Imagine Flourishing

I made you a dang adorable zine to print and color!

Last Sunday morning I woke up to a bunch of notes and a big long report from my editor who’s working on my book with me. I have a whole lot more writing to do, and some big structural changes to tackle, but that’s not what I’ve been thinking about, really. The things that keep replaying on a loop in my head are words like “brilliant,” “hilarious,” “very clever,” “brave,” “wonderfully talented,” and “irreverent.” Throughout the manuscript she made little notes on all the things that made her laugh, and just seeing those “LOL” comments sent the most delightful tingle up my spine. I’ve been clanging around in the dark, feeling so down on myself and my writing for so long, her notes felt like standing in the cloudless-day-sunshine after just the longest dang winter.

Two other things have been going on in the background of my brain while I’ve been thinking about my editor’s feedback:

1) I’ve never gotten more responses to something I’ve written than I did last week, when I shared about learning to draw and trying to stop my negative self-talk. I can’t even tell you how many people reached out to tell me about their own experiences being mean to themselves, too. I can’t stop thinking about it.

2) I’ve been reading the most brilliant, most gay fantasy series: Kalynn Bayron’s This Poison Heart. I don’t want to give anything away because I really think you should read it too, but I do want to tell you about this one thing. Our main character, Briseis, has a — hmm, let’s say — gift with plants. However, she’s been trying to hide it and shove it away for so long that she’s started feeling a lot of shame around it. Briseis meets this cute girl named Marie, who’s also into botany, and they start talking about how “if you have a plant and talk to it like you love it, it’ll grow faster, bigger. But if you keep a plant and talk down to it, insult it, it will wither and die.”

And in this really flirty, but also totally scientific way, Marie says to Briseis that people are like that too. She says, “But imagine telling someone they’re beautiful, magnetic, stunning. Every single day. Imagine how they’d flourish.”

I’m learning that lesson all over again in my own life, and it seems like maybe a lot of y’all are too — so I made you something! I made you something so cute! While I was noodling on all these ideas,

Austin Kleon

wrote about zines, and I thought, “You know, I can draw a little bit now; maybe I’ll make my Cattywampus pals a zine.” And I sure did! It’s called FLOURISH and it’s eight little pages of flowers I drew just for you — with all the love in my heart — that you can use like a tiny coloring book, and also a little reminder to be sweet to yourself.

You can download the zine right here! And here’s an instructional video from Austin Kleon on how to fold it after you print it out. I’m rooting for you to flourish, every single day.

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