You know that cozy fall feeling?
Hot chocolate, rustling leaves, pumpkins on porches, short cool days, and big yellow moons. The kind of Halloween that smells like candy and damp costumes. Not the haunted house kind, but the laugh-with-your-friends-in-the-dark kind. Scary, but only in a “cartoon Frankenstein and Linus waiting for the Great Pumpkin” kind of way.
That was the vibe I was chasing one afternoon while brainstorming a fall zine collection—somewhere between kid nostalgia and creative mischief. I pictured storytellers as the playful cartoon witches of my childhood: always brewing something wild and wonderful. Witches have familiars, of course—usually cats. But I wasn’t sure “witch” was the right word for every reader. So I kept the cat… and made it weirder.
What if storytellers had gremlins?
Not the horror-movie kind. I mean the invisible creative chaos agents.
The ones who:
- Knock over your drink the second you print a fresh zine cover.
- Replace your carefully written “wear” with “where,” and let spellcheck approve it.
- Show up only when you’ve got a deadline and think, “This won’t take long.”
Last week, I sat down to write a quick email. Fifteen minutes, I said. Easy.
Within seconds—no exaggeration—my computer opened multiple browser tabs, flipped through system settings, and entered some tech-seance I couldn’t escape. My hands weren’t even on the keyboard. It was as if the gremlin knew I’d gotten too confident.
Three hours later: email still unsent. Gremlin? Satisfied.
I used to think this chaos meant something was wrong. That I needed to get better at planning, or focus, or systems. But lately I’ve been wondering: what if this is just part of it? What if the gremlin isn’t the enemy? It’s not sabotage, just a little…disorder.
Creative disorder.
It teaches me to let go of perfection. To stop expecting tidy outcomes. When I stop expecting the straight line, I don’t panic when I end up somewhere unexpected. Sure, frustration still visits more often than I’d like—but changing my mantra from “Why is this happening?!” to “Ah, the gremlin’s back” helps.
That’s the idea behind the Story-Seeker’s Gremlin—a little sticker and zine concept I started playing with this summer. It’s on the back burner for now, because a better idea showed up (Tales of the Woodland Watchers—a series of fall creatures with spooky stories to tell). But honestly, I wouldn’t have met the Woodland Watchers if the gremlin hadn’t dragged me down a side trail, chasing cats and mischief and moonlight.
So here’s to the creative side trails.
To the chaos that reroutes you.
To the mischievous spirit of making things, even when the printer jams.
And to whatever creature is hiding in my keyboard:
I see you. Please give me back my bookmarks.
