Sonya Cheney

Writer. Witch. Creatrix.

favorite books of 2019 mini book.

by Leave a Comment

Last summer, I joined rukristin’s Awesome Ladies Project online community to help on my scrapbooking journey, and one of my favorite projects that I’ve done so far as part of the site is her “Best of…” course. It’s quick and simple to fill out the sheets she provides (although choosing favorites isn’t exactly easy), and when I had my list narrowed down, I went through the paper books I already had from zine making, picked a few pieces I thought coordinated, and started putting together my first mini book.

I decided to go more with favorites than “best”–which there was a great conversation about on the ALP site, actually–because most of the time I’m reading purely for entertainment or to learn something. I don’t always read critically and can sometimes be pretty easily pleased with something even if it’s not objectively “good.” I’m trying to be better about that this year, in fact, by writing more reviews on Goodreads after I finish a book rather than just rating it, which maybe I’ll talk about in a later post.

Anyway, my list turned out as so:

10. Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood by Trevor Noah

9. Sadie by Courtney Summers

8. Keep Going: 10 Ways to Stay Creative in Good Times and Bad by Austin Kleon

7. Like a Mother: A Feminist Journey Through the Science and Culture of Pregnancy by Angela Garbes

6. Inspection by Josh Malerman

5. Stay Sexy & Don’t Get Murdered by Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark

4. The Lady from the Black Lagoon: Hollywood Monsters and the Legacy of Milicent Patrick by Mallory O’Meara

3. Two Can Keep a Secret by Karen M. McManus

2. Doctor Sleep by Stephen King

1. The Girl Next Door by Jack Ketchum

For my first try at anything resembling a mini book, I’m pretty pleased with how it turned out. I like the size, I like the way I included the covers, and I really like the fact that I managed to use a lot of scraps to do it; I didn’t buy anything new for this. Even the yarn on the binding is leftover from an old sock knitting project.

I’m already planning a second mini album, this time with my favorite horror movies of the 2010s. I think that one will be a bit more challenging, mainly because I don’t keep track of the movies I watch quite like I do the books I read, but I think it’ll be fun nonetheless. Plus, it gives me an excuse to use the Halloween paper pack I got last year.

zines, scrapbooking, and storytelling.

by Leave a Comment

For months I’ve been obsessed with scrapbooking. It’s on my radar as a possible creative activity for years, since around the time 30 Days of Lists started, but it’s only recently that I’ve finally begun dipping my wallet toes into it, and as I was working on a mini book of my favorite reads from 2019, I realized part of what I love so much about it–scrapbooking is surprisingly similar to zines. Even digital design is similar in the way you layer, create text blocks, and just pour yourself into it to tell your story. The biggest difference, of course, is that you don’t really publish scrapbooks. At most, we share photos of our works on Instagram or blogs, but there’s no photocopying and distributing like with zines. The act is similar, though, in laying out the pages and telling stories.

I haven’t been writing any zines lately, even though I’ve had endless ideas over the past year. (Thank you, pregnancy.) To be honest, I’m not sure why I’m not working on zines more. I still love the thought of it, and as I’ve been working on daily pages and mini books at my desk, I’ve loved the act of cutting and pasting, but I can’t seem to do it in any way other than personal journaling in a scrapbook way. It’s not a bad thing, but it does make me think about how I’m evolving as a storyteller.

While I am working on my pregnancy essay collection, I can feel a lot of my memoir work becoming more internalized and intimate, journaling more for myself, for my personal scrapbooks, and just for more catharsis than greater publication. I think it’s been good for my storytelling as I dig deeper into myself and feel less inclined to hold myself back. Getting these personal stories out in an uninhibited way feels like it’s allowing me to think more about my fiction again, and I’m so excited about that. I’m even feeling enthusiastic about revising my novel, which is a big deal because revision is my least favorite part of the writing process.

As far as published personal writing goes, my current focus is on my pregnancy collection and my blog. One of my goals this year is to blog once a week, and I’m looking forward to seeing how that goes. I’d like to think this post is a good first step.

twenty-twenty incoming.

by Leave a Comment

Hello there.

It’s been quite the year, hasn’t it? The last few months of my life have been both completely different and entirely the same: I still watch an unhealthy amount of Netflix, but the difference now is that I do it with a small human in my lap most of the time. Of course, at three months old, Finn is even now becoming more independent with each day, spending a little more time by himself playing on the floor while I read or knit. It’s a new routine that we seem to be settling into after months of near-constant contact with one another, and I think it’s going to do us both some good.

I have so much in mind for the coming year, so much that I want to work on and accomplish and focus on. I’m taking Ali Edwards’s One Little Word course for the first time in 2020–with my word already selected–and I’m looking forward to this new way to explore my creativity, create some intention in my life, and to reflect upon as the year progresses. I’m planning on writing a separate blog post about the word I’ve selected in a week or two.

One of my first goals for 2020 is to blog once a week. That’s it, only once a week. I seem to constantly be thinking, “I miss blogging,” and every few months I try to pick it back up, but then it tapers off again, getting lost in the folds of every other thing going on in my life. If I’m being honest, I just haven’t made it a priority like I wish I would, and lately–as in, for the past couple of years–I’ve been observing other people doing things that I want to do and that I know I can do if I just, um, do them. And overall, those things tend to be summed up in “writing.” I just want to write. I want the time and I want the freedom and I want the energy. I have the ideas. It’s getting them on a page, digital or otherwise, that’s always been the challenge for me. I don’t want to be one of those people who has a “great idea for a book” but never writes it. Granted, I wrote one for NaNoWriMo last year, but it’s just sitting in a binder in my office, and I honestly don’t know if I’ll ever do anything with it. Maybe its purpose is only to remind me that I can do it because I already have once, and it’s time for me to move on to my next book project, whatever that may be.

At the start of 2019, I created a Pinterest board to inspire me and remind myself of what my hopes and goals were for the year. I maybe didn’t look at it as often as I should have or would have liked, but it was a good activity for me, and I’m planning on doing another for 2020. I expect many photos related to writing to show up, along with a few other plans I have for the year. And if nothing else, it’s aesthetically pleasing to look back on every once in a while, whether or not accomplish all the goals it represents. (This year, for example, there were a lot of health and fitness photos on my board, but getting pregnant changed those plans up a little bit; it was still nice to look at the different pairs of pretty Adidas shoes, though.) The other thing I’m doing to prepare for the new year is going through the new edition of the Artist of Life workbook. I used it throughout 2019, and pretty consistently up until Finn was born, and it was an indispensible resource for keeping myself aware of my larger goals, the steps to take them each month, and the habits that I wanted to create and maintain. I have so much fun working through the book, thinking over the previous year and taking a look at the one ahead, doing a self audit of my life and my dreams. It feels good to go through it, and it feels even better to do the monthly reviews and see what I accomplished, so I’m enjoying putting the work in to get my new copy ready for 2020.

I know the beginning of the year is a somewhat arbitrary time for a fresh start; I mean, it’s the dead of winter, not an entirely inspirational time. Of course you can start over anytime, any day of the week or year, and you and I should if we find it necessary. But I can’t deny the draw of the “new year” and its promise of possibilities, so I’m going all in with my 2020 preparation, and I can’t wait to see what the next year brings.