This is the space for our members to discuss and share their creative projects, ranging from written works to drawings, photography, and even craft projects such as knitting and woodworking. Self promotion is welcome (websites where we can view and/or purchase your work). Please do continue to preface if content is NSFW and be sure to properly spoiler/link such content.
In the mid-to-late aughties—back when I not only wrote fiction but also considered that my sole creative vocation*—I wrote a blog, Washtenaw Flaneurade (2004-13), that started largely as a way to connect with my community at a time when social media was still in its relative infancy (MySpace reigned supreme, etc.). A lark at first, it intensified as I began to grow a social life in Southeast Michigan (something I’d been sorely lacking my first couple of years here) and became almost a part-time job now and again. It wasn’t especially political or anything, mainly movie, book, and show reviews (my social life largely revolved around the local indie music scene in Ann Arbor and sometimes Ypsilanti) and the occasional existential lament or paean, but it was an important part of my identity at a time when I probably did more work to figure out who I was and what I meant than I ever had before (and maybe since).
Eventually, from a fear of repetition and maybe from changes in my circumstances (among other things, I had a better-paying and more stable job that started to fuel a badly-needed sense of security) I decided to hang it up in the early teens. Whatever the reason, I felt like I’d said all I needed to say and anything else would be a retread (this was also around the time I started to feel like my fiction writing was going through the same issue; maybe I shouldn’t have tried writing a second novel**). I partly came to regret this a year later and tried again, first with starting the main blog anew (that lasted maybe half a year) and then a book blog that was in part a reaction to the opening of the new local bookstore (now a somewhat beloved downtown icon) as well as my massive crush on one of the clerks (which longtime mothership commenters may remember from the Savage Love comments). The latter blog was actually a great idea in itself*** but I’d obviously lost the fire (there was a lot going on in my life at the time but I still think that was the fundamental reason).
Ten years later, I’ve been engaged and fulfilled with visual art to a degree I couldn’t have imagined back when I was writing (there were moments here and there when it came close, but I still prefer things now). Sometimes I miss the ritual or practice, but that doesn’t last long and doing these threads is always a nice way to keep my oar in, as it were. While I kept the narrative impulse going through my involvement in webcomics during the late teens, that seems to have seeped into my visual work without the sequential element (something I’ve come to feel very strongly about, especially the more I’ve come to learn about art history and the seemingly infinite precedents for telling stories in a single image).
I’ve gone on before (as I’m sure many of us have) about the impact of social media and its monopolies on artistic access and exposure; the situation’s pretty obnoxious and it doesn’t seem to be getting any better, and will likely get worse given the proximity of bad actors therein to the levers of power (a proximity we all saw catastrophically underscored just yesterday). I still post once or twice a week on Instagram (and still value the connections both old and new that I’ve made there), but Facebook’s now almost a monthly thing (biweekly at most), and I’m getting increasingly uneasy with how dependent a lot of people I know seem to have become on it (there’s a lot of personal stuff here I won’t unpack, which probably feels like a sick joke given what I’ve written already).**** This discomfort intensified with the recent news of Meta’s (renewed) AI-based shenanigans, which needed little further comment even before the even more recent antics of its founder.
The latter reinforced (and certainly further justified) a definite strain of commentarian sentiment I’ve seen both here and elsewhere bemoaning the decline of independent voices or writing online. So many free-standing blogs or websites seem to have fallen into abeyance or vanished outright while Meta or Twitter or whoever dominates the media through which people express themselves (I signed up for Bluesky but am still reserving judgment). Our own site has, of course, been a partial reaction thereto (and it feels like even the mothership’s now trying to make a stab at its own form of resistance), and Bfth, among others, still keeps the form alive in her own blog posts (which I ought to read more often).
Mindful of my backtrack ten years ago, I idly researched platforms like Neocities before I remembered that my own art website is supported by WordPress and could easily fit something like this. The question is what “this” might be, or whether I’m equipped right now (or ever) to handle it. Most of what I have to say I usually say here, and it generally (I’d suggest) isn’t especially useful outside of this specific context. So I have some idea of what I’d like to see done, but not much will or ability to do it. That’s how things stand now, anyway. A lot can change in a little time, and hopefully, sometimes, for the better. Wishing all of y’all the best as always.
The header this week is just titled Cafe Scene (apparently sliced in half by the featured image panel), based on a sketch of a local coffeeshop I did in autumn 2023; I’ve been doing a bit more with Procreate and it was the result of using layers (which I belatedly discovered exist on Sketchbook, too, although I wonder if they added them recently due to competition, as I upgraded to their advanced features recently) and the gel pen function. More on that next week, when hopefully I’ll have had more time to practice.
How’s your work going?
*Given what came later, I thought it weird that I’ve never really been musical, a suspicion I proved by picking up a dirt-cheap practice guitar in the early teens (mainly for research on a novel I planned to write about the local music scene; I figured I should at least know how to hold a guitar, let alone some basic knowledge of chord structure and the like). I felt… nothing.
**Two writing-related projects I want to hit in the next couple of years: (a) transcribe my diary from 2009 (I kept one the entire year, the first and only time that’s ever happened) and (b) fix my second novel, which was… okay, then much less so once I edited it, but I want to make sure of that since my editing threw the chapter counts all out of whack (I’m hoping the structure will look better as a result).
***The idea was to take three novels, one from c. 1740-1914, one from 1914-89, and one from 1989 to the present, and review all three in the same blog post. I was struck at how quickly those categories came to mind and what an interesting comparative statement that might make (without even making any direct comment thereon, just presenting them as-is). I still think it’s a great idea and I’ve brought it up before on the Book Nook (if anyone’s interested in taking it on).
****A week back, I saw the first declaration from a Facebook friend to cut back on usage (in favor of Bluesky) for social and political concerns. It wouldn’t surprise me that others have already done so and just not said, but it wouldn’t surprise me if more people I knew (probably less than I’d like) did so more publicly in the coming weeks and months. I’m still not sure whether or how I’ll be one of them (I’m mostly observing the present blackout, though when it comes to Facebook, that obviously isn’t a massive lift apart from people’s birthdays).