Turning Your Journal into a Zine: A Beginner's Guide to Self-Publishing Your Pages

What a Zine Is

A zine is a small, self-made publication, usually photocopied, usually folded from ordinary paper, and usually made in a run of a few copies to a few hundred. The word comes from "magazine," but a zine has almost nothing in common with one. There is no editor, no advertiser, and no requirement that it be good.

Zines have been around for about a century in one form or another, from science fiction fan newsletters to punk scene sheets to the quiet, personal booklets that fill zine fairs and library collections today. What they share is a simple premise: you made it, you copied it, and you handed it to someone.

A journal is an unusually good source for a zine. It is already full of writing and images you made for no audience. Turning a few of those pages into something you can hold, fold, and give away is a small act of publishing that asks for very little equipment and no permission.

Why Make One from Your Journal

Most journal pages are never read again, even by the person who wrote them. That is fine. Much of the value of journaling happens in the writing, not the rereading.

But occasionally you write something you would like to keep somewhere other than the middle of a notebook. A run of entries from a particular season. A page of sketches from a trip. A list that turned out to be funnier than you meant it to be. A short piece of writing that came out nearly finished.

A zine gives those pages a second form. It also changes how you see them. Choosing eight pages from a notebook of two hundred is an act of editing, and editing your own journal teaches you what you actually value in it. Many people find that making one zine changes how they journal afterward — not toward performance, but toward noticing which kinds of entries carry weight.

There is also the plain pleasure of making an object. A zine is finished in an afternoon. You can hold it, and it fits in a coat pocket.

The Question of Privacy

Before anything else, settle what you are willing to share. A journal is private by default, and a zine is not. Even a run of five copies leaves your hands once you give it away.

A few ways to think about it:

• Make a zine for yourself first. Nothing requires you to share it. A single copy, folded and kept in the back of your journal, is still a zine.
• Choose from the outer edges of your journal. Observations, lists, sketches, descriptions of places, and small moments tend to be easier to share than entries about relationships or hard feelings.
• Change what needs changing. You can rewrite names, remove dates, cut lines, or blur details. A zine is a new piece made from journal material. It does not need to be a faithful copy.
• Leave out other people's stories. Your journal holds things that belong partly to the people in your life. Their privacy matters as much as yours, and a zine is a poor place to settle anything with anyone.

If you reread a page and feel a small flinch at the thought of a stranger holding it, that is a useful signal. Leave it in the journal.

What You Need

The kit is almost embarrassingly short.

Paper. Ordinary printer paper is the standard. A single sheet of US Letter or A4 folds into an eight-page zine, which is the format most people start with.

Your source pages. The journal itself, plus access to a scanner, a phone camera, or a photocopier.

Scissors or a craft knife. For one cut in the middle of the folded sheet, and for cutting out pieces of journal pages if you are collaging.

A glue stick. For pasting pieces onto a master copy.

A black pen. Fineliners and felt-tip pens photocopy cleanly. Pencil and pale ink tend to disappear.

A photocopier or printer. Library and copy-shop machines work well, and the slightly rough look of a photocopy is part of what makes a zine feel like a zine.

A long-arm stapler is useful if you later make a larger, stapled zine, but the one-sheet format needs none.

Choosing Your Pages

Start by reading back through your journal with a pencil and a stack of small sticky notes. Flag anything that makes you pause: a sentence you like, a page that looks good, an entry with a clear shape.

Do not choose yet. Just mark.

Once you have a few dozen flags, look for a thread. A zine works better with some kind of center, even a loose one. A few possibilities:

• A season. Entries from one autumn, one winter, one difficult spring.
• A place. Pages from a trip, a neighborhood, a walk you take often.
• A subject. Every time you wrote about your grandmother's kitchen, or the bus, or insomnia.
• A form. Only lists. Only one-line entries. Only sketches with captions.
• A question. Pages that keep circling the same thing, without answering it.

The eight-page zine has six interior pages plus a front and back cover. That is not much room, which is a gift. You will have to cut, and cutting is where the zine gets its shape.

Pick more than you need, then remove pages until what remains feels like it belongs together. If one entry is excellent but does not fit the thread, save it for another zine.

Editing Journal Writing for a Reader

Journal writing is written for one reader who already knows everything. A zine has readers who do not.

You do not need to fix this completely. Part of the charm of a journal zine is its private, unexplained quality. But a few small changes help:

• Trim the context only you understand. References to "what happened on Tuesday" or "her again" may need a word or two of explanation, or simply removing.
• Cut the throat-clearing. Journal entries often begin with a few lines of warming up before the real writing starts. Start where the entry starts.
• Keep the voice. Resist the urge to make it sound more polished than it is. The texture of a journal — the half sentences, the crossings-out, the odd tangent — is often the most interesting thing about it.

You can retype the text, hand-copy it onto clean paper, or use the original page directly. Each gives a different feeling. Handwriting photocopied from the original journal looks the most intimate. Retyped text is easier to read and easier to edit.

Folding a One-Sheet Zine

The eight-page, one-sheet zine is the most common format, and once you have folded one, you will remember how.

1. Fold the sheet in half the long way, like a hot dog bun, then unfold it.
2. Fold it in half the short way, then in half again the same way, so the sheet is divided into eight panels when unfolded.
3. Unfold completely. You now have a grid of eight rectangles, four across and two down.
4. Fold the sheet in half the short way again, so it is two panels wide and two panels tall, with the fold on one side.
5. Cut along the long horizontal crease, starting at the folded edge and stopping at the next crease — one panel's width. Unfolded, this leaves a slit through the middle of the sheet. Do not cut all the way across.
6. Unfold, then fold the sheet the long way so the slit is on top.
7. Push the ends toward the center. The slit opens into a diamond, then a cross. Keep pushing until the panels fold flat into a small booklet.

The first time, do this with a blank sheet. Then number the panels in pencil while it is folded — front cover, pages one through six, back cover — and unfold it. You will see that some panels are upside down. That is correct. This numbered sheet becomes your layout guide.

Making the Master Copy

The master is the original you will photocopy. Everything happens here.

Take a clean sheet, fold it the same way, and use your numbered guide to see where each page goes and which way up it sits. Then build each panel:

• Paste in pieces of journal pages. Photocopy or print your chosen pages first, then cut and glue. Do not cut up the journal itself unless you truly want to.
• Write directly onto the panel. Hand-copied text in black pen reproduces well.
• Add small elements. A page number, a doodle, a strip of torn paper, a heading.

Leave a margin of about half an inch around each panel. Copiers often clip the edges, and folds eat a little space.

When the master is done, look at it under a desk lamp. Glue edges and pencil marks sometimes show on copies, which can be part of the look or something you want to clean up. Neither is wrong.

Copying and Assembling

Run one test copy. Fold it. Read it as if you have never seen it. This is where you discover the upside-down page, the sentence cut off at the margin, the image that turned into a black square.

Fix the master, then make your run. Five copies is a perfectly reasonable number. So is fifty. Most people start small and are glad they did.

A few practical notes:

• Adjust the contrast. Light journal pages often need the copier set darker. Collage elements may need it lighter.
• Try colored paper. A pale colored stock changes the whole feel of a zine without any extra work.
• Fold carefully. Crisp folds, pressed with a fingernail or the back of a spoon, make the finished zine look much more deliberate.

Sharing It, or Not

Once you have copies, you get to decide what happens to them.

Some people tuck a zine into letters to friends. Some leave them in little free libraries or on café tables. Some sell or trade them at zine fairs, which exist in many cities and are generally welcoming to first-timers. Some libraries keep zine collections and accept donations.

And some people keep every copy, or make just one. The act of making it was the point.

If you do share, it is worth adding a small note on the back cover — a title, a date, perhaps a first name or a pseudonym. Zines travel in unexpected directions, and a little context helps the next reader.

What You Learn from Making One

Making a zine from your journal tends to show you something about the journal itself. You see which entries hold up and which do not. You notice the subjects you return to without meaning to. You find out what your handwriting looks like reduced and photocopied, and how a sketch you thought was rough reads perfectly well on a small page.

It does not need to change your journaling. The journal stays private, unshaped, and written for no one. The zine is simply a second, small home for a few pages that wanted one.

Start with a single sheet of paper and a handful of entries. Fold it. See what is there.