Some Memoir Prompts

Recently I finished a week-long workshop in memoir comics at the Center for Cartoon Studies, taught by Melanie Gillman.   They are an excellent teacher, and I had wonderful classmates, and so I learned a lot during the week.

One of the practices Melanie recommended was creating journal or diary comics every day or as often as possible and putting these on social media.  This keeps you practicing and gets you into self-publishing and hopefully building an audience for your work.

These comics are meant to be completed, start to finish, in 30-50 minutes or so (we had 50 minutes in class and it was amazing what people could do in that time).  For inspiration we looked at (among other things) a web comic called Deep Dark Fears and an anthology called Lies Grown-ups Told Me.

Here's an example of my comic (done in 50 minutes, remember!) for a prompt like "tell me about a lie a grown-up told you that you believed at the time."

For short comics like these, I don't want to spend time thinking up subjects, so it's a case where a writing prompt is really helpful to me.

But to really spark my imagination, I find I can't come up with the prompt myself.  It's best if it coms from outside of me, from something random, like pulling a paper out of a hat.

So where do I find such prompts?  Below are a few sources.  These are all prompts intended for prose, but I don't think it really matters that much in terms of prompting one's thinking.

 I think reshaping them to fit a daily journal comic, something you could do in 50 minutes, is probably most important.  For me, no matter how the prompt is written, I always try to rephrase it:  "Tell me about a time that..."  That helps me.

So a prompt like "How good are you at saying goodbye?" becomes "tell me about a time you said goodbye and felt really good about it (or really bad about it)."   Or "how comfortable are you with lying" becomes "Tell me about a time when it was the right thing to tell a lie."  That sort of thing.

Anyhow, my favorite book of prompts is Natalie Goldberg's Old Friend From Far Away.  I also love her classic book Writing Down the Bones, which has some prompts and also some thoughts about writing.

I also very much enjoy this huge list from the NYT.  It is intended as a list for teachers to use with students, but with a little revision as suggested above, I think it works well for one person.  And it's such a huge list you are bound to find something there to prompt you!

I find two other online collections valuable for inspiration as well: the essays collected at This I Believe and the work done at StoryCorps.  Both of these have huge online archives you can explore for ideas.

Also, if you haven't seen Lynda Barry's book SYLLABUS (also her book What It Is), check those out, as she has some excellent methods for helping you develop your own prompts.

On memoir as a genre, I love Mary Karr's book, The Art of Memoir, and Marion Roach Smith's book, The Memoir Project.  Notably, Marion Roach Smith is strongly against "prompts" and exercises as they distract you from writing your "real" memoir.

I think this is a terrific point.  Doing exercises without a clear intent can be a waste of time and energy.

This is why the idea of a daily comic which you SHARE in some way is so attractive (and perhaps terrifying).  You have a prompt, you have an hour, and you learn to focus and complete quickly and in a way meant for readers.  And then you pop it up on Instagram or Facebook or Twitter or share with family and friends in some other way.   You can find me on Instagram:  @Elizabeth_Trembley .

The best writing book EVER is Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird.  No prompts, but just the best writing book ever.  :-)

Lynda Barry on Keeping a Visual Diary

As part of my summer project of using this blog to help get the word out about wonderful resources on the web, this post includes several of my most favorite things all wrapped up into one!

Lynda Barry
Brain Pickings
Comics
Combining the Verbal and the Visual

Check out this terrific article on Brain Pickings (and sign up to receive their posts and newsletter!!  ALWAYS so good).

Our hearts and minds and spirits are changed by looking and drawing.  Because of that, because of how I think it expands our hearts and minds and spirits, I see it as essential, especially in times of life fraught with evil, violence, targeting. 

Bringing peace and goodness into the world through our own lives is an important act of resistance, I think.

Analysis of the Depiction of Memory in Batman Hush, Part Two

This is a continuation of my analysis of how memory is visually depicted in Batman Hush.  Click here to read part one.

The next example uses the present blending into memory that we saw in the Alfred page above, but introduces the extremely complex notion of memory fragmenting.  We are now, however, prepared to read it smoothly.

The green jade pendant is something the characters are encountering in the now.  But it is triggering Bruce's memory, and so we see it in color, but depicted in the looser watercolor style, as it pulls us into the monochromatic blue world of childhood. 

In addition, this page doesn't use panels in the same way as we've seen them in other memories.  In this case, it sticks with the standard nine-panel grid, even as image spill across gutter, and interlace with "snapshots" of objects in the room.  The speech balloons in the first tier help us understand how to read these as blended across the gutters.

This composition from fragments mimics the fragmentation of traumatic memory, thus preparing us for the most complex depiction of memory yet, which occurs on the very next page.

On the next page, Bruce Wayne observes Harley Quinn steal a pendant from one of his friends, a pendant that belonged to the friend's deceased mother.  And he remembers the death of his own mother.  Simple enough in words.  But the visuals rock such complexity!

I note how the nine-panel grid keeps the fragmentation introduced on the previous page, but in a much more visually complex way.   The watercolor, blue memories, are snaphots, fragments, from Bruce's memory of the murder and robbery of his mother.   Each of these gets only one short wordless panel.  Traumatic memory is preverbal, so this makes a lot of sense!  The white balls on the ends of Harley Quinn's hat meld visually into the pearls stolen from Bruce's mother (especially across the first two panels of the second tier, thus helping us understand some of the visual triggering Bruce is experiencing.  Even her speech balloons in the third panel of the second tier continue that visual string of pearls.  And then the bottom tier allows us to sink with Bruce into the full trauma, the first moment of his aloneness, the murderer gone, only the child left present with the bodies of his parents.  And the color scheme shifts to red for the first time.  Clearly, at this point it does not signal Metropolis (as we know this murder took place in Gotham) but overwhelming rage/trauma.

One final thought:  the red occurs in the memory, but not in the now of the story, because the gutters remain black.  This changes later in the book.

In a later episode, in an encounter with the Joker, Batman begins to remember all of the horror and trauma that the Joker has brought to his city and to individuals whom he (Batman) has loved.  And as he remembers, he becomes more and more enraged.  

At this point, the background color of the now of the story turns from black to red, and we see that red framing the memory sequences.  The memories themselves are pleasant and so remain in the familiar loose watercolor style framed in black.

However, as we see on a later page, when Batman's memories become horrific, they become awash in red, as with the murder memory.  These have no white in them.  

And I also see a red gutter appear, reminding us of the rage Batman hides from Oracle in the now of the story.

One last thing.  There is one (and I think only one) point in the story where Batman envisions a future scene which he fears.  It is depicted in a style and color that does not appear on any other page in the 300+ page book. 

Mostly hatched, with a little wash, it has a line quality and color reminiscent to me of a ballpoint pen.  Unlike the looseness of the watercolor used to depict memory, this uses a looseness that is like a "sketch," something that is in the making, but not come to fruition yet.  Perfect visual match, I thought, for a speculation about the future.

These sorts of interesting things happen over and over in the book.  It really was a great study for me in handling and cueing time and emotion... on top of being a fun Batman story!

Workspace Photo

Workspace photo. 

I see that my birdfeeder is crooked!  Gotta do something about that...

I do actually have a studio space, but it is such a mess from my moving out of my college office post-retirement because I haven’t had the gumption to do a big re-.org and put-away, that I am working here. July. July is “clean up the studio” month.

Sharing: An Article About An Artist's Paintings of D-Day

This summer I am trying to share more of the amazing material I find on the internet related to comics, comics techniques, and comics theory.  There is so much out there to learn from!

Today I share this article by Dave Philipps, which appeared in the New York Times, about artist and D-Day survivor Guy de Montlaur.  It is also about his art, trauma, and expression.

"One June Early Morning"  source:  the NYT article linked above

This is not exactly about comics, but it is another interesting example of an artist who experienced war, could not speak about it, but could paint it.   I continue to find work about the pre-verbal nature of trauma and the verbal/visual nature of people's ability to express the "unspeakable," just fascinating.

Also, this article mentions a John Huston documentary I never knew about. 

Memoir: How to Visually Depict Terror

As I continue work on my graphic memoir (trigger warning:  it includes a scene in which I find a dead body), I'm thinking about how I can use different visual styles, maybe even different art tools, to depict the disintegration of my normal mental state into terror as I realized I was in a life-threatening situation.

That got me thinking about how much I've learned about how trauma is processed preverbally and wondering if I could recreate the finding of the dead body scene with no words at all. 

Anyhow, I had out the pens and paints, so I decided to draw it all again (for what, the 200th time??).  I did not relook at anything I've drawn before, but of course, I remember much of what I've already drawn.  So some of these images might look familiar if you've read this blog much before.

Anyhow this was just for fun, messing around to see what I could learn by doing it.  There's nothing better than playing with art supplies and seeing what other parts of your brain they might open up!

In Honor of Pride, My 2018 Pride Comic

 Last year I posted about how I sketched for hours during my local pride event, then turned those sketches into a commemorative comic.  It was distributed through our local LGBTQ resource center throughout the year.

I won't be home for Pride this year, so I thought I'd post this PDF of last year's comic as my part of the celebration.

What if All Our Stories Disappeared?

I ran across this fascinating article in Lit Hub, by Alexis Wright...

"Stories have a problem. Writers are not keeping up with what is happening in the world to help us understand what in hell is going on, but one of the major threats for writers and thinkers whose ideas and work disregard the barriers is censorship of the truth."

Paula Schmidt, from pexels.com

"While thinking about this huge subject of silencing, the muting of voices, and bullying tactics used to oppress, humiliate, manipulate, create fear and exclude, I thought about how to tell this story about censorship in another way—by visualizing an extreme situation where the world was stopped from telling stories. "

"Eliza" by Tommi Parrish

I love the look of Tommi Parrish's work.

When you read the whole thing, watch the lawn mower.  What goes on outside this room... why is it included?  So much here!

I hope you'll enjoy "Eliza" which appeared in The Believer as much as I did.  So much to study!

Sketching a Bobblehead Batman

I have a Bobblehead Batman on my desk, right near my computer screen.  I really can't do anything on my computer without looking at him.

He reminds me to be fierce, undaunted, and work for justice, no matter what "the authorities" think. 

He looks better than this!  My proportions got a little off.

Still it was fun for me to work on the shadow shapes, something I don't think about often enough, and which really do help make a sketch come alive!

Real Life on Valentine's Day

A little sketch I did around Valentine's Day last year.  The hilarious card, the water bottle, the coffee pods, the sticky notes, the family photo, the dog brush, the cleaning solution for puppy accidents...

real life.

SketchKon Sketches #9 Learning Life Drawing

Veronica Lawlor did a terrific session basically designed to teach us new ways to approach life drawing.  You can see from the sketches I made during the workshop that it included things like blind contours, non-dominant hand sketches, one-line drawings, and so on.

She emphasized that getting rid of "normal" habits of seeing and drawing would open up our drawing skills.

After some warm-up lessons, we sketched poses.  The models from Dr. Sketchy's were great!

SketchKon Sketches #6 Some Sketchnotes

While at SketchKon 2018, I sketchnoted every session I attended.

Here are a few.

Sketchnoting is a great way to help yourself pay attention, stay focused, and capture elements of a presentation or workshop that have the most meaning for you!

Check out the next few posts for more sketchnotes!

Sketchkon Sketches #5--Lawlor and Reim Workshop #3

Continuing with sketches from the Urban Sketching Boot Camp workshop I did at Sketchkon last November...

We sat in a garden and produced multiple sketches, focusing entirely on mark-making and texture.

This was fascinating and hard work for me.  I am not someone who enjoys making tons of tiny marks.  I know loads of people find it meditative and relaxing, but I always catch myself wanting to get on with the next thing.  There just seems always to be so much more to capture.

One of the last things we did in this workshop was go to the entry of the hotel and draw people.  We were assigned to do five people, full body, in motion, in fifteen minutes.  Thanks to all the practice I've had in Roz Stendahl's classes and in drawing at soccer games, I was able to sketch many more.  Plus, they move so fast.... I don't know how anyone could spend three minutes drawing someone in motion!

What a great day!  We were all exhausted and exhilarated at the end. 

If I ever had a chance to do a workshop with either of these teachers again, I would!

More on Walking in the Woods When Frightened

My graphic memoir in progress focuses on something very scary that happened to me while I was walking my dogs in the woods one morning.

So I've been experimenting a lot of the last year or so with how the woods look to me normally, versus how they looked when I was terrified.

The classic example of this, in my mind, is the scene from Disney's Snow White when she flees the murderer through the forest.

I didn't experience the trees, the woods, as my enemy in this way.  I experienced them more as the container of evil.

Anyhow, I don't know how I'm ultimately going to depict this, but I thought I'd share a sketch or two in the next few weeks of me working these ideas out.

In Honor of American Thanksgiving, Let's Draw at Taco Bell!

A terrific post from The New Yorker about drawing in public.  Live subjects.  And at Taco Bell.

Go To Dinner, Get a Zine...

When I attended a low residency comics workshop earlier this month at SAW (the Sequential Artists Workshop in Gainesville, Florida), I got to go to dinner with Tom Hart, who runs SAW, my fellow comics memoirist, Jesse, and my spouse.

Shop talk ensued.   I told the others a story about something that had happened to me while researching my story.

At the end of the conversation, Tom said something to me like "THIS conversation, the way it just happened, should go in your comic."

I needed a topic for an 8-page mini-comic challenge that I and another artist had given to ourselves, so I grabbed at this.

For the next two days, I sketched, scripted, inked, colored, printed, folded, and stapled (all in between lectures and other workshop assignments).  I did all the work on my iPad Pro in Procreate.

The result held together very nicely, I think.

Not sure if it works entirely as a stand alone zine (since it offers no explanation of the blackout or of "finding the body"), but I really like it as a discreet episode!  It has potential to fit right into the longer work!

Seeing Your Thoughts in Your Surroundings

Earlier this month at the comics low residency workshop I took at SAW (the Sequential Artists Workshop in Gainesville, FL), one of the things I worked on was getting more visual metaphor into my memoir sketches.

Warning:  I'm working on a memoir that includes my finding a deceased person in the woods while walking my dogs one day. 

Anyhow, this sketch is one which resulted, and which I liked very much.  I think it will inspire some future work!

Loads of thought exists on the notion that we see in our environments that which we expect to see there.  How we, to an extent, create our own realities in this way.  If we are intent on all the evil that exists in our world for example, it can become all we can see.  We miss the good that also exists.

I know I'm guilty of this.  I"m not sure it's a good thing in real life.

But in art, I think using this to depict a character, that character's thoughts, that character's relationship with her reality, can really open up some interesting possibilities!  It's a little like finding shapes and objects in the clouds--only we also get to draw the clouds.

Sketching in Church: The 150th Anniversary of Grace Episcopal Church

I really like to sketch in church.

I have permission from the priest, fyi, so no worries there.  And I always show my work to any parishoners who ask, so people know I'm not goofing off.  They know that, in fact, I'm probably paying better attention than many others.  My mind can't wander.  I'm capturing the service.

These pages capture my attendance on a Sunday which opened the year-long celebration of the 150th anniversary of the Episcopal Church in Holland, Michigan.    Instead of using a "sketchnote" form, I used more of a "comics" form, with panels and speech bubbles and the like.

All of these were done live, during the events. 

I captured some of my favorite moments from the liturgy.

I captured some details from the reading of the gospel and the sermon.

And after the sermon concluded, some of the special announcements.  And communion.  All are actually really welcome here.

And today, after the service, we all went outside for the dedication and unveiling of a new historical marker commemorating the church in the State of Michigan.

Sketching Holland Pride 2018 Part Three

On Saturday June 23, 2018, I spent the day sketching from life at the Holland, Michigan PRIDE festival.

I hope to use these live sketches as the basis for a comic book of images from the day.

I sketched off and on for about five and a half hours!  I filled sixteen spreads (which I'll share over the next few blog posts).

This is a fun way to commemorate an event and keep a journal.