form that would take yet, but I am keen to make more stuff, now that there’s a Pathless treasury that we can draw from.
There’s this interesting switch that’s sort of happened with me — I see many of the things I’m doing more as artistry rather than some “role” or definitive project.
I like where that is going.
comrades in arms
These were my peers (and partner) that made this zine possible, give them a read! They are amazing people, writers, and friends. 🤗
Amy Lin - I need to convince my partner to start a Substack. 😂
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It was awesome seeing how the zine evolved in the sidelines - learned a lot just from observing
Congrats with shipping. Related to the point about how to push the envelope when there's a higher quality bar required - sometimes dictator mode is needed but I suspect there is an art to it (or just shared understanding of expectations)