Dear Reader, So, this is it. After months of uncertainty and confusion, we managed to piece together a publication devoted to undergraduate students. Let me tell you, it’s no easy task building a lit magazine from essentially nothing. The literary gods must have been in our favor. At the start of fall semester, Kammi and I decided it was time to resurrect Green Blotter. Again. This poor magazine has been picked up and dropped more often than Tom Cruise’s cultural relevance. We asked around and were finally directed to Betsy Gonzalez, our encouraging and wonderful advisor. Seriously, she’s awesome. Betsy helped us get things rolling, and eventually we assembled a modest crew of literature and art enthusiasts. I’m not sure if any of us realized how much work is involved with publishing a lit magazine. I certainly didn’t. Sure, I knew it would take some time, but I didn’t expect the work to smack me in the face all at once. By March it was agonizingly clear that I’d wasted too much of my free time zoning out and watching Netflix. Oh, Netflix. Forever my greatest downfall. Watching Twin Peaks was fun, but it didn’t prepare me for the inevitable deluge. Reading submissions is the fun part, but there’s so much more to the job than playing God and deciding who is worthy of acceptance. We had to send out rejections, too. It’s difficult and uncomfortable and altogether a bummer. Because, really, who are we to determine what embodies true talent? There was a lot of second-guessing involved, but I’m proud of our final decisions, and I’ll stand by them. Once we got through that struggle, we needed to finalize the layout. That part wasn’t so bad, but then it was time to proofread. And proofread. And then proofread some more. I swear, there had better not be any typos, but if there are, all I can say is, to err is human. From there we were basically finished. We sent it to the printer and prayed it would turn out as great as we imagined. My advice to anyone in this position? Stay organized and don’t procrastinate. I
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