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.  :-)

Sharing this Article with Comics Watercolor Artist Jared Cullem

This summer I'm going to try to do more sharing of interesting things I find on the internet about comics, comics techniques, and comics theory.  There is so much out there to learn from!

Today, I'll share an interesting article about comics creator and watercolor artist Jared Cullem which I found on the website la petite palette.

I love how he talks about discovering watercolor as a medium for his art after having no interest in it at all:

If you told me it would become my obsession and passion I would have laughed. It gave me the advantage of working mostly on drawing and value before shifting into painting. I ran across French comics that were watercolored and it changed my life forever. I got my first little cotman box and have painted daily, unable to stop since. 

I love the way the details blur as this character slips more into his internal world.

Check the article out here.

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. "

Recently I was able to create the visual script for the remaining 16 or so pages of the fifth chapter of my in-progress graphic memoir.  Thought I'd share a few images.

In this first one you can see the underlying grid I use on all my pages.  It has two layers.  One is the six-panel grid which is the basic design spine for my book.  Of course, I do not follow it on every page, but it is the rhythm that underlies it all.  The other layer you are seeing is grid that breaks the page up into 12 even sections horizontally and vertically, with gutters.  This helps me to divide the pages away from the six-panel grid in an even way (I can easily find halves, quarters, thirds, sixths...).  And it helps guide me in drawing straight lines.

Anyhow, you see me roughly placing the words, which have already been written and edited a bit in a Scrivener document which is words only.   Anything could change at this point, but what I'm aiming for is a sort of movement from the upper left down toward the right.

Next is a different page, but one step further along in the process.  I have drawn in what I think are likely to be the panels. In my book, the narrator's vioce is external to and above the panels (totally cribbed that from Fun Home).

This next one (also a different page) is almost done but not quite.   That middle block of words is being said by a friend to me in the past (roughly 2003 or so), and though she is pictured on the page, she is pictured in 1996, so I don't quite know how to "balloon" that dialogue, or where to point it.  She is depicted in 2003 on the previous page, so maybe it will read clearly, or maybe I can point a tail in that general direction but I'm not sure yet.  I will have to look at the spread to see.

Plus, this is the sort of page that makes my head spin with nerves and my heart jump with joy.  The images in the first and second and start of third tiers are from 1996.  The dialogue is from roughly 2003), and the very last panel is from 2005 or so.    THIS is why comics is, I think, such a miraculous form for memoir!!!!!  You can't do time like that in purely prose (of course, I'm not sure I can coherently do it in comics, but I think it can be done...)

I also like the verbal and visual rhythm of "no" on this page's draft.  :-)

And there you have it... a glimpse into my drafting process.  NONE of this is final art, of course.  I'm just getting the story together and practicing various visual styles as I go.

New MFA Preparing Author-Artists of Graphic Novels and More

An MFA program worth learning more about if you are interested in studying this sort of thing.

The website says: "This is a two-year residential program, launching in fall 2019. Graduates of the program will be prepared to work as author-artists of graphic novels and picture books, professors of illustration, critical writers on popular culture, and curatorial staff in museums, libraries, and auction houses."

Just thought I'd pass it along in case anyone was interested, as it sounds REALLY cool.

St. Francis Statue and Thinking About DeCluttering

In my household, we have a lovely St. Francis carving.  I used it as inspiration for a sketch.

This got me thinking about something I read once (I forget where) about a great strategy for decluttering a house. 

It said something like:  if you have items you keep for sentimental value, but you don't really use them, consider sketching them. 

Why not write details about the item, even a story about it or the people and places associated with it.  What a great way to fill a page in your journal.

Then decide if you want to still keep the object, or if you can donate it to someone who will use it.

Sometimes, giving the items some moments of focused attention, and commemorating them with a sketch, is all it takes to feel like you can let them leave your home!

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!

Low Residency Workshop at SAW

Last week I had the great good fortune to participate in a Low Residency Workshop at SAW--the Sequential Artists Workshop, in Gainesville, Florida.

Here, I sat around the table for a week with comics makers from Florida, Michigan, New York, New Orleans, Kuwait, Australia, North Carolina!  Everyone came with ideas.  Some came with projects in process.  We all brought the goodnesses of our creative spirits and wisdoms to share.

Here's a shot of me sharing the collage comic I'd just finished.  It involves Batman (which you might have guessed).



There is nothing more fun, I'm discovering, than a comics workshop.  Look at all the art on the table!!!  All the art supplies!  Look at all the comic books in the library behind us.

Interested in working in comics, but not sure how or where to start?  Check out SAW's online classes and resources.  Some are free.  Some are pay what you can.  Or consider the next in person weeklong workshop in March or May 2019. 

I'll post some shots of the work I created there when I get things scanned in properly.

Learning from Hatke

Now and then I sit and copy ideas from a graphic novel I admire.

And I really admire the work of Ben Hatke.  I recently read Mighty Jack and the Goblin King.    In the course of that story I noticed some images that could inspire some of my own drawings on the memoir I'm working on.

So I copied them, modifying them to look like me (and not so much like the character Jack). 

Continuing my work of copying and modifying... I used a car drawing from the book and transformed it to my station wagon.

South Africa Sketchbook Part Fourteen

Here is another page from my sketchbook on which I recorded a story told to us by our Afrikaans guide.

It captured my imagination to think about how a society, so split by racial violence and injustice, could ever come together in peace.

And how something small, like traffic courtesy, played a big part in it!

This makes me think a lot about the state of things in the USA, with road rage, mass shootings, and our divides over racial and economic and political issues.

Maybe we just need to get out of each other's way now and then and think "I see you.  I honor you."

South Africa Sketchbook Part Thirteen

One of the most magical aspects of having a Zulu guide and a Zulu driver was their wonderful tradition of storytelling.  Some of the stories the shared were myths and folktales.  Others were explanations of how the people and animals in the nation actually live.

One evening we had some down time while the choir rehearsed, and I used that to do a rough sketch of a comic version of my favorite story of the day.   I'm including it not because it's beautiful or even coherent to anyone but me, but as an example of the sort of thing you can put in your sketchbook!  Because, remember, it's for you!  And there are lots of ways to use those pages to remember the different aspects of your life.

Here's the story I was capturing (which I remember so clearly because I drew it).

This is a story about how the wildlife has adapted to life in the giant game reserves which I called "How Lions Use Tarmac to Catch Giraffes."

In the game reserves, the lions become very alert when a storm comes in because this means that they can hunt the giraffes. 

In normal weather, they can't capture giraffes generally, because the giraffes are too big and fast.

But when rain comes, the lions gather the pack and run to find a giraffe. 

Then, as the rain begins, they frighten the giraffe and shift themselves during the chase to drive the giraffe onto one of the hardtop roads of the preserve.

The rain makes these roads slick underneath the giraffe's hooves and the tall, leggy animals begin to slip and slide.  They lose their speed, and sometimes they completely fall to the ground.

This is the change for the lions to pounce and kill their prey.

I thought the lions' use of paved roads as a tool for hunting was pretty interesting!