Finding the joy in writing with ZK Hardy
Writers in conversation
It was back in April 2024 that I had a conversation with
about adventures in publishing. At the time I wanted to turn it into a series of sorts, yet here we are, January 2025, and I’m only just getting around to a sequel.Here’s that first chat with T K Hall:
So, time for a new chat. As before, this is really an opportunity to poke at another writer’s process and get into the weird little details that we each obsess over.
is the brain behind the newly redesigned . ZK’s method borrows from television, creating several ‘pilots’ that readers can then vote upon. Whichever pilot episode wins then becomes a series. How fascinating, I thought. Let’s have a conversation.ZK Hardy grew up in central Massachusetts and went to the University of Massachusetts Amherst where they studied creative writing and computer science. Currently, they live in Southern Wisconsin where they work in the video game industry. When not writing, you can find them programming or trying to stop their cats from eating out of the sink (with minimal success). You can find their previous work at Fiction on the Web and After Happy Hour.
Simon K Jones: Hi ZK. You’ve had a busy end to 2024, gearing up for the launch of your new serial. What’s that involved? Where’s the bulk of the effort at this point: on the writing of the serial itself, or all the preparatory work around publishing it on your Substack?
ZK Hardy: Hey Simon! I’ve had a very busy end of the year. Most of the work so far has been focused on the serial, but that’s partly because I went through to try and identify (as much as I could, anyway) all of the places that I needed to update to execute the rebrand with as little conscious thought as possible. I use Todoist to manage all of my tasks, so when I first thought about doing a rebrand, I went through and tried to identify all the places I’d need to update to make it work seamlessly. Have you ever considered doing a rebrand? Is it a similar amount of work when you have to launch a new serial?
SKJ: I think I’m in a perpetual cycle of rebranding. I started publishing my newsletter mid-2021, without having much of an idea of how to do it. I’d been writing serial fiction since 2014, but had always published on Wattpad. Moving to Substack was an effort to exert a bit more control over my writing career. Wattpad did a lot of the heavy lifting in terms of presentation, so I had to figure out a lot of stuff along the way.
There’s two aspects of it, when it comes to the Subtack. One is more traditional rebranding, in terms of colours, fonts, logos, images and so on. Then the other side is more UX – trying to figure out how to make a multi-year, ongoing serial approachable for readers, and how best to make use of Substack’s tools.
I’ve had three distinct ‘branding’ phases on the newsletter, I think. The first was when I was figuring stuff out. I had a very clean, graphic sort of look to everything, which was riffing on my original cover for Tales from the Triverse:
That was quite cool in its own way, but it was rather cold and dry, probably a bit too abstract. I was going for that sort of abstract 1960s/1970s scifi book cover, but it didn’t entirely work.
In 2022 I became obsessed with Midjourney for a time, and went all-in on illustrating the book and the newsletter with AI images. At the start of 2023 I decided to cease all use of generative AI systems, for reasons I outlined here.
I went through a bunch of covers at that time which seemed exciting at the time, but which I now look back on and cringe.
In retrospect, now that I can recognise lazy AI images as a sort of reflex, these all look awful.
Anyway – after that dark period I then went fully hand-drawn, for better or worse. I decided I’d rather have technically inferior art that was 100% made by me, rather than technically fancy but soulless AI stuff.
That led me to this, which has been the foundation of a lot of the branding pieces ever since, from banners and headers to other motif elements:
Point is, though, it’s been a long and winding road, and a series of mistakes one after another that have slowly, painfully led me to where I am currently.
Tell me a bit about your rebranding effort: what’s prompted it? Why now?
ZK: Interesting that your rebranding went through those three phases! I’ve only been following you for the last couple months so I’ve only ever seen the last “hand-drawn” phase, which I love. Honestly, I always thought that all of your illustrations were “professionally” done.
I think there’s been several things that prompted the rebrand to Inkdrift. For one, when I announced that I would be doing a serialized novel in 2025, I’d begun doing something radically different from what I’d been doing before, which I think necessitated a rebrand. Another was recognizing that having something under a “brand” and not my name was a much more common use-case on Substack than the way I was using it previously. The third was a shift of perspective from considering my writing as a potential occupation, and more pursuing it as a hobby.
SKJ: The other thing about branding, which you just reminded me of, is that it can actually be quite useful for writers who are naturally shy, or find self-promotion a bit icky or weird. I’m not a fan of talking about myself, or having a spotlight on me, but ‘Simon K Jones’ is very much an author persona I’ve constructed. It’s a way of having slight separation between me and the work, so that I can talk about it without feeling overly self-conscious.
Without that ‘branding’, whether it’s ‘Simon K Jones’ or ‘Write More’ or anything else, it becomes too personal, too obviously me, and then I get nervous.
ZK: It is absolutely useful to have that separation and establish an “authorial persona” if you will. When I was younger, saying I wanted to write stories was an incredibly vulnerable thing, like I was waiting for someone to give me permission to actually start writing and treating my stories seriously. Once I started considering writing a hobby, I felt like I finally had permission to spend money and time on it without feeling like I had a plus and minus column in the back of my mind, trying to make sure that it would all add up. That little trick allowed me to start treating my Substack more seriously, write more, explore more avenues of self promotion. I talked about this a little in the post where I announced the poll at the end of November.
SKJ: The word ‘professional’, ‘amateur’, ‘hobby’ all carry such loaded meanings, right? They are synonymous with a quality assumption. Professional = high quality. Amateur = low quality. Hobby = not serious. When actually, none of those things are true.
Professional work can be good or bad. We’ve all read terrible books and watched awful movies. An amateur or complete beginner can produce something entirely wonderful. Just because someone is doing something on the side and has no interest in earning a living from it doesn’t mean it can’t be incredible art.
It’s really important for all of us to separate the quality of the output from the chosen route.
ZK: Exactly! In fact, when you’re just starting out, you don’t know the “rules” you’re supposed to follow, so you’re able to walk through walls and make decisions that other (more “experienced”) artists wouldn’t consider. At University, I worked at a Writing Center where I frequently worked with students who spoke English as a second language. Frequently, they would put together some of the most beautiful sentences, simply because they didn’t know those words don’t “typically” go together, like when someone who dislocated their shoulder instead said they “violently misplaced it”.
I also think it’s important to remember that the fun, the joy, is in the doing of the thing, regardless of the quality.
SKJ: An aspect to this is also that you won’t improve as a writer (or in any other field) if you’re not actively doing it. If we shy away from doing something because we’re not good at it, then we’ll never get good at it. Studying is important as well, but ultimately the best way to become a better writer is to write. You can’t wait until you’re the perfect writer, because it’ll never happen.
ZK: There’s a great quote from the radio host Ira Glass about the gap between the taste you have when you start producing creative work and the quality of the creative work you’re producing at the beginning. When I was a kid, I wrote stories on the back of homework assignments, in class when I was bored, pretty much all the time, but I lost that joy as I grew older and started taking creative writing more seriously, as a potential form of employment. Part of the fun of the serial has been in getting to reclaim that joy and remember what made writing fun.
Was “reclaiming the joy” part of your thought process when you started illustrating chapters of Triverse or was it entirely to replace the AI generated images?
SKJ: That was absolutely part of it. There were a bunch of ethical reasons I stopped using AI generated images at the beginning of 2023, but the main reason was that I missed doing my own work. Back in 2022, I thought Midjourney might enhance my work, but it became a crutch. The end result was that I did less drawing myself, and that seemed all kinds of upside-down.
I don’t always get to do my own illustrations, and sometimes have to lean on stock photos. But I’d still rather use a good stock photo, taken by a human who had a point of view on that location and that moment. My illustrations are never going to be as technically impressive as an AI image, but they’re much more me, and I think subscribers and readers appreciate that.
ZK: I’m envious of your illustrations as I have no artistic talent whatsoever (my chapters are going to be illustrated by the wickedly talented Sabina Lewis). Have you considered working with illustrators or is that a part of the process you wouldn’t want to give up?
SKJ: I would absolutely love to work with illustrators. That’s not really been financially viable, although that has now become an option due to the success of the newsletter. If I convert more of my serials into books I think that might be the time to look around for an illustrator to commission. Do it properly.
I’m very jealous of comics writers, who get to work so closely with artists and in such a collaborative fashion. Making a comic is on the wishlist for post-Triverse projects. One day!
ZK: “Do it properly.” Don’t downplay your own work! I love the illustrations that you have, especially the cover. I assume you do them after you’ve written the chapters, but are they incorporated into the timeline for publication? When do you consider whether a chapter requires an illustration or not and when you’re doing an illustration, do you take time off from writing?
SKJ: Any illustrations I manage to squeeze in are done as the last piece of the publication puzzle. The text itself is obviously non-negotiable, and I always get the audio reading done because it’s good for accessibility. The illustration is optional, but if I have time I’ll do something. They’re quite often 30-minute quick scratchy things – I definitely don’t put as much time into them as I do the writing.
If I was clever, I’d build in a longer lead time so that I could do more illustrations. At some point I need to go back through those chapters published in 2022 and rip out all the AI slop and replace it with my own sketches.
ZK: The lead time is really nice, although a pain to maintain. Because I’m working with an illustrator, I have to produce my drafts about two weeks ahead of time, which adds an additional layer of difficulty. But the hardest part, so far, was more because of the way I launched my serial (creating three different first chapters of novels and letting my readers choose). I ended up having to take about two weeks off from any creative writing at all between when the last pilot went out and when the results of the poll were announced. I didn’t want to invest too heavily in any individual story because I wanted to focus my efforts on whatever won the poll.
Have you ever taken any serious time off from creative writing? I tend to find I feel itchy, for lack of a better word, after a couple of days of not working on a story.
SKJ: I go very peculiar if I don’t write regularly. I feel more stressed, and feel like I’ve forgotten something. Like that feeling when you’re not sure if you locked the front door, or turned off the oven. Writing ticks off several boxes for me: I find it incredibly fun, for starters, but it’s also a place I can empty my brain into. A lot of my thoughts on the world, on politics, on the news, on big questions about life, go into my fiction. I don’t tend to debate that stuff directly, and feel ineloquent and ill-informed when I try. But put it into a story, and I can properly explore what’s going on in my brain.
There’s also the immediate act of writing. When I’m in the zone, it blocks out all other thoughts. It’s like playing sport, where for that brief moment of time you don’t think about anything else.
So, I’m very curious about the pilot approach, and using polls and reader feedback to determine what you do next. It’s not something I’ve ever tried. Are you worried about being pulled in a direction you might not enjoy?
ZK: I had that question a lot from family and friends, but I can honestly say that all three pilots were interesting to me. The first one was in the fantasy world I’ve been writing in for years so it was fun to get to explore it in a new era and from a unique character perspective. The second was a completely from scratch world which brought its own unique challenges, but I got to write in a steampunk / Victorian style, which was very fun. And the third (and winner; now the first chapter of Rainbow Station) was something I’d been toying with for years, before finally sitting down to write it. I literally had no vested interest in any of the three stories; I was excited to work on any of the three, and still might circle back to either the fantasy or steampunk story in the future.
My only disappointment in the process was that there was one vote for the steampunk story and it was an accident (my mother-in-law’s cat ended up tapping the iPad at the wrong moment). But that might have been the fault of the story because that one was abnormally difficult for me to write.
SKJ: I wouldn't assume that the cat did that by accident. It’s still waiting to read the story.
Thanks, ZK! Really appreciate your time. I do love hearing about how other writers do their thing.
ZK: Thank you, Simon! I really appreciate getting to chat about this stuff. Looking forward to seeing how you wrap up Triverse!
Meanwhile.
I use Substack’s set of tools to publish this newsletter. For the most part it works very well, but if you’re a reader of Tales from the Triverse or other serialised fiction that exists in newsletter form, I’m sure you’ve bumped into fiddly quirks that you wouldn’t get when reading an ebook.
On Saturday I sent out a Note delving into this a bit more, with some ideas of how to improve the reader experience:
There have been all sorts of interesting responses to that. Hopefully the designers at Substack HQ will catch wind of it. Co-founder
did acknowledge recently that they’re aware of what needs to be done; as always, it’s a matter of priorities.If we all keep shouting about it, and declaring our general love for reading fiction, it can only help.
It’s been really cold here in Norwich. This was my delightful zero degrees parkrun on Saturday:
It was very atmospheric. Makes me want to write a story about something emerging from that fog.
Other bits:
I’m doing a live stream chat with
today at 2pm UK time / 9am EST. In theory we’ll be talking about algorithms, categories and other nerdy things, but we shall see what happens. I think you’ll get an email when it starts, but the easiest way to watch is with the Substack app.In the last week I went past the 7,000 subscriber mark. Thank you, as always, for reading. It really is a dream-come-true scenario that I get to write this thing every week, and talk to all of you.
Right, I’ll sign off there for today. Have a good week, everyone.
 | A guest post by
|
I like the idea of using the branding as a promotional tool when the writer is reluctant to self-promote.
I very much hope this does now become a series, because this was a great chat. I was particularly interested, Simon, in what you said about a "perpetual cycle of rebranding." I'm guilty of wanting everything I put out into the world to be just right, and that can be a real block to creativity. One of the advantages to publishing online is that your work is free to evolve - nothing is set in stone. And I resonate with everything you say, ZK, about rediscovering the enjoyment of writing - it's absolutely crucial, and I'm glad you've found a way that works for you. Thanks again, both, marvellous stuff!