Next Citizen cover

I'm editor-in-chief of the school magazine, entitled The Marlboro Citizen. I may link to scans of it sometime, if I ever find the time to contact IT about putting up a Citizen website. My staff and I are currently working on a November issue. A 4:30 AM collaboration with a school scanner yielded the beginnings of next month's cover, pictured above.

The bottom of my palm originally read "Oct. 2008" (oh, my ambitions!), but Stephen edited it for me. I think the finishing touch will be a simple whitening out of everything behind my arm and hand. I could have Steve make everything transparent instead of white and put a layer behind it of a school building, but that would be too busy. I like keeping our covers striking and simple. Many people expressed thorough satisfaction with last month's cover-- a white-letters-on-black affair with a center-middle drawing of mine of an easily recognized dorm building. Of course, many people expressed thorough satisfaction with the whole damn thing.

I was nervous about running the Citizen when I first started out, but with the October issue being such a success I stopped worrying about things like not getting enough submissions. Well, apparently I just got lucky with the first one, because I've only received five submissions so far, and that's after extending the deadline for both staff and guest contributors.

Five submissions plus the two I'm expecting to receive is plenty for one issue, but there isn't a lot of diversity among the submissions, and they're mostly creative writing as opposed to articles. Creative writing is more than welcome, but really well-thought-out hard news and editorials is what I want to focus on this year.

Plus, my photo editor is in the hospital, and while the photo prof emailed all of his students, I haven't gotten a single photo submission. Looks like I'll be writing two articles, doing layout, getting people paid, making sure I get submissions, holding staff meetings, planning deadlines, going to the printer's AND taking my own photos. Luckily, I don't let myself get stressed-- allowing myself to get nervous about responsibilities won't help anything. Everyone should try controlling their negative emotions instead of letting things get to them. It isn't easy, but it's possible.

I think that maintaining a quaint little Citizen website might be a nice idea. I received an article from a staff member yesterday on an obscure genre of music, and I'd really like to direct people to a place online where they can hear examples of the music and find links to related websites. I should probably hold off on that idea for now though, considering how much extra work needs to be done for the November issue.