Before I sat down to write this article I looked up “writing for artists” on Amazon. My search came back with dozens of books on basic grammar, technical writing and sentence structure for us language impaired visual artists. This was disappointing. I wanted to find references on learning styles and creativity that focused on cross media creation. I believe that creativity is just problem solving ability. Talent, persistence and encouragement determine the outlet.
Since I was young I have always considered myself a visual artist. I loved crayons, play-doh, scraps of fabric, rolls of newsprint and piles of wet sand. Anything I could make something pretty out of was fair game. But, what about words?
I never considered myself a writer. In fact, English class always required a bit more effort for me than my other classes. (Okay, not as much as say, calculus or neuroanatomy, but I always had to work at it.) Even though I loved to read, I had language arts confidence problems. This was due to some mild dyslexia in elementary school, fear of public speaking and the complete and utter lack of spelling ability.
After a summer of hard work on my mother’s part, I discovered the general difference between some of the peskier letters (like b and d), and I quickly caught up to the rest of my class. But, the effort left a certain resentment of sentences and paragraphs behind. As for the public speaking aspect of English class, I would have sold my little soul for the chance to get out of reading aloud. Perhaps these two are related, or perhaps I was just a bit shy, but there was always that black cloud looming over English class. Today I might have to read a paragraph of Huck Finn aloud to my class. The world might end, I might implode and tomorrow everyone will show up at school wearing “Becky is stupid” t-shirts.
I blame my dad for my lack of spelling ability. He was worse than I was. But, I also credit him with my creative spirit. Who cares if you can spell chorus, chifforobe or fuselage. Can you make one? Even in high school I was constantly getting docked points for spelling. I could remember the rules, but the rules didn’t always apply, and I couldn’t tell if words “looked” wrong on the page or not because, lets face it, there are way to many words in our language for me to visually memorize them all. My teachers always used to tell me, “Look up words you are unsure about.” They also told me to turn in my papers on time. I’m not sure they realized just how many words I can’t spell. I was not going to be able to do both. Fortunately, I came of age just before one of the greatest inventions of the communications age became ubiquitous. Without which I would never have been able to spell ubiquitous. The spell checker had arrived. I was saved.
I think a lot of visual artists struggle with some or all of these things. As far as I am concerned these are all great reasons to enjoy art class way more than English class. But, just because the medium isn’t perfect doesn’t mean you can’t create beautiful things with it. Just because you hated English class doesn’t mean you would be a lousy writer. I had to lose my favorite hobby to realize this.
Something strange happens when your art becomes your work. You feel overwhelmingly grateful that you are able to do what you love to make a living, but you’ve lost a little something too. True, I don’t do diagrams, logos and web pages as what I consider my “personal artwork”, but the creative process is similar. I still did artwork for personal enjoyment, but I needed something different. I needed a new creative outlet.
My rocky relationship with words had already begun to change. In my high school senior english class I won an essay contest. Nothing big, but enough to boost that language arts confidence just enough to get it rolling. It wouldn’t be until graduate school, when drawing was working, that I would try out some creative writing.
I started late at night, while my pen and ink and paintbrushes were sleeping. I didn’t really have a story, I had an idea. I had a grand feeling, an overall concept. If it had been a painting I would have taken a big drafting pencil to a large piece of newsprint. I didn’t have any training, I hadn’t gained my obsession with books on writing yet, so I started with what I titled “story sketches.” I wrote about the characters, the setting, the relationships and the backstories. After that I started writing scenes. It was jumbled, unorganized and completely new and wonderful.
As a visual artist, the hardest part of writing novels is the inability to see it all at once. I can’t stand back and study the piece in whole. A story must be experienced over time and not all at once like a painting. This was my new challenge. This more than anything, more than spelling or grammar, was what made my new hobby difficult. Because of this, I now make huge wall sized sticky note charts as I plot new stories. I might not get anything out of it, but being able to stand back and see all of my story makes me feel good. It looks pretty cool too, you know, visually.
Gradually, writing has become more than a hobby for me. It has become another art. I might not be published, and writing might not pay the bills, but I’m a writer now, just like I’m an artist.
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