Tag: personal

Big Fish, Little Fish: or, getting scared after posting

Hope ZaneWriting

Man, I got scared after posting that last post. Like, for real kind of nauseous scared. Which is so funny, because it’s such an innocuous little post. It’s something I really wanted to share—something I’m always trying to share, the feeling of being inside my stories, loving them, discovering things.

I thought, “I should have posted that to Patreon after all.” Not because I really wanted to monetize it, but because there’s no one there, and so it feels safer. Private, maybe? A little $5 wall to keep the whole internet out. As if there are really that many people who read my little blog!

But I think, after stepping back for a moment, that fear is critical voice saying a version of, “Who do you think you are?” Barbara Sher talks about that, about the nasty voice in the back of our heads, parroting the times people have said that to us, in those words and other words, starting from when we were children.

Who do you think you are?

Be humble.

Why do you think anyone cares?

And that’s maybe the fear, isn’t it? It’s not really that no one cares. It’s that maybe other people will judge me for caring. It says things in tones of, Oh, so you think your work is good? You think it’s serious? You think it deserves to be thought about this carefully, to be spoken about lovingly? You think you’re that serious?

And… I don’t know. Maybe?

But it’s the wrong questions going in the wrong direction, mostly made up of trauma and fear. The right direction is, I think, I love these things. I love my stories; I think they’re good. I hope other people think they’re good, too, but that’s… something else. Outside of this.

I want to be allowed to love things. If I don’t love the things I make, then who will? I want to be able to love them out loud, unapologetically. I want to talk about them in the ways I want to talk about them, and I want that to be okay.

I am reminded of something I wrote a very long time ago now.

I want to love my lover, trust my neighbor, and leave my door unlocked some nights

The existential uh-ohs can’t catch you if you’re flat

Hope ZaneGeneral

I am extremely tired today, like the fully wrung-out, lay flat tired. I had jury duty today, and the process was A Lot. The whole month has been a lot.

I have a new book coming out tomorrow, but book releases have always been quiet affairs for me. I am most excited about my stories while I’m actually writing them, living in them, when everything feels white-hot and vital.

Presenting a book to an audience feels more like showing off a piece of beach glass. Beautiful and worthy, but evidence of where the lightning struck rather than the lightning itself. I hope that doesn’t sound full of myself.

Which is to say that I’ve been living inside other books these days, and those feel vital to me. Lively.

I’ve been cross stitching and crocheting, drawing and looking for inspiration everywhere. I think I am trying to find peace.

I hope you check out the book, and that you like it if you read it. Here is a strange sticker I saw the other day as tribute.

a yellow fire hydrant with a holoraphic sticker on it of a person bending down with the caption "but did you stretch?"

Writing about aftermath

Hope ZaneWriting

I’ve been wanting to sit down and write a real blog post for a while now, but the blog post I thought I would write yesterday is probably different than the one I’ll actually end up writing today, food poisoning and all (ick).

I’m always fighting between the impulse to keep work to myself, where it’s safe and only mine, and the very real, sometimes achingly urgent desire to share it with others.

I’ve been working on a couple of new stories. The one that feels most exciting to me is about running away from home, or maybe just about running.

I was thinking the other day that I often write about the aftermath. The Thing happened, and now you live, to quote Coleman Barks, “in the wake of a new life.” You are stumbling through the wreckage, trying to assemble pieces of yourself.

(And here, a friend reminded me that what is grief but the aftermath of loss?)

Part of the interesting part of writing, to me, is figuring out what that Thing even was. What was the hit that caused the pain? Can you reconstruct the blast by the shape of its crater?

Jisoo feels like that kind of wreckage. Soft and fragile and sharp. Cringing and traumatized, loved and hurting and willing to hurt others.

Or else maybe the hurt is accidental.

I am still looking for the incident that made a hole of this size.

Thank you for everything, grandma.

Hope ZaneGeneral

I spent a lot of time with my family this weekend, and I went to my grandma’s funeral yesterday. I might have something to say about that… later.

I wrote a story about her, and it means a lot to me. I’m not quite sure if I feel like sharing it yet.

I’m kind of negotiating the balance between public and private life.

You probably didn’t know her, but my grandma was named Beverly, and I swear to god there was no one in this world like her. She could have talked the sky green. She was a little bit magic that way, she could talk to anyone about anything, make things possible that weren’t before, just by connection.

My dad is so much like her. He says I am, too.

I’d really like to be. I don’t think I am yet, but maybe I’m a baby bear growing into what it’ll one day be.

I feel like I have some big shoes to fill because the world seems smaller without her.

But all that’s for later. There are things I’d like to do, and be, and become, but today feels like a day for tender-hearted grieving, still. The words are coming slow. I am fully about to go get some McDonald’s about this as part of my campaign to be kind to myself as much as anyone else.

Take care of yourselves out there.