Zine-ing

As a self published author, I thought zines would be a good way to get my short stories out more quickly than writing a full length book.  Plus it adds a whole new layer of creativity to the project.  Plus it's fun.

But there is a dark side to this zine making.  Yes.

I am learning about myself while engaged in this work.  When I told my friend Sage I wanted to try my hand making a zine, she responded by saying that I had the hard part out of the way, because I already had written the stories.

Uh, no actually.  For me, the stories are the easy part.  Stories just sort of tell themselves to me.  It's more like they just happen to me.

The cutting and pasting, now that's hard.  Not kidding-really.  The whole multi media art form thing was very daunting to me.  But I'm getting the hang of it.  And it's very freeing.

I was programmed from an early age, not to deface books.  Not to cut them, or mark them up.  To handle them with care.  My text books in university were only barely touched with a highlighter, if at all.  (Do they still have text books at universities?)

And being a book binder by trade, I am in the business of making books.  So it's very difficult for me to take a pair of scissors even to a magazine.

And collage is all about the layers, right?  But one of my other vocations is that I'm an energy worker/healer type, and in that activity it's all about removing the layers.  So I was baffled by the whole process of collage at first.

When I was a kid I used to write stories and draw all the time.  I got so that I could do very detailed pencil sketches with high lights and shading.  But as I grew into a busy adult, the creative me began shrinking.  And things like writing and artwork began to freak me out.  The less I engaged in those practices the more important they seemed to be, and the less capable I felt myself to be.  By the time I was in my late 20s, I was so wound up with anxiety around artwork, that to do a pencil sketch would take me hours, and then I would leave it unfinished.

That set a precedence, which led to a long string of unfinished stories too.  Then I stopped singing and playing music too.  That whole "not good enough" fear factor just spiraled out into every aspect of my creative life.

Now, many years later, I have reconnected with my creative muse.  I am writing and drawing and singing again, only now my drawings are more like cartoons, and doodles and I'm okay with that, because now they are fun and spontaneous and I actually finish them.

I would much rather have a finished creative scribble, than an unfinished master piece.  And this is why.  Because all of the feeling you're trying to convey in that scribble is actually recorded on the paper.  It is in every way like a vinyl record.  So I know that what I'm trying to demonstrate with a sketch or a doodle is going to communicate itself, even if it's not fine art--and that's what I'm after.

Which brings me back around to collage and zine making.  It's a great process for shining some light into the dusty corners of one's psyche.  And it's a very primal way of expressing creativity which takes me right back to being a kid.

Hey, it's my first zine!  I'm gonna put it on my refrigerator, like the rest of the kid art.

Hearth & Heart is available at Pegana Press.  https://www.peganapress.com/zines.html