Why I Make Sh*tty Zines
The Zine-O-Sphere #006: On the benefits of making bad art and singing off-key
I have an envy problem when it comes to art and creativity.
There’s just so much impressive work out there that sometimes, I feel bogged down by the pressure to make something even half as impressive.
It happened to me today while scrolling my Substack feed. There are so many incredible artists and writers and makers here. Most days, I thrive in that headspace and enjoy seeing it all with a smile on my face. Other days, that familiar little green monster returns to my shoulder and says, “Hey, toots! Long time, no see.”
So, to funnel this envy and self-pity into something positive, I decided to take the afternoon to make a shitty zine.
Being an artist-academic is a tough gig. I’m used to holding myself up to ridiculous standards, grading systems, and rubrics. It’s practically been beaten into me. There are days where all I want is for everyone to take one look at me and say “Wow, she’s really good!”
That’s what happens when you’re born with something people consider a “gift.”
For the first half of my life, I was known for my singing voice. Everywhere I went, people told me how beautiful it was. Mostly, adults would go on and on about how much talent they saw in me. Old ladies would come up to me after a church solo, take my hands in theirs, and say “My, my. What a beautiful voice you’ve got there.”
My voice drew people to me—older men, boyish crushes, well-meaning teachers, and cautious frenemies. It all felt like they wanted something from me. It felt like my “gift” was the only thing people saw when they talked to me.
It all out me on the path to some pathological validation seeking. I trained classically with a voice instructor fir six years. I sang in the adult choir at Church. I was in the high school glee club and performed in dozens of local theatre productions. I spent my summers going to weeks-long music camps and singing with forty other teens just as talented as I was. I made it my job to please everyone around me.
And still—I knew there were so many with better voices, from several girls I knew personally, to the all the people on TV. When I did theatre as a teenager, I struggled with this constantly. It appeared as though everyone was infinitely cooler, smarter, and more talented than me. I lost out on parts to girls who were prettier than me, yet, felt honored to have the privilege of singing backstage harmonies. I learned that lesson pretty early—there will always be someone better than you at x, y, and z.
I started to resent it. I started to reject any talent I had outright because I hadn’t earned it. Even then, the talent I seemed to possess only brought me so far. Always an ensemble member, never a lead.
Eventually, I stopped singing. I stopped writing. I stopped doing pretty much anything except studying. I wanted people in my new life—college, my career—to see a brand new side of me. I wanted to read long books and be taken seriously. I learned how easy it was to stop expressing myself. It was startling how many people would take me at my silent word when I stopped speaking up.
I felt lousy about all of this for years until I made my first zine.
Frankly, it wasn’t very good. There were easily a thousand typos, about a dozen poorly-made collages, and plenty of half-baked thoughts from my nineteen-year-old brain. Like some kind of end-season soup, I threw in everything I had left in my creativity pantry. I scoured my residence hall’s makeshift library for magazines, construction paper, and markers. I borrowed song lyrics and printed out random images to glue on top of each other. It was messy and funky and weird and ugly and unsettling and so many other adjectives I can’t even name just now.
Yet, I loved it. I loved the process of making it—of spending four months writing, drawing, cutting, pasting, and creating something. I loved that I loved something I wasn’t very good at. I realized how liberating it is to make a crappy art piece or write a shitty poem. There is something thrilling about being mediocre and having no concrete artistic talent, degree, or skillset in a particular field.
All the work I did for my voice—my natural-born talent—never felt like that. I never took ownership over it because I never had to fight for it. I rarely struggled to hit high notes. Singing harmony came as easy to me as breathing. Still, it belonged to the rest of the world, not to me. It was for everyone else’s benefit.
But zines—zines were for me.
That’s when I realized it. I needed to reclaim creativity. I needed to make something for my own self first. See, that’s where I found true vulnerability and authenticity. I realized those precious qualities are not in held the sought-after praise of elders or the comment sections of Instagram, Substack, or Tumblr.
True artistry is best discovered in one’s willingness to create for their eyes only.
Then, if and when you release it into the world, it may or may not resonate. If it does, gratitude extends tenfold. If it doesn’t, well—at least you made something worthwhile. You made it for you. You made art for art’s sake.
This has been my artistic journey over the last few years. I’ve moved to new cities, joined writing workshops, written bad poetry, and made countless zines, a few of them pretty shitty. I did it all to reclaim my creativity—to express myself in exactly the way I wanted.
Even more incredible, I starting singing again.
I’m not sure I’ll ever sing in public again, though a good friend recently encouraged me to seek that out, however it looks, on my own terms. Maybe I will someday. For now, I sing my favorite songs in the shower. I hum to myself when I do the dishes. I sing at concerts when the artist asks me to. I do it all for myself and those I feel closest to.
In the spirit of this philosophy, here’s a sneak-peak at a silly zine I made about the benefits of singing loudly and off-key. If you want this pictured print copy on the pretty salmon-colored paper and the pretty edges, send me a note/message with your mailing address.
I’ll mail it to you with a beloved stamp and maybe some other stickers or something :)
P.S. While I wouldn’t exactly say my zines are bad (which is subjective), they are definitely imperfect. I am learning to like that. Beyond all talk of improving the more you do something, zines are the best, low stakes medium with which to create your insomnia-fueled, half-baked ideas. I wish more people could take on projects with the idea of making something imperfect. It’s more liberating than you might think!
P.P.S While at a show this past week to see the band Frog, there were a gaggle of incredible ladies beside me singing their asses off—loudly AND off-key. It made me so, so happy.
We’re making a zine!
Are you a member of Gen X (1965-1980) or Gen Z (1997-2012)?
This is an open call to all Gen X’ers and Zoomers here on Substack and beyond. Let’s create a zine about us—our values, our technologies, and our lived experiences. The aim of this zine is to shed light on our similarities, as well as our hang-ups and differences. On what do we disagree? Where do we align? Where can we take pause, reflect, and find common ground?
I open this up to contributions about a variety of things—our music, our pop culture, our technology, our workplace behaviors, our philosophies, and even our political leanings. Please feel free to submit essays, critique, poetry, interviews, oral histories, artwork, and anything else you all feel may be relevant to communicate these ideas.
If interested, please fill out this contact form by next Friday, April 10th at 5pm. Next steps will soon follow!
‘Til Next Time!
Hi zine friends! If anyone has any resources, thoughts, or zines to share with me, please leave ‘em in the comments below. I would love to hear from you :) Happy Zine Making!
Now, if you all will excuse me, I’m going over to my record player and spending the rest of the weekend spinning the four new Weather Station records I just bought, looking exactly like this—
The Zine-O-Sphere is your hub for all things zines, including books, libraries, digital collections, festivals, distros, workshops, and of course, individual zinesters and their incredible work. My hope is that by sharing these resources more widely, more folks will find their way to the wonderful world of zines.
Love your journey towards zines, they really are accessible vessels for anything you throw at them! I also make messy zines, it's the best way to approach them in my mind- a part of their charm!
Wow--a fascinating and relatable story that surprised me! I love this reason for making 'zines. In fact, maybe I should start making them.