I'm a self taught writer. Actually, does anyone go to any sort of school to learn the creative part of writing, or do they go to learn the technical aspects? I never thought a person could be taught creativity. A screenplay writing course can teach you spacing, formatting and things of that nature, but it can't do anything for your creativity.
I had an art teacher tell me a long time ago, that you learn how to draw by following and understanding a certain set of rules but that you actually become an artist by breaking those same rules. (Does that make sense to anybody?)
Anyway, in my opinion, I believed that the self taught route was the best. Not that it was a conscious decision or anything, that's just the way it turned out.
As a young comic book fan, I absolutely loved the far out stories and concepts that was presented to me on those color splashed pages. I was so inspired that I began drawing my own damn books. This mostly took place in school when I was supposed to be learning things. Drawing paper was never an issue, no, damn that, I had notebook paper!! Every test paper, every note given to us by the school to take home, every single solitary paper surface where a little Puerto Rican kid could draw balloon people wearing masks, was quickly taken over and scrawled on. (For some reason I was somehow civilized enough not to draw all over the text books we were given..still can't figure that one out)
Anyway, that's pretty much the way it went. From elementary school all the way through High School, I drew all over every damn thing. A typical comic book for me was to grab eight to ten pages of loose leaf notebook paper, fold it in half, and there was my book. I drew a cover, interior pages and even did little ads on the inside front and back covers.
By high school of course, the writing was starting to mature, the artwork however was not catching up. So by the time I was in my 20s, I concentrated soley on the written word. But I was still sticking to my primitive guns; I was not using word processors, typewriters or even computers.
My tools were quite simple; I had sprial notebooks and pens. Although I am quite computer savvy now, I just cannot create using a damn computer!! That huge white screen, staring at me, waiting for me to begin something of importance, scowling at me, as if though I were wasting its time...
A Distant Battlefield took about four spiral notebooks to write. I had no problem with that at all. I am comfortable there. I can do a chapter, or a half chapter, lose interest or doodle on an upper corner of a page. It's strictly a comfort level thing and there is of course the obvious connection to my youth.
Any visitor to my apt in Brooklyn would easily testify to the closet in the spare bedroom which is jam packed with notebooks, notepads, finished scripts, story ideas and tons of character sketches; an entire universe in pulp form waiting for me to unleash it on the world.
From there, once I have gone through several drafts and rewrites, I can then take the sprial notebooks to the laptop for the final iteration. Then and only then do I sit in front of the computer and put some work in.
It's probabaly not unusual. I doubt I'm the only writer who feels this way, and I look forward to meeting some of them one day. We will compare notes, swap stories, talk about technique and creativity and other sorts of stuff.
I'll bring my spiral notebooks and my balloon people.
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Hey George!!!! Great post!!!! I can definitely relate!!!! My sister and I used to write stories also when we were little and we used to fold over the notebook paper to make covers too!!!! Our father was a big comic book collector and had a room full of comic books from floor to ceiling (some of them were Playboy magazines)!
ReplyDeleteWhen we got into the junior high years, we started to draw stories in notebooks and read them to each other. They were usually stories about each other and our imaginary 3 twin sisters that we each had, which represented the 4 parts of our personalities (the sexy one, the mean one, the smart one, and the balanced or "regular" one, as we liked to call it).
It's funny that you mentioned putting ads in your books because we used to have one of the characters in our books watch TV and then draw out a whole entire music video in the book, kind of like the reader was zooming in on the TV screen and watching the video with the character (I distinctly remember TLC's "Ain't Too Proud To Beg" in one of my sister's books)!!!!
Once we got older though, my sister stopped writing and I got more into poetry and fashion design. I was already drawing pictures of people on the side for money and I would sell them in school because me and my siblings didn't have a lot of money for lunch and I was too embarrassed to say that I had reduced lunch. I used to charge my friends 25 cents for random regular pictures that I'd draw in class and custom "portraits" were 50 cents (along with the 25 cent packs of Now and Laters and other cheap candies that I would purchase in the morning, before school at the deli and then flip it for a profit throughout the day). I used this money for more inventory and to get something to eat at the snack line since I didn't want to be seen at the lunch line.
I think that it is really interesting how we can look back on our childhood ways and the things that we did and start to see the connections and how those experiences have shaped us into who we are today. It is a great thing when there is something that you have a passion for and you can do what you love for a living. Great post, George!!!!