Schmoe
An online literary magazine that seeks to highlight a variety of genres and provide a place where writers and readers can interact via comments and online sharing. Pieces will be selected based on regular literary criteria as well as an additional emphasis placed on showcasing literature that is accessible to young adults of all interests.
Created by Sarah Talley, Rachel Mahrt, Tasha Watts, Shelby Boyer, Hannah Ballard, and Nicole Black
With consultation from Allie Crafton and Greg Williams
After asking around with our classmates and friends on Facebook, we found that there would definitely be an interest in this project. Enough to fuel Schmoe and make it successful. There was interest overall in the project as well as in the interaction between writer and reader and the accessibility to the common reader.
We also attempted to get some outside social proof for our project. Laura Cebula, author at Thought Catalog commented on Tasha's post, giving us some feedback and ideas for the project. Tasha emailed Chris Lavergne of Thought Catalog with an introduction and some links and got the response, “Looks good. Seems like you have some exciting ideas going on here. Keep me in the loop with your progress!” She also commented on one of Simon Staffan’s posts about transmedia that was somewhat related to the concepts we’d be employing, as well.
There are plenty of other existing resources out there that we've seen but have yet to tap into. There are blogs about ways for writers to become more involved, websites with ideas and layouts similar to what we're interested in, and professors with special interests in media and writing.
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If you want to know what the group members think of this project, I could just tell you that we're all excited about it and can't wait to really get it going. But if you want to know more I guess you could read Tasha's post one and post two on the topic, take a look at Shelby's enthusiasm, or look at my own ramblings.
We've found a few sources to give us some ideas on the interactive nature of our site. Net Smart gives a description of how people use and pay attention to the internet and how that will develop it in the future. Rachel gives a great review of it on Goodreads. Cloud Atlas by David Mitchel explores the impact that different sorts of stories and genres can have upon a life. Each story frames the next. There is also some content about the changes that the digital world makes with communication. The Wisdom of Crowds is also a good source for information on user activity on the web. Shelby provides a great review of it on her blog.
Rachel read The Hunger Games and found ways to compare it to literary magazines. Tasha also found connections in her book I Am the Messenger. It explores the power of everyday, ordinary people. Our magazine aims to benefit ordinary readers and writers alike by providing an outlet for deep thought and beautiful expression that does not seek to alienate anyone who hasn't read the complete works of James Joyce.
Our plan for the project is to use a pre-existing platform like Wordpress with layout possibilities. The audience we are going to market to is the young adult audience in the 17-25 age group because they typically familiar with the internet and will be more willing to experiment with us as we go. This group will also provide us with a lot of potential writers through creative writing classes, friends, and peers as we seek out submissions.
Since it is a website, success will be primarily measured by page views, subscriptions, likes, comments, and interaction. However, success will also be measured by the number of submissions that we receive. The idea will not be successful unless it is taken seriously by the writers and the readers.
The prototype idea was originally posted on Tasha's blog. The layout will tentatively be similar to Thought Catalog and different layouts found on Wordpress.
Awesome. Thanks so much for doing this. I'm excited to see where we go next!
ReplyDeleteI think this can be something really cool. It's important that more literature not only gets out there but celebrated: highlighting it in a literary magazine is always a boost to a writer's ego. I am concerned of how we'll be able to set it apart as something different and new. We have to make it very clear that this IS a magazine and not just a writing community for people to post anything and share anything. I know when I asked friends about it, they didn't really note the difference and I wasn't quite sure how to explain it. Perhaps we need something to make it stand out--our own special niche or something (like Rachel's idea on remixing, I think,would be worth exploring).
ReplyDeleteI’m a little curious as to how you plan to acquire writers and readers for your project. As long as you don’t have problems doing that, the project should do well. As I understand it, lots of people like reading, most writers like sharing their work, and the social media craze of the day proves that people like to connect online, so as long as you can find these groups and get them together, everything should work swell.
ReplyDelete