I want to introduce you to my latest full-length perzine: presenting catmothcrow three! I’ve nicknamed this my “moodring” zine and it’s a double-sided issue about big feelings. The a-side is called “blue for contentment / purple for joy” and it’s all about how happiness can be boring, but that’s okay. The b-side is called “pink is for nostalgia / gold for anxiety” and is a response to the movie I Saw the TV Glow.

Starting work on this zine felt like it took forever. I’d been scheming and dreaming and planning the essays in it for over a year, but whenever I tried to craft an outline and start writing it all out, I felt stuck. Today I wanted to share with y’all the different tactics that helped me bust through those mental walls, and a few prompts that helped shape the final form this zine took. Part of writing zines is dealing with writer’s block, but hopefully these tips and ideas will help the block be more of a tiny hurdle you can skip on over, rather than some sort of massive labyrinth that leaves you feeling lost.

(I also recorded this essay as a video! You can watch the full episode on Youtube or Internet Archive, or if you prefer to listen in, you can hear an .mp3 here.)

Idea #1: Revisit an old zine

catmothcrow three got its start as an issue of Pocci, my perzine series from the ’10s. That issue begins: “I am curious about joy… what defines joy and how is it any different than happiness, or comfort?” In the zine, I talked about the trouble with finding pride in being a “sad girl” when you’re feeling pretty happy, and the ways that joy feels like firecrackers and starlight, all fleeting and radiant. I re-read the zine last year, and was struck by how much it still resonated with me; often times, old perzines can feel like they were written by someone else entirely, someone less assured in themselves, less confident. But not only did so much of the writing in that particular issue resonate, but it made me eager to explore my relationship to those feelings now, in my thirties.

If you’ve been writing zines for a while, revisit your first issues. What about them still resonates? Is it time for an updated edition, a part two? Is there a sentence you’re still especially proud of? Write it down, and then write something brand new using those words as a jumping off point. Responding to our own works, revisiting the words that we wrote one–, five-, ten-, twenty-years ago can be a wonderful way to spark the match that gets the creative fires roaring.

Idea #2: Share your journal entries…

Or maybe you’ve never written a perzine before, and are visiting this blog for the inspiration needed to start? In that case, crack open your journal, and create a zine outta the entries.

I think that one of the easiest ways to write a perzine is to grab your diaries and publish them. If Anaïs Nin were still alive today, I bet she’d be a zinester. Sylvia Plath, too. Diaries are the life source for all good perzines, and you can mine your private thoughts for words to share publicly.

As I started piecing together my moodring zine, I struggled to write the a-side, the side that would respond to Pocci and explore my relationship to joy. I pieced together bits and pieces from scribbled notes — fragments of thoughts — but the words just didn’t flow and anytime I sat down to write, I felt drawn to do literally anything else, suckered by intimidation.

What finally got me writing was flipping through my journals. I saw in my daily diaries a clear through line: my life wasn’t full of big, firework moments of showy joy, but a more quiet, everyday contentment. This made the act of writing a compelling perzine a little more daunting — good stories typically have conflict, but my life is pretty dang stable and calm. But then writing about the writer’s block itself actually ended up being the entry I needed into writing about these ideas — the writer’s block became the central conflict and this whole experience made its way into the final zine (how meta!).

I share this story with you now to underline just how important a regular journaling practice can be for making perzines. Always be writing! In the morning, capture what happened yesterday, no matter how dull. Write notes to yourself, motivations, scribbled ideas. Let pen touch paper and just see what words come out, ruminate and ramble on the page. Always be writing — you won’t revisit it all, most of it will just have been in the service of the act, but occasionally there will be gems to mine or revelations that spark entire essays!

Idea #3: …and share old collages, sketches, or bullet journal spreads

You can even put this into practice with your sketchbooks or junk journals. Collaged pages from a bullet journal spread make for great zine backgrounds! For the a-side, I used collages of stickers, doodles, and paint streaks from my current sketchbook as a background for many of the zine spreads. And for the b-side, I dug my old notebooks from highschool outta storage and scanned in all the pages. The sketchy ramblings from my teenage notebooks became the perfect backgrounds for the b-side of the zine, and I let fragments of my highschool poetry peek through the printed text.

Idea #4: Respond to a tv show, movie, album, or book

Around the same time that I was re-reading old issues of Pocci, I saw Jane Schoenbrun’s I Saw the TV Glow. As I say in the zine, that movie cracked me open like a geode. I had never seen a movie capture just how suffocating and alienating it can feel to grow up in the suburbs. For months after seeing it, I crafted responses and love letters to the film in my mind as I biked around Midtown, and I knew that whatever essay I wrote would end up in a zine of mine somehow someday. And so when I landed on the idea of creating a double-sided zine about moods, my I Saw the TV Glow essay seemed like a natural fit for the more saturnine side. I envisioned it as a few short vignettes amongst many, but when I sat down to write, the words just kept flowing and soon I had an essay that filled one whole half of the zine.

We all have those movies that make us feel seen, books that allow us to fall into their worlds and daydream, our favorite media that wholly consumes us. Writing about your relationship to another artist’s work, whether it be a movie, book, or tv show is a great topic for a perzine.

When is the last time you felt utterly moved by a work of art? What memories does it make you think of? In what ways does the movie or story or song mirror your real life? When you share your personal connection to a movie or show, you not only excavate your own emotions, but you might even make connections with others fans. I’ve noticed at zine fests that perzines can often get passed over, while fanzines are usually my best-sellers; creating a fanzine-perzine hybrid can be a wonderful way to share your work with readers who might otherwise not take a chance on personal storytelling.

A zine that melds fanzine and perzine beautifully is Charlie Fairfield’s Weeping Willow no. 1. This horror themed-zine is achingly honest, warm and inviting, like a comfy 1970s sofa in the living room of a haunted house. In the zine, Charlie shares horror lit recs, their recent reads and watches, and their memories of growing up in a “horror family” — being schooled in the genre by their dad and grandpa. They even have their own essay about I Saw the TV Glow (which, seriously, if you haven’t seen it, go watch it! All of us zinesters rambling about it should let you know just how fucking special this film is.) For me, the highlight of the issue was an essay about their grandfather and ventriloquist puppets and the book How to Sell a Haunted House by Grady Hendrix — candid, funny, charming, and tender.

Another fanzine with big perzine energy that I love is Chloe Soetaert’s Sufjanista. I first met Chloe at a Zine Club meeting dedicated to music, and they shared this zine with the group. In it, they recount how listening to Sufjan Stevens shaped and soundtracked their life as they entered adulthood and found their way in the world. The zine is beautiful and funny and even comes with an “Intro to Sufjan” playlist, which speaking of…

Idea #5: Playlist as pathway

Still feeling stuck? Put together a playlist of songs that capture how you’d like readers of your zine to feel. Use that playlist as a pathway. Respond song-by-song, sharing the memories that each song makes you recollect. You might weave lyrics into your writing, allusions to the tunes that shaped who you are or soundtracked some of the best/worst/most memorable days of your life.

The centerfold of catmothcrow three is just that: a playlist that weaves itself through both sides of the zine, tying them together. Some of the songs are obvious picks (if you’ve seen I Saw the TV Glow, you know why “Anthems of a Seventeen Year Old Girl” is on there twice), while others felt referential in a way that only makes sense to me, but I hope that you catch still the vibe all the same.

And since we’re talking about the centerfold of this issue, I’ve got one more zine to share with you: I Love Rings by Tiana Traffas. The cover art, featuring a scan of Tiana’s hands, inspired me to scan my own for the centerfold. This handwritten zine seems simple enough, featuring images of all the rings in Tiana’s collection, but don’t take that to mean that it’s just some sort of catalog… Tiana also shares the stories about how she acquired each one and that makes this zine so special! I love getting a glimpse at other folks’ lives through the objects that they treasure. And side note, but Tiana has some of the most beautiful handwriting I’ve ever seen.

Idea #6: use a tarot reading as a writing prompt

Alright zinesters, I’ve got one last idea to share with you, and it’s a little bit esoteric. When I was flipping through my old journal entries to build the a-side of the issue, I came across a tarot reading I had done last spring, to celebrate the start of the season and visualize what could come next. The cards helped me think about certain aspects of my past, present, and potential future, and I wrote at length in my journal about the wisdom and reminders that reading brought up for me. I incorporated this journal entry into the issue, and have used tarot in the past as a sort of free-writing exercise. I’ll draw a card and write a few paragraphs spurred by whatever themes it inspires.

So if you’re also a witchy zinester and read the tarot, grab your deck and try making a zine inspired by a reading. Here are prompts for a simple three-card tarot reading that will hopefully give you a lot to think and write about:

Shuffle, cut, draw a card: this is the conflict. This represents something that has been dogging you, keeping you up at night. An anxiety or some sort of inner turmoil or external hurdle. Draw two more: these are two possible paths to take, paths towards resolution, calm. The tarot tells the story of a fool’s journey towards enlightenment; what journey are these cards depicting for you? Let the cards act as a mirror, reflecting back parts of your reality and illuminating previously ignored patterns. What themes are apparent? Do the cards reveal anything you’d like to share?

Obviously, doing a tarot reading to jumpstart the zine-making process isn’t going to be for everyone, but I hope at least a few of these ideas are the push you need to write your next (or first-ever!) perzine. The act of writing anything — be it a zine or a novel or an essay or article — can be so intimidating, but having that finished piece in your hands is a wonderful reward.

If you do end up writing a perzine using any of these prompts or ideas, let me know about it down in the comments; maybe we can make a trade! And if you’d like to check out catmothcrow three, copies of that zine are available in my shop.