How to Write an Article (1)
Awoooooooo! Hi :3
I think it's really fun to chat with people on the internet, and getting to write articles for Zooey Dot Pub is sort of like chatting to a whole bunch of people at once. It's like doing stand up comedy, or giv some other kind of presentation to a room full of people: in many ways it's a conversation, but it is also a conversation where I am the one up on stage with something to say. While writing these articles, I'm thinking quite a lot about what everyone in the metaphorical room might think of everything: when I talk about important things (like the love that can be felt between a human and a dog,) I try really hard to word it in ways that will be very memorable, quotable, mantra-able, to the person who is in the audience. I want to give everyone something that was worth their time, some ideas that they can take home with them when we go our separate ways.
And I truly believe that I am not the only person who has something to say that's worth everyone's time :3 I have talked to a lot of people about zoophilia. Often I'm talking to my fellow zoos, although I do also have a lot of conversations about zoophilia with my non-zoo zoo-ally friends. And I think that pretty much everyone who I talk to has a perspective that's worth sharing, if they can find the right way to express themselves.
So, hi, reader! If you're interested in being a writer for this magazine, or if you're just curious how a writer for this magazine might have written an article, then I'm here as the editor-in-chief of Zooey Dot Pub, to tell you how to write an article.
Also before we get into the details, let me give you the short version of how this process works:
Overview
First, you have some idea of something that you want to share about zoophilia; maybe it's your personal experience as a zoophile, maybe it's your view on how zoosexuality relates to other queer activism efforts, maybe it's how zooey it is to be a furry! Your idea could be a lot of things! Once you have your idea, you write it downIt might be similar to a high school essay, or it might be like a little short story, or you might imagine that you're writing yourself a script for a presentation. Then, after you've written it, our team of editors here at Zooey Dot Pub will look over it to make sure all of the punctuation is correct and the message is something that will resonate with our audience, and then on a Saturday or a Sunday we'll put it up on the site and shout it out on our socials!
Okay, now let's get into all of the deets on how to write an article!
Step Zero: Thriving
The reason why I can say so much about how nice it is to snuggle with dogs, is because I have spent a lot of time in my life snuggling with dogs. I have taken naps with dogs, pet dogs, scratched dogs while they stretched and wagged and I have given them a big sniff and they looked over and licked my face, I have pretty much become a real expert in what it's like to make dogs feel happy, relaxed, and good. And so, when I'm writing an article about zoophilia, it's no surprise I have plenty of anecdotes to draw on.
There are a lot of other ways to thrive too, besides snuggling with dogs. Maybe you're a real bird zoo, and you find that reading fiction books that have bird main characters gets you to be your best self. You read from these books and then you feel embodied as your truest being, someone who is ready to speak about what being a bird is like.
Maybe you just know that you're a wolf, and being in the forest and not over-analyzing things, just being there and having wolf instincts, is where you are your best self.
Maybe you're gay, attracted to the same sex, and you just have a lot to say about how being gay and being zoo seem to have a lot in common, and you want to have a platform to express a lot of words about that idea.
I think that the best writing comes from a genuine place. Even if it's not worded like Shakespeare, literally even if you made typos or grammatical errors, I believe that the writing I have appreciated the most in my life came from people who had something that they truly wanted to express. And like, they might not have even made a big deal of it, but they were for real speaking their mind in some way. Whether it was a joke they were telling, whether it was a dark emotional point they wanted to convey, whether it was just something that made them happy once that they wanted to share the story of, I think that emotional resonance is a good place to begin from.
So, when you're looking to tell something to other humans, such as when writing an article for Zooey Dot Pub, I think that your starting place should be something that has been on your mind about zoosexuality. What do you want to tell people? Like I said above, it could be a lot of things As a furry personally, I draw on furry topics a lot, because I find that it's a really interesting intersection of acceptance and bigotry, animal and human, zoo and non-zoo. You might have a lot to say about furries and zoos too, or you might have a different passion! Your article can be whatever zooey thing is on your mind when you're going about your day.
Once you have your idea, it's time for the fun and straightforward process of writing it.
Writing: Destroy Your Illusions
In my life, I have spent a lot of time in forums that are set up for writers who want to be pro authors, but have not sold their first book to a publisher yet. There are a lot of conversations that come up again and again in those spaces: Does the math of my fantasy world's solar system check out? Am I allowed to do the Hero's Journey plot structure but make the protagonist an anti hero? I haven't started writing my first book yet, but how will I negotiate my future book's movie contract with Disney?
But like... I think all of those questions are missing the mark? Those things are probably missing the point of the interaction you have between a writer and a reader. I think that the point of the writer should be "I'm really excited to tell you about this and I'm going to say it in a way that captures your interest," and the point of the reader should be "I'm really interested in what you said and by the time I'm done reading this I will have some points you said that I'm going to want to work into all of my conversations over the next few days."
In my opinion, people new to creative writing can get really lost in the weeds, really easily.
Here are some of the questions that I actually ask myself when I'm sitting down to write an article, that can get the creative juices flowing for me:
What am I excited for more people to know? Like, for example, I happen to know that dogs are very good at communicating, even if they can't speak English usually, and I am delighted by every opportunity that I get to share with an audience how a dog told me they wanted to go pee, how they wanted my food, how they wanted me to stop playing video games and snuggle with them instead, how they wanted me to tell other humans to stop arguing because it's making them uncomfortable, I just love being able to share that aspect of animal personhood with more humans so that those humans can endeavor to listen to the dogs in their own lives. It makes me really excited to get to share that with more bipeds, on the behalf of dogs, and so I look forward to getting that kind of thing into an article that is going to be read by a lot of people.
hat vulgar punk rock song am I going to listen to on repeat while writing this article? What song will help me get into the headspace of this piece? (Or, if you don't like lyrics in your writing music, what ambient track(s) am I going to have on? Or, no music at all is also valid, I do that too a lot!)
What are some of the sentences that I want to end up saying at some point in this article? Even if I don't go into every article with a formal outline, I usually think ahead to one or two of the cool lines that I want to deliver at some point. It gives me something to look forward to, something that I'm writing towards, it's like a treat for myself when I actually get to arrive at the badass line.
What is my hook? What am I going to say right away that's going to make the reader want to pay attention to this article? In this article, I did a big awoo and said hi and did a :3 face, and then jumped right into something that I think others will find relatable (chatting on the internet is certainly an actual passion of mine, it's not disingenuous,) and then connected it to the article's topic before we could get lost in talking about chatrooms apropos of nothing for too long. I think that in any writing, but especially in writing geared for the internet, it's fun to open with something that catches interest.
How will I be the reader's tour guide? If you're guest writing for Zooey Dot Pub, you actually don't have to worry about this, I will jump in as an editor and handle it :3 But, as an advanced writing thing, I do think a lot about the audience. For any given article, some readers will be very familiar with the topic at hand, and other readers will be totally new to it. In either case, it helps to set a roadmap early on for what the article will cover, so that readers know how to follow along, know what to expect. And especially if someone is skimming, it grants them the tools to know what we're probably going to be getting at in a piece. I think reader friendliness is almost always ideal, and so, I want to think about what my "this is what my essay will cover" paragraph is; I want to think about where my paragraph breaks are, and how the topics are neatly identifiable. Again, you don't have to worry about that as a guest writer! At all! I will think about it and have your back I promise!
And finally, one last question I ask myself: Do I enjoy pressing buttons on a keyboard or do I prefer writing letters out on paper or do I want to tap words into my phone for this one?
Basically, I'm really into practical thoughts about how I'm going to get things done in my life, and less into abstract bullshit that won't actually matter to anyone. So when I want to write an article, I'm not pacing back and forth kicking a can around and mulling over whether I'm following Stephen King's writing advice to the letter so that I can make him proud; I'm just writing the article so that it actually exists and others can read it!
If you know how to talk, and if you've been able to read this far into an article, then you can probably get an article done yourself, if you wanted to. I believe in you! You kinda just do it and then it's there!
The Editing Team Then Helps
So, once you've written your article about what it is that you want to say to zoos (or about zoos, or like, we could do an article that was all zooey poetry too that might be fun,) get in touch with Tarro, and they will be very very happy that you've written something. They will bring your article to the editing room, and our team will look it over.
Pretty much every article gets revisions made to it. I personally live and die by the Chicago Manual of Style, if you're super curious about our specific standards for punctuation and sentence structure. So, we might touch up where your apostrophes are, rearrange sentences to communicate your message more clearly, and add in some new sentences that are still communicating your message but just helping it all be more clear to the reader what you're saying.
At Zooey Dot Pub, we do our editing using a website sort of like Google Docs, where anyone who has the url for a document can all edit it together (no account required!) You'll get a chance to look at our changes, and be able to edit it again yourself if you disagree with anything we've changed. We can discuss anything that we disagree about, and probably find something that will work for everyone. We do sometimes reject articles if the fundamental message isn't something that we are comfortable promoting, or if the article states too many things that seem questionable and that our team is not able to verify. But, as far as writing style, we're willing to put in a lot of work to make anyone's article work.
Fame And Glory
Once the article is ready to go, we'll figure out when a good time to publish it will be! At Zooey Dot Pub, we post new articles on Saturdays and Sundays. Once an article is ready, it'll typically be published on the next weekend or the one after. Once in a while we do actually have a longer queue of articles on deck to go out, but, two weeks is a good rule of thumb. It'll go up on the site (if you want to request we take it down later then that's okay we can do that,) we'll promote it on Twitter, Discord, and , and if you're a member of the Discord server then you'll also get a new color for your name (gold!) and be able to see what discussions people are having about your article. Plus you might see some funny troll comments under your article on Twitter, if you're into that; shout out to who makes sure to comment on all of our posts with really confusing videos that I think are supposed to be threats but I don't really understand them.
On your article, you are free to promote your own socials too, the only caveat being that if you make like, a lot of porn, we might not want to link to it just because we are a PG-13 website.
In all seriousness, I think it's fun to get your work out there. We are not the number one website on the entire internet by any quantitative metrics, but we do have an appreciable audience of readers. Plus like, you can send people a link to your article as an Official Source in a debate, which is pretty nice.
Conclusion
Writing is fun and easy! Go do it and then send it to Tarro and get it put on our website! Awoooooooo!
Article written by Alissa Dogchurch (July 2024)
You can contact Tarro at @hereforthezoo on Twitter, or by joining the Zooey Dot Pub Discord and sending them a DM!
Questions comments or concerns? Or, y'know, that last thing we just said? Check out our Discord server! discord.gg/EfVTPh45RE
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