Prince Nice

Hope ZaneArt

After all this time and all the books I’ve written, Nice is in many ways still the character closest to my heart.

It’s a kind of strange alchemy, I think—what characters we connect with. The things we write, we can write at no other time. It’s something I think about that reminds me to finish my work lately.

The me of today probably couldn’t have written the books about Nice. But the me of back then couldn’t write the things I’m working on now. We can only do the work that’s in front of us.

I’ve heard so much about the writing software, Ellipsus, from a friend that I went out and tried it. I’ve used Scrivener for years, and I am a creature of habit. I want to like Ellipsus, but perhaps it’s just a bit too different for me. I might give it a couple more tries, though.

I’ll be honest, I mostly tried Ellipsus so I could make a really obnoxious writing area for myself.

I’d love to give you more substantial blog posts in the future. For now, I think this is what I’ve got. I’m trying to check in more and not be a stranger.

into the woods

Hope ZaneWriting

It’s funny how people can say such lovely things to me about my writing, and I will still end up feeling so profoundly unsafe.

I don’t know, I think it hurts me to be misunderstood, or misinterpreted. I often feel foolish for caring so much about this one, silly thing. They’re just stories. They’re just for fun, so why are you taking it so seriously?

I don’t know. But the thing that makes me take it so seriously is probably the thing that makes me write so much. I care a lot. I am trying very hard to say true things in order to satisfy myself.

Sometimes I want to run away, when I feel like this. Drag all my little feelers back inside the shell, keep writing, maybe even sending out little messages in glass bottles, but in a way where the return response will never reach me.

That sounds awfully lonely, even to me. I doubt I’d like it very much for very long. I’m sure I’d get lonely.

But some nights I feel alone anyway, so what do we have to say about that?

Longform content vs. the mob

Hope ZaneGeneral

Today I’m looking back at some longform essays I’ve written as blogs on other parts of the internet and thinking that the world—or at least my world—was better when that was the way we primarily communicated before shortform content rotted all of our brains (and here I am @ing myself).

I think the thing that skeeves me out when it comes to writing longform content, which is to say exposing more of my innermost thoughts and feelings than can fit into an extremely cultivated PR-friendly soundbyte, is the fact that the internet is forever and the things we post here never really die. It’s less that I’m afraid I’ll say something offensive and more that I’m afraid my cringe will live on forever, long after I’ve stopped believing whatever it was I’ve said, or that saying it is a good idea.

But you know, as cringy as I find some of the things I’ve posted on the internet two, five, ten years ago, it’s fascinating to see the record of who I’ve been and what I’ve believed so strongly as to write it down and make it public. And often, too, there are little bits of wisdom there that I’ve forgotten, or else I think that past version of me is braver than I am now.

My therapist would point out that if you were to ask that old version of myself, they would say the same thing; it’s easy to glamorize the past and harder to admit that more or less, we are made of the same stuff in perpetuity. Same cringe, same bravery, same heart.

I am cringing already.

But cringe is dead, or something. And it does occur to me at times that no one will really know me if I never let myself be known. Maybe there’s another essay coming sometime soon about how the recent insane-person drama in a fandom I’m involved in has seriously wigged me out and given me a stomachache for the last week, and how I have inexplicably found a new hobby this year and that hobby is “pencils.”

I’m basically always just trying to make interesting work, share other people’s interesting work that I find, and to generally be a force of kindness and goodness in the world. You know, no big deal.

Thoughts about art, writing, and imperfection

Hope ZaneWriting

I took a kind of sabbatical from author spaces and spent a lot of time drawing over the last couple months, while also dealing with my health.

In the meantime, I wrote a lot of the next chapter in Lira and Willow’s story, which then got cut up and edited into about 30k words as of now. This book has been fighting me harder than any book I can remember in recent memory, but I hope it’s all worth it in the end.

I’ve been wanting to do more with my art lately. It’s something I’ve wanted for a while, to be able to integrate it with my writing, to be able to see my characters and worlds come to life. I haven’t felt “ready” or “good enough” for a long time, and in many ways I still don’t!

My breakfast/lunch today!

But I’ve also been having some thoughts about “professionalism” and what it means, and how in some ways, I think it’s what’s led us to where we are, re: gen AI art and the way some people feel like they need to use it, or that it’s more desirable than their own imperfect efforts. And I do believe that human art is good and vital and necessary, despite and maybe because of its imperfections. So I think I will at least try to begin cultivating the visual world of my novels, in whatever way I can.

Maybe it will be a growing experience for both of us!