HOW TO STOP WRITING FOR FANZINES

CHARLES BURBBEE

It breaks over you eventually – the realization that you are wasting too damned much time writing for fanzines, those ephemeral things read only by a few esoteric folk who believe only what they believe before they start reading your article. By god, if I were rewriting this I would change that sentence. I really would. If I were rewriting this article. But before I go any farther along this digression I'd better go back to my original clause or I'll find myself explaining how to write a fanzine article and this is meant to be an article on how to stop writing for fanzines except Masque.

It comes to you with compelling force that you are doing yourself little good banging out wordage for fanzines since your writings have little effect on the intelligentsia, though this may be explained perhaps by the lack of a fannish intelligentsia.

And so you stop writing for fanzines, except Masque. It is not easy to do, in a way, because once the brain is channeled to thinking along fan article lines, everything that happens is magically twisted and shaped into a fannish article. Whole paragraphs pop into your mind and you want to grab a typer or a pencil and jot them down before you forget them. And if you neglect to do this your trained mind goes right on developing the article, right down to supplying a solid punch line, something it usually doesn't do ahead of time. At a time like this the article writer is suffering the pangs of birth and simultaneous death. He longs both to bring his opus to print and the notice of a handful of esoteric eyes hidden for the most part behind lenses of varying thicknesses, and to slay the beastie before it gestates. This is the critical period. It is a towering monster of an impasse. The weapon to slay the dragon quight (Willie, leave that word alone) is to shrug and say, "Fugg it." Or, if you choose to lessen the shock of your capsule statement, you say, "The hell with it." And then you stride away, taking big steps, and leave the idea where you hatched it. If you're a big man, that is. If you're just an ordinary person such as I am, you just shove the idea aside and concentrate on something significant. This would depend on what sort of person you are and what you consider significant. For example, when I was plagued by the urge to write an article on the various methods of masturbation bragged about by members of the LASFS, I simply changed the subject and remrembered the trouble a neighbor of mine had when his first-born learned to walk. Seems the child learned to walk by watching flies and his parents had to pick him from the ceiling to keep him from eating the light bulbs because broken glass is dangerous in the hands of small children.

So after a while your brain will no longer turn out fannish ideas for articles and you are comparatively safe, unless you know somebody like William Rotsler who is such a fine fellow withal that it is difficult to refuse him when he asks for material. But you buckle right down and say, The hell with you, Willie, don't you know I've stopped writing for fanzines? And so, by God, you write an article for MASQUE to show that you can stop writing fanzine articles any time you choose.

This is the first of a series. Next installment next issue of Masque.

Page scans provided by Tom Veal

Data entry by Judy Bemis

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