zines, scrapbooking, and storytelling.

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.