Category Archives: On the Creative Life

On Creativity, On Illustration, On Integrating Word and Image, On the Creative Life, On the Writing Life, On Writing

Being Both

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Who am I? A writer or an illustrator? Which? Both?

Yikes.

For years I drove myself insane with that question. Sometimes quite theatrically. “Is there a name for somebody who isn’t just an artist and isn’t just a writer but is something that doesn’t really have a name? How do I tell people what I ‘do’? What am I?”

Many a 2 a.m. distress session there. Until a friend clarified things.

He said, “Your nouns are fighting each other: artist vs. writer. If you used verbs instead—I’m painting or I’m writing—then it’s just a question of time allocation.”

Duh!

For more on leading a double life, click here.

On Creativity, On the Creative Life, On the Writing Life

Three Systems

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Daybook drawing: Peppers

We writer-artists—those in the arts in general—have interesting stuff happening in our brains. Which is why we can do the cool stuff we do…and why we can’t speak coherently when, in the middle of a paragraph or a painting, we have to pick up the phone.

And why we’re so often late bloomers. Most people have to learn only one system—the culture they were born into—but an artist must learn two: the culture they were born into, and their own idiosyncratic brain/psyche. They must then, on their own, invent a third: a system which, like a bilingual ambassador or a car’s transmission (choose your metaphor), mediates between the first two.

No wonder it takes a while to sort it out. If you’re in a creative calling, or working your way into one, be patient with yourself. You’re inventing a new world.

For more on creative process, click here.