Playing at asemic writing, and a little detour

Asemic writing is mark-making that looks like writing but isn't. The practice as an art form has been around for centuries, but the term seems to be a more recent coinage, or else it's just obscure. When I searched for it in a couple of dictionaries, they either asked me if I meant "anemic" or said it isn't in the dictionary. But it does have a Wikipedia page, and a few books have been written about it, including Asemic: The Art of Writing, by Peter Schwenger, published in 2019 by the Univ. of Minnesota Press, which I'll be fetching from my local public library this week.

I first encountered the term on Pinterest a year or so ago, when some mixed media art that incorporated the technique came across my feed (sandwiched among cute animal videos—I have got to stop clicking on those), and it's been on my radar ever since. More recently, I stumbled upon a Facebook group, Asemic Writing: The New Post-Literate, which has fed me a steady stream of inspiration and examples. 

So I thought, what better occasion to try my hand at this intriguing art form than as part of my 100-Day Project? I decided to once again use a journal page for this week's work: I would fill the page with a single composition, rather than a collection of mini works, and I would limit how much I would work on it each day to ensure that there would be something more to add the next day. I started by writing my start date in the upper left corner of the page. I then decided that I wanted to include some collage elements to make the page more interesting.

Two things I noticed early on with this one. First, it actually took some restraint to not try to "finish" it each time I sat down to work on it, which allowed ideas to percolate in my mind and be influenced by works that people were posting in the asemic artists' Facebook group. 

The second thing I noticed was how, as I was making my various squiggles, I recalled doing something like this as a kid, before I learned cursive, when wavy lines filled with loops looked just like handwriting to me. It gave me a warm feeling of nostalgia as I remembered spending hours with my childhood friend and frequent drawing companion, Vicki, doodling and drawing together with no particular purpose in mind.

I had a couple of days midweek (days 4 & 5) when I didn't work on it because of other demands on my time and attention. Interestingly, the project emails that I got this week were about being flexible with yourself regarding what it means to "show up" for your project each day. And, indeed, I did feel that I was still working on it because it was on my mind and I was pondering what I wanted to do next.

On Saturday morning,  I took what I thought was my final photo of this week's work, and noted the date at the top right of the page. I wasn't sure whether it was actually done, but I was pretty sure I was done with it. Except I had a slightly nagging feeling that it still needed just a little something more. So instead of noting that it was finished, I just noted that I had stopped.

When I showed it to my husband, who is a writer, editor, and an avid reader, he insisted on looking for words among the squiggles. He pointed them out to me, saying this part looks like the word "anything" (later, he said it looked like "everything"). Then he pointed to the word "Zen," which was a little more plausible (see it in the upper right, by the blue dot?). Perhaps the whole thing is some sort of koan. 

I still wanted to find that "something more" to complete the work, so I picked up a small vintage paperback about photography to look for an image, and there was a black-and-white photo of a man looking at a script, which made me think of the way my husband looked at my squiggles, trying to make sense of something indecipherable. It felt like just the finishing touch it needed, to put that quandary right in the middle of all the asemic nonsense.

I like having this one in my sketch journal, because it feels and looks like a kind of sampler to me. I plan to continue working with asemic writing and collage, but move on to a different substrate now and quit using the journal (probably white watercolor paper). Enough with the brown pages! Plus I want to reclaim it as my visual/junk journal/scrapbook again, in which I paste various things relevant to recent activities, or put stuff in makeshift pockets, with (legible) commentary and observations. I'll show you some of the pages in a separate blog post another day.

A Little Detour, or Other Mini Projects

I was clearing some of the clutter on my desk this week when I came across a clipping I had saved earlier in the year. It was from my local newspaper, reprinted from the Washington Post, titled "Seven easy steps to a more fit 2024," by Gretchen Reynolds.

Keeping the clipping on my desk only to get buried by other detritus didn't seem to be doing me any good, so I thought I would paste each of the tips on separate cards, repurposing some playing cards from incomplete decks in the process. Because if they are in the form of a set of cards, with some splashes of color and a picture, then I'm sure to actually get out there and do the things. Right?

Meanwhile on Etsy . . .

I added my newest zine to my Etsy shop, titled Green: A zine about a color. You can read more about it and see pictures on the listing page. I'll be mailing that and the also-recent Zine of Days and Dragons to two of my returning customers today (Monday), with a couple of other things. I always include a few stickers with orders, and some other little freebies just for fun. Packing up orders and shipping them off is one of my favorite parts of having an Etsy shop, and I'm quite content with my slow pace of business, which allows me to take my time preparing orders—and to do other things, like the 100-Day Project. I used to try harder to promote my shop and follow Etsy's tips and suggestions, but it wasn't any fun and I never really had my heart in it, so I stopped doing it. 

That's all for now. I'll be back next Monday.