How to wrestle words
💰 Gimme $2 so I can try something in Todd’s zine 💰
This week we’re ganging up two questions because, well, you’ll see.
Our first question comes to us from Marcel Pauluk:
What’s all the fuss about zines? Aren’t they relics from the past—like scrolls, printed porn mags, and newspapers? We’ve got all the world’s info (weird stuff included) right at our fingertips now, don’t we?
Last weekend Erika and I biked out to the annual San Francisco Art Book fair, which always seems to happen on the hottest weekend of the year, in the hottest neighborhood in the city, in two buildings that have no ventilation. All that said, it’s a blast, and we’re always excited to go because we find weird shit. The place is wall-to-wall tables of everything ranging from big name art book publishers selling $300 monographs about Czech typographers to art weirdos selling homemade stickers and zines about circumcision reversal. And every year, even though people could’ve stayed in their better-ventilated homes looking at all the world’s info right at their fingertips, thousands of them come out to see if Volume 15 of Circumcision Reversal: Stories of Regret, Part 2, made by some dude named Todd on his dining room table in Daly City, is out.
It was, and I’m now the proud owner of it.
I also purchased a book with photos of cars in swimming pools, and a book of photos of full-size memorial pillows, which people use to comfort themselves after a loved one dies. Which took me on a whole journey that started with “what the actual fuck” and ended with me feeling a deep connection to these people and how they were negotiating mourning and loneliness.
Based on all this evidence, I’d have to argue your point that zines are relics of the past. People are still making them, and they’re still amazing. And they’re still weird. And they run the gamut from hand-made zines snuck on the office copier, or made at a late-night session at Kinko’s (Shut up. It’ll always be Kinko’s.), to stunningly beautiful multi-color perfect bound riso printed zines.
The better question is why. Why—when we’ve got all the world’s info (weird stuff included) at our fingertips—are people still making these things? Why are people still spending their precious time laying out zines, cutting themselves on x-acto knives, changing out riso drums, hand folding thousands of sheets of paper, ka-chunking so many staples (which always manage to be just a little bit too short), leaving their originals on the copier glass for Cathy from HR to find, and then piling them on a table in a badly-ventilated space for people like me to barely glance at it because there’s way too much stuff to look at?
The answer is that they do this because they have to do this. Do I have a vested interest in circumcision reversals? Not really. But I do have a vested interest that someone out there does.
Like you said, we’ve got all the world’s info right there at our fingertips, but everything at our fingertips is increasingly suspicious. Between conspiracy theories and slop-generated content it’s all beginning to leave everyone a little empty. A little unfulfilled. And this isn’t so much an old man yells at cloud moment, as much as an old man yelling at what you’re filling the cloud with, and the price we’re paying for it. Because while we did manage to build a place for everything, we let some very terrible people fill it with a combination of very terrible lies and very boring slop.
In comparison, Todd from Daly City spending a year hunched over his dining room table putting together Volume 15 of Circumcision Reversal: Stories of Regret, Part 2 feels like an act of love wrapped in the ultimate gesture of humanity. Todd has something to tell us. It’s important to him to tell us. He puts in the time. He does the work. He collects all the necessary assets. He assembles. He staples. He trims. He packs. He shows up.
Human beings are held together by each others’ stories, and we crave not just the telling but the hearing, and the togetherness in both those acts, we’re attracted to the evidence of such a thing. Not just the evidence of whatever final container the story might take, we want evidence of the journey it took to get to us. We want to know that Todd did more than ask ChatGPT about circumcisions. We want to know that Todd did the work. Not because we need to hold Todd accountable, but because we want to share in the humanity of Todd’s journey. That’s the real story.
Humans are tactile. We want to hold each others’ stories the same way that a young person, who has no nostalgia for vinyl, will still go out and buy a record even though the music is there at their fingertips. Because a thing we can hold in our hands can be passed on to someone else’s hands, creating a moment that can then be held in our heart. Where things live forever.
Our second question comes to us from Khaver Siddiqi:
I want to start a newsletter for my writing. What advice can you give me?
Find something you love as much as Todd loves circumcision reversal and make it yours.
I cannot tell you how to write because everyone’s brain works a little bit differently, and what works for me may not work for you. Even things that have been long-held “universal truths” are mostly bullshit. I am, however, happy to tell you what works for me, and maybe somewhere in there you’ll find a spark that lights your particular fire.
I write a newsletter because I love to write.
Writing is like wrestling to me. You get in the ring and you fight. And even if the finale is scripted (Publish newsletter.) the moves it takes to there is a fucking ride. You get tossed against the ropes. You get suplexed. There’s always outside interference. (Look what I found on the internet!) About fifteen minutes in you’re regretting everything you’ve ever written, then out of nowhere you come up with a great phrase, you write it down, but it doesn’t fit anywhere yet because you have to get to your opponent to the middle of the ring first, so you write the three sentences that get it there and then BAM! Now the phrase works! Body slam. Your feelings about writing may be different. Your metaphor is most likely different. What’s important is that you love to write.
If you don’t love to write, don’t do it. Writing is a shared experience with a reader, and if you’re not enjoying your side of the experience, your reader isn’t going to enjoy theirs.
But here’s the thing: everybody writes. We write emails all day. We send texts all day. We put words in boxes in various places on the internet all day long (which honestly, we should do less). And most of the time, we do it without too much concern because we’re just passing along quick bits of information to someone. Someone is the most important word in that sentence.
Every week, usually on Wednesday, I go through questions that people have sent in. I choose the question and answer format as a way to both kickstart the writing process, and because it’s important to me to feel like I’m writing to someone. Writing isn’t a theoretical exercise for me. For example, right now I am writing to Khaver. (That’s you!) I’ve never met Khaver. I’ll probably never meet Khaver. But Khaver had a question, and I am going to at least try to answer it. Even if no one else gives a fuck, there’s still the slight possibility that I might say something that’ll help Khaver, and that makes it worth it for me, and hopefully a few other people will find my answer useful as well. Know who you’re writing for.
Never use a five dollar word when a nickel word tells the story just as well. Don’t write to impress people. Write to communicate with them.
A tiresome writer wants to show you how smart they are. A good writer will convince you of how smart you are. Which means a good writer needs to see you. The person they’re writing for. And once you see the person you’re writing for, you can tell them the story you want to tell them. No feedback has ever meant more to me than someone saying “you write like you talk.” Writing is just talking. With your fingers.
Let’s go back to the Wednesday part. I’m a creature of habit. Wednesday afternoon is my newsletter writing day. As much as possible, that afternoon is cleared for me to write. Which means I don’t have to think about newsletter writing on those other days, and I get to do other things. Which I also enjoy. But on Wednesdays I write.
What if you don’t feel like writing on Wednesdays?
On Wednesdays I write.
For me, it’s very important that I do this newsletter on a weekly schedule. That’s the exercise I set out to accomplish. The bus shows up when it’s supposed to show up, or eventually, no one trusts the bus schedule anymore and they start looking for other ways to get where they need to get to. This means that not every newsletter is gonna be a gem, but weirdly I’ve sent out some that I thought were gems that landed with a thud, and some semi-polished turds that really touched people. Or so they told me. And that’s nice.
I’d encourage you to come up with a schedule that works for you. Maybe you’re a weekly person, maybe you’re a monthly person. Maybe you’re one of those insane people who can put out a daily newsletter. God bless ‘em.
But the best advice I can give you is to be yourself. If you’re writing about something you love, and telling that story as you would tell it, that’ll come through. You’ll enjoy doing it, and your readers will enjoy that you’re writing about something you care about, even if it’s something they might not care about. Yet. It’s your love for the topic that pulls people in. I have 15 volumes of Circumcision Reversal at home that prove this point.
See, I told you these two questions went together.
🙋 Got a question for me? Ask it! I’ll try to answer it.
🗞️ If you’re starting a newsletter, don’t use Substack. They’re evil. If you’re already on Substack, Buttondown will migrate you for free and DO ALL THE WORK!
📣 I’ve got two Presenting w/Confidence workshops coming up. They’ll help you get comfortable talking about your work, whether you’re employed or going through the heinous interview process.
🎥 This is how insane people sound when you tell them why A.I. is bad.
📚 If you like how I write, there’s whole books of it!
🥰 No one writes better about fandom than Sacha Judd. You need her newsletter in your life.
📺 When I shared an early version of this newsletter with my friend Steph, she insisted I watch S1 E4 of How to with John Wilson and I am forever scarred. You should watch it and we can heal together.
🍉 Please donate to the Palestinian Children’s Relief Fund.
💰 If you’re enjoying the newsletter, gimme $2.