The Making Of…
twenty20
Journal
Summer 2011 Issue 1
Collaboration
A free
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Publishing,
a trade name of Diamond
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"Collaboration"
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2011 Diamond Point Press.
All other artwork © 2011 Fabio Sassi
"The
Writers on Their Process" sections
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* * *
Table of Contents
The End… or Just the Beginning?
* * *
How It All Started
Summer 2011 Issue 1: Collaboration'a beginnings can be traced to twenty20 Journal's. When it started, I decided it would be a quarterly magazine publishing about 10 pieces per issue. I soon realized it was growing at such an unprecedented rate that it could support twice-quarterly publication. So it was decided: twenty20 Journal would publish two issues per quarter.
The next thing to happen was what I had hoped would happen from the beginning: twenty20 Journal received a lot of submissions, and fans, from India. Diamond Point Press has always reached audiences in the U.S., U.K., Australia, New Zealand, and Canada, but never the largest English-speaking country in the world, and the largest democracy (both by population). When I saw the large response from Indian writers, I decided to devote an issue solely to them, and that it would be a special third issue in the Summer quarter.
I then thought: why not make it an annual tradition to have three Summer issues? And why not make all three Summer issues have specific constraints, or "themes?" So I decided to come up with themes for Summer 2011 Issues 1 and 2.
Meanwhile, I had long been thinking I wanted a way to connect my writers with each other. I had established meaningful friendships with many of them, but I thought it was a shame that none of them knew one another. I had also been thinking of doing an issue inviting back past contributors as a way of thanking them. These ideas combined in my head to form the basis for Summer 2011 Issue 1: Collaboration, an issue devoted to collaborations between pairs of past contributors.
* * *
Pairing Up the Contributors
No pair was chosen randomly. Every pair was chosen either because they were a perfect match, or because their styles clashed. It was, in a way, an experiment for me to see what would work and what would not. The results remain to be seen.
Here are two examples of reasons behind pairings: Trisha Bhattacharya and Nora Nadjarian both had written superb examples of surreal fiction for twenty20 Journal. They were a natural fit. A different sort of pairing, however, was Len Kuntz and David Tomaloff. Kuntz had written the piece that, to me, has thus far defined hard-hitting minimalism for twenty20 Journal, whereas Tomaloff had written the most experimental piece to ever appear in the journal. The styles of Kuntz and Tomaloff contrasted so much that I wanted to see where it took them.
Once the contributors were paired up, it was time to begin the process.
* * *
The Initial Fourteen Pairs
Sue Ann Connaughton and Lou Gaglia
Janaan Dawkins and Brandon Kelley
Tim Dicks and Bruce Harris
Neil Ellman and Sean Pravica
Michael Frissore and M.A. Zamani
Len Kuntz and David Tomaloff
Britt Melewski and Josh Nadeau
Rich Murphy and Stephen V. Ramey
[Dropped Out] A poet from Winter 2011 Issue 1 and a poet from Winter 2011 Issue 2
[Dropped Out] Another poet from Winter 2011 Issue 1 and another poet from Winter 2011 Issue 2
[Dropped Out[ A fiction writer from Winter 2011 Issue 1 and a fiction writer from Spring 2011 Issue 1
[Dropped Out] A poet from Spring 2011 Issue 1 and another poet from Winter 2011 Issue 1
[Dropped Out] Another poet from Spring 2011 Issue 1 and another poet from Winter 2011 Issue 1
* * *
Add-on Pairs
When I realized I wouldn't have 10 pieces in the issue, I wasn't sure what to do, but there had been a related thought going through my head. It was remarkable that 9 people had risen to the task of collaborating on a poem of 20 words or fewer with a complete stranger, and I wondered if I could do the same, even with someone I knew.
So I emailed JM Francheteau, Poetry Editor of the Diamond Point Press magazine Muscle & Blood, for which I serve as Editor-in-Chief, and asked if he wanted to try some 20-word-or-fewer poetry collaborations. We threw together three, and chose the most fitting. For the first time, I appear in my own magazine, albeit collaborating with someone else.
I also emailed Christopher Przewloka, Fiction Editor of Muscle & Blood, and Robert Long, author of the short story Diamond Point Press nominated from the magazine for the Pushcart Prize, asking if they wanted to collaborate on a 20-word-or-fewer fiction piece. They said yes, and ended up putting together a great piece, bringing the final number of pairs/pieces to 11.
* * *
The Writers on Their Process
Trisha Bhattacharya and Nora Nadjarian
Collaborative creation demands synergy. Constant communication and regard for each others' opinion and thoughts helped us create this story. Therefore, it was a smooth process for us. Intially, there were constant emails back and forth, where we discussed several ideas and settled down to work only on a few. An honest and creative online enviroment was created so that we could bring out the best piece possible. Our ideations and sensibilites merged. “One brought beauty, another brought style. Together we considered and reconsidered the words and lines. We connected, on an intellectual and emotional level, to strengthen our story.”
Sue Ann Connaughton and Lou Gaglia
Day One: Giddy with ambition, we crafted a plan:
Write the first half of twenty stories each.
Complete each other’s stories.
Add pithy titles.
Send forty winners to Twenty20 Journal.
Day Four: Confronted with reality, we adjusted the plan:
Assemble the group of completed stories.
Tweak titles.
Replace any duplicated words.
Delete unsatisfactory stories.
Day Five: Sent six stories to Twenty20 Journal.
Our collaboration went smoothly, because we incorporated the following into our process:
Planning
Quality standards
Adjustment
Negotiation
Compromise
Endurance (for consecutive days and nights of intensive writing and emailing).
Rich Murphy and Stephen V. Ramey
A twenty word collaboration between poet and one-liner? Preposterous! Impossible! Hey, maybe if we try this? Maybe... well it can't hurt. A brainstorm of half-fictions ensued, Stephen providing opening lines, Rich picking his pitch and knocking it over the fence into unseen, sometimes inaccessible territory. We settled on four complete works; of these, three were not quite right, edging the plate on either side. Stephen coached tweaks, Rich applied his poet's ear, and crack! Three new trajectories. Benjamin selected his favorite arc. Ironically, the strongest was the one that required three pitches and the greatest degree of give and take between us.
* * *
Issue Art
There was always one twenty20 Journal cover that stuck out in my mind in particular, and that was Fabio Sassi's cover for Winter 2010-2011 Issue 2. So when I thought of who to bring back for such an important issue, Sassi naturally came to mind. Luckily, he had some art available, and the cover art ended up being a piece called "elastic pink evolution," pictured above. The Contents page art for the issue is the cover art for this e-book.
Summer 2011 Issue 1: Collaboration also received its own custom logo, as did every Summer issue. The logo, in which all the letters of each word are joined together by an underline, is meant to reflect the collaborative spirit of the issue. It is pictured below:
* * *
The End… or Just the Beginning?
I found this project so satisfying for all involved that I decided it couldn't just end here. A whole journal of collaborative works had to be created. And the project currently underway is even bigger than I originally imagined.
Conmigo is an upcoming free, online, multilingual journal of international collaborative poetry. By "collaborative," we mean the poems must be by two or more authors. By "international," we mean the collaborators must all be of different nationalities. By "multilingual," we mean that the site is available in multiple languages, that we will accept poems in multiple languages, and that each poem will be translated into multiple languages.
The goal of Conmigo is to encourage international literary exchange and thus, in our own way, spread the idea of world peace via creative writing. It may sound like a lofty goal, but Diamond Point Press has always been committed to serving higher purposes.
The journal is still in its infancy. Currently, we are 100% sure we can offer the site in, and translate all poems into, Arabic, English, Esperanto, Hindi, Korean, Spanish, Swedish, and Urdu. We can accept poems in all those languages, plus Latin. We are actively seeking translators for Chinese, Danish, French, German, Indonesian, Japanese, and Russian, as well as every language not listed
For more details, go to http://conmigo.co/.