Moominpappa as inspiration. Don’t break the chain…
Teaching the ape
Just for fun, I drew James Tate’s “Teaching The Ape To Write Poems,” from his Selected Poems, as a comic.
Writing advice for artists and visual thinkers
Yesterday designer Jessica Hische tweeted, “I have it in my head that I should pursue an MFA in creative writing to be a better writer and find more space for writing in my life. Really, I should find a way to carve out time to focus on writing without paying tens of thousands of dollars to do so.”
Unsolicited, but here’s my advice for visual thinkers (and others) who want to be better writers:
1) Get Lynda Barry’s What It Is and do the exercises every day in a private notebook.
2) Start a blog and write something there every day.
3) Find or start a writer’s group. (I don’t have one, but I’m married to a fantastic writer and editor.)
4) Become a better reader. Read way more than you write.
5) I believe that the creative process translates across disciplines, so the real challenge to a visual artist who wants to write is learning to operate with words the way you do with pictures. (For example, my blackout poems started out as my attempt to write like a collage artist.)
6) Here’s cartoonist James Kochalka talking about creativity, and how if you can draw, you might be able to write, if you can write, you might be able to make music, etc.:
7) I don’t think most academic programs are set up to help creative workers make these kinds of cross-disciplinary transitions. (Some do or did exist: Carnegie Mellon, for example, used to have an information design program that helped designers learn to write and writers learn to design.)
8) One of the reasons I started the list with Lynda Barry is that she speaks of “The Image” (learned from her teacher Marilyn Frasca) — the thing that is alive in the work. If you can learn to work with The Image, it translates to any art form.
9) I should add that I went to an explicitly “interdisciplinary” college, so I was actually exposed to these ideas in an academic setting. (Lynda went to one too, Evergreen, and she is now a “Professor of Interdisciplinary Creativity” at the University of Wisconsin)
10) Cartoonists, because their work demands work from two disciplines (writing/art, poetry/design, words/pictures), are highly instructive when it comes to visual people learning to write, writers learning to make art, etc. (Check out Scott McCloud’s Understanding Comics for more.)
11) Read a lot. Write a lot. Repeat.
Time as a filter
On March 24, 1857, Thoreau journaled about memory, and how the passing of time serves as a filter for what is good or interesting:
If you are describing any occurrence, or a man, make two or more distinct reports at different times. Though you may think you have said all, you will to-morrow remember a whole new class of facts which perhaps interested most of all at the time, but did not present themselves to be reported.
On March 27, three days later, true to the topic, he polished his thoughts on the subject:
I would fain make two reports in my Journal, first the incidents and observations of to-day; and by to-morrow I review the same and record what was omitted before, which will often be the most significant and poetic part. I do not know at first what it is that charms me. The men and things of to-day are wont to lie fairer and truer in to-morrow’s memory.
Above: Thoreau’s drawing of geese in formation, March 28, 1859
Workin’ on it (5 quick thoughts on writing)
Just finished another draft of a book proposal. 5 thoughts, none of them really new:
1) Time is really the magic ingredient for self-editing. Put it in the drawer and walk out the door. Come back later and look with fresh eyes.
2) Print out each draft and edit it by hand.
3) Wait until a new draft to make any structural changes, otherwise you’ll just spend all your time shuffling things around and not writing. (I learned this from The Clockwork Muse.)
4) When I need to make big changes to a draft (less than 10,000 words, anyways), it’s better if I just start with a blank document and just retype everything from the paper copy of the last draft. Cut & paste makes me lazy, and I don’t think about whether things are flowing or not.
5) I knew the score at the age of twelve: “Writing is easy, but it takes a lot of time.” So much time.
Above: a page from Show Your Work!
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