Having someone you personally know read your perzines or zines in general?

[Saling Pusa Distro/closed]

HOw do you feel about it? DO you let family and close friends read them? Personally, I wish I could because I feel like most of the things I write about will help people I know understand how I think or how I am... but then again I am not too comfortable having people know what I think... reading my zines is like having a free access to my brain, heart and soul...

maybe it's cowardice on my part...

any thoughts?

[AD]

I don't want my parents to read my zines, so when I received an e-mail from my mom saying "I've read your fanzine. Do you mind if I tell you I think it's great?" I felt a little uncomfortable... Regarding what she said I know I shouldn't, but still... I didn't answer.

And like most of you, most of my friends seem just not to care about zines, even when they know what it is. I don't offer them copies any more, I don't like seeing them on the floor, under a desk or next to the trash can...

[KellyRose-Pulse Zine]

i have always thought that was kind of weird too. i really don't have any "artsy" friends at all so pretty much the only people in my life who know i write a zine are my boyfriend, who i live with, and my family. i don't let my family read it because it is wayyy too personal and sometimes i write about them. i dont think i would mind if my boyfriend read it as long as i wasn't around but he respects my space and says he doesn't want to impose on me by reading it, which i appreciate.

i have wondered before if anyone had people they were close to in their life that didn't know about their zine. my boyfriend is always encouraging me to show the girl who is pretty much my best friend my zine, but like i said she isn't really into art or any kind of underground culture so i really just dont think she would get it..

it doesnt really bother me though and i think not showing my zine to people in my everyday life gives me more freedom to write what i want.



I Am said:

isnt it weird that we're not comfortable enough to let people we're supposedly close to (i.e family) read our zines... or people who are supposedly our friends don't care enough about it?

is that really a trend with zines? where people who dont know us are more interested in what we do? and we relate and connect more in a way with people we only meet through zines or online?

[riotgrrrlaz]

My very best friend is the only person who reads through my zines. Occassionally my husband will flip through them, but because of the fact that they are so personal he prefers not to read them. It is kind of wierd for me to have people I know read my zines.... it's not that it is embarassing, but it's just that I do not believe everyone I know or all the people in my life would fully understand my thoughts and emotions. Plus most of them would have absoloutly no idea what a zine is or why I create one. LOL!

[amandaaaa]

my friend was with me yesterday while i got my most recent zine printed. she walked over to the copier as the pages were coming out and picked up a set and started reading through. it was weird. i was sort of looking at her like, hey put those back down. but i was also sort of like, well.. we're pretty good friends so no real big deal and she knows a lot of what is written already anyway.
the zine's nothing really deep or toooo personal, but yea. for some reason i don't think i like other people i know reading through them either.

[K.]

I've never let my friends or family read my zines, mainly because I'm not really comfortable with talking about a lot of what I've written. For the last 8 years or so, I used zines as a way to work out things I was dealing with in real life. My zines have always been deeply rooted in personal experiences regarding relationships, whether they're platonic, romantic, or familial. In high school I wrote a lot about my relationship with my dad, the growing distance I felt between myself and my childhood friends, and the intense difficulties I was having with my then-partner. The zines I wrote in college continued to explore the same topics & the zines I wrote after graduating college became even more personal. Zines gave me a space where I could work on understanding my feelings and experiences & writing about them helped me to gain a lot of (much needed) perspective. Reading other zines & communicating with other zinesters was also hugely beneficial for me. While my parents and friends were always very supportive of my participation in the zine community, they also understood that I wanted and needed to keep some distance between my "real life" and my "zine life."

[pennysweetprincess]

i know what you mean, the amount of times ive had to explain to people what zines and decos and stuff are and have them look at me like im insane, lol well maybe they dont look at me like that, but theyre probably thinking *what the f*ck?*

Emma Jane Falconer said:

I only give them to friends who'd be into that kind of thing, but my zines aren't really personal, so I can see why you'd feed totally differently if you wrote a really personal, confessional type zine. I often don't tell people I do zines, not because I'm secretive about it, I'm just bored of explaining what a zine is and why I bother doing one.

[ramsey everydaypants]

I've always given my zines to my friends and parents. I live a pretty transparent life, though. I keep a photo blog that they all read that pretty much just documents what I do all week. I try to be really conscious of the things I'm writing and make sure they're statements I've thought through and not something written out of an emotional reflex. They're all personal and about how I'm feeling at any given moment, but maybe it's because it's all written in lists I feel a little protected. Nothing is too in-depth. It's just enough. I'll usually write about general ideas rather than individual people, but most times the ideas are based on people in my life and my relationships. People can infer all they want and feel free to ask me questions after reading it and I'm happy to talk to them about anything in my zine. I'm definitely a 'get it out by writing it down' kind of person. I don't often go to people with my feelings but I don't mind if they read something I've written. It feels a lot less confessional than starting up a conversation about it. So I guess my zine is a way of doing that, breaking the ice, about things I'm feeling and starting conversation.

I'm a nanny and often even give my zines to families I work for, etc. I think my zine is a good overall representation of who I am, a real one, good and bad, so if someone is cool with what they read, I'm happy to have them around.

[Amy]

I refuse to let my parents read mine. One of my friends asked for one and I said 'sure' but tehn I "forgot" and I think she did too.

[T.Allen-Mercado]

Hmm, I'm in the editing phase of my first zine, but have maintained a fairly expressive blog for 2 years. My closest RL friends do not read my blog and I doubt they'll read my zine...I'm happy with that. I have a separate relationship with my online friends and hope to build one with my zine readers as well.I look to mt RL relationships to keep the zine and blog fodder fresh.

[Aj Michel]

I didn't tell my parents about my zine publishing endeavors until I had to move home for about 1.5 years during a transitional time. At that point, I figured as a 35yo, I had nothing to hide. Plus, Dad is endearingly nosey.

The reason I never told them about it before then is that I figured they wouldn't be interested, or wouldn't understand why I spent time and money doing zines, not for any content reasons. Plus, my zines are largely compilation zines around a theme (technology, grocery shopping, television, etc.), so some of them don't have a lot of my writing in them.

After I showed my Dad the zines I had done, and boxes of zines from other people, he was really intrigued and excited about it. Plus, he likes gadgets like long-armed staplers and papercutters (he was an engineer before he retired).

So, Dad and Mom have known about my projects for 5+ years now. Mom is indifferent but supportive, but Dad is totally into them. I even used an old picture of him for the back cover of Syndicate Product 13!

He knows I'm working on Syndicate Product 15, and in an e-mail to me he wrote: "Remember, I want a copy of your new Zeene." Old people are so cute.

I've never kept a zine I've published (or a blog post) from any friends or family. I'm of the belief that once the words are out there, you can't keep control of them anymore no matter how much you try, so why bother?

How can you really control who reads your zine, really? For example, even if you gave a copy to a close friend in confidence, they could still just leave it laying around for others to pick up. They could lose it from their bag, they could leave it on the bus.

[T.Allen-Mercado]

Your dad is way cute! And, I agree once the words are out there, there's really no containing them.

[Mae Undead]

My mom is not really interested in my zines. I remember expressing my excitement to her that I was going to speak at a class at SJSU about zines and she was just very nonchalant about it and said, "OK." My tita has stumbled upon my zines when I gave them to my sister (when she used to live with me.) I felt really weird mostly because I didn't give her my permission and was giving me advice about what I should have wrote but, hey, she was enthusiastic about my writing!

I haven't shared any of my zines with my closest cousins but I did introduce the concept of zines and ended up making a compzine with them. That was a fun experience but other than that, the only people I share copies of my zines to any of my family members is my cousin Lam and my sister. They were always encouraging and interested in my writing and that support makes me really happy.

As for friends, I usually give copies to my very close friends since they were the ones that introduced me to zines. Any new person I meet, I usually introduce them to zines since I'm all about it. Heh. Usually, there aren't many people that get really interested in the concept and just shrug it off but every once in a while, they are excited to have a space to write, which is totally worth every brush off I've received.