Tag: writing

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 ZaneArt

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!

the wheels on the bus

Hope ZaneGeneral

You might have noticed that I keep posting serials and then being like nvmd actually.

I eternally vascilate between “writing ‘in public’ in the fanfiction way is peak” and “actually I want to disappear into my cave and emerge with a book in 3-4 months; nobody talk to me.

There are two wolves, etc etc except one of these wolves keeps undoing the other wolf’s work.

I am trying so hard to finish something. Literally anything. My bibiliography seems to indicate that I can finish books! So why is it that lately I feel like I can finish exactly nothing? The unpublished words keep stacking, and with it, so does my S T R E S S.

I need to sell books and pay my rent; I resent capitalism and want to be an Artist. It is what it is.

I’m flighty. I start a lot of WIPs. I don’t abandon them, but sometimes it takes me quite a while to circle back around. It’s less writer’s block and more “writer wants to work on everything simultaneously.”

I’ve been working on a mafia-ish thing. You can read part of it here. I have more written than I’ve posted. Hideya and Ruby give me cezhou vibes a little bit (for the girlies* who’ve read QJJ, iykyk)

Anyway, I’ve also been drawing and crocheting a lot lately. I’m trying to make this enormous, gloriously obnoxious Santa blanket.

The Fox and the Rose has also been out of Kindle Unlimited for a hot minute, and I still haven’t put it up wide on other stores yet >.> I realize that looks super goofy and I hope to fix that asap!!

#using the blog as a blog #witness the author’s slow breakdown that hopefully is still kind of cute #pray for me y’all

Glittering

Hope ZaneGeneral

Takes place circa Eiderdown era

“How does it feel being an empty nester?”

Rook sprawls out on their four-poster bed as indolent as a large cat.

“Don’t say that,” Nice chides. His fingers make quick work of his hair. He’d just recently returned from yet another trip. Although the winter had promised no more diplomatic trips, he was called to the city of Vada-el for something he had only told Rook about in vaguest terms.

“Hiding from me?” Rook had asked, half a tease.

“I would only bore you,” Nice had said, before deftly twisting the topic to other things.

Nice regards himself in the mirror, tilting his head to the side to take in the white fishtail braid that begins above his left ear and trails down to his throat. It’s strung through with beautiful baubles, glass beads the size of marbles that contain the vast blueness of the cerulean ocean, as well as crystals set to look like glorious four-pointed stars, bright against a backdrop of snow.

He unravels the braid with his smallest fingers, drawing the colorful pieces from the strands of his hair and setting them in a shallow dish where they plink together like water.

When he’s through, he scritches the tips of his fingers through his hair, waking up and soothing his sore scalp with a sigh. He’s been wearing the ornate Vada-elan hairstyles more and more lately, even getting proficient at doing the simplest of them himself, but he’s still not quite used to it.

Continue reading “Glittering” →

Art-ing and Writing

Hope ZaneWriting

Koreatown is done (?) but I’m having trouble figuring out the cover, so it’s a bit of a work in progress.

I’ve really committed to doing my own covers in recent days, and it’s been frustrating, exciting, and kind of hilarious. I have a perfectionism problem. I’ve made a ridiculous amount of thumbnails and sketches.

On the writing– I went back to Willow and Lira’s story, of all things. I like the chapter I’m working on today. I think I might try to finish it by the end of the day and then maybe get some art up.