The other day I was over at Dirty Footprints studio, and I came across a lovely video on using pastels. Dylan and I watched the video several times – he was fascinated, and so of course, next thing we knew, out came all the pastels and some stencils. We didn’t have a circle stencil, unfortunately (next up: a trip to the dollar store!) but we had a few other shapes that Dylan liked just as well. And here is his first pastel piece:

And here is the gorgeous video on playing with pastels from Dirty Footprints Studio:

Collage: Train and Snowman

Stick Figure, made with paper, tape and thread

I think this following picture is an owl or something with wings. He’s sleeping right now, so I’ll have to ask him in the morning when he wakes up.

Collage Creature

Robot Creatures … on our dining room wall

Perfect inspiration. And I noticed she uses two types of pens – fine line and thick line.

I definitely want to give this a try.

Found via Semicolon.

This is the collage she created for a book she’s still working on:

Jennifer Crusie’s Collage for You Again

If you click on the image, it will take you to the large-sized picture on her site. Click on that image, and you can see the details up close. It’s very intricate, and gave me some wonderful ideas and lots of inspiration for  doing my own pre-writing collages.

Reading through her process, it seemed to me to be a very good way to open up yourself to your intuition, dusting off that fossil, as Stephen King put it in On Writing.

Recently I’ve been thinking a lot about writing more intuitively; when you’re plotting and figuring out where you’re going with your novel, intuition can often get left behind, especially if you’re writing suspense or mystery or even fantasy. On the one hand, it’s easier to sit down and write when you have a good idea where you’re going, but on the other hand, too clear an idea where you’re headed can dampen your enthusiasm for getting your story down into words. At least, that’s what I find – I’ve always loved the feeling of writing and discovering my story at the same time. When the discoveries have already been made, methodically by the left-brained me, the writing isn’t nearly as fun.

So the idea of prewriting with collage really intrigued me. Off I went to the art supply store for proper provisions (which is a part of the fun!). I came back with a variety of supports – large foamcore boards, packages of medium-sized illustration board in both white and black, and a nice-sized pad of sturdy cartridge paper.

As I was wondering the aisles, resisting temptation as best as I could (there was a gorgeous box of oil pastels that I really, realistically speaking, didn’t need … and yes, I was very good and didn’t buy it!) I realized I could extend the process further. I would do an overview of the book I’m writing on a large foamcore board, but I would also do smaller collages for each of the major characters, and for specific locations, too.

So now I’m well-armed in the supplies area. Next up is a visit to the dollar store to see what catches my eye, then it’s going to be a day spent with a stack of magazines, letting my inner muse tear out pictures without any censoring from my logical self.

What I’m looking forward to the most? Seeing what surprises come up for me. The novel I’ll be using this technique with is one I’ve carried with me for nearly ten years now. It’s a fun book, but it’s a big book, too. I think in the past, tackling this project has always felt overwhelming – there’s just so much there, so many areas to explore. Now, however, I feel like I’ve found the way to find my way, so to speak.

And that definitely feels good.

More Links

I decided to Google around and see if I could find other authors who also use collages as a prewriting technique. It’s fun to read about each writer’s collage process. I didn’t find very many links, so I thought I’d list the ones I’d found for anyone who’s interested.

Collages with Barbara Hannay

Collaging: A Story in Pictures (Note: pdf file)

Workshop: Creating a Writing Collage

Story Collage (Yvonne Lindsay)

Tycoon’s One Night Revenge

NaNoWriMo: I didn’t reach my 50,000 words on the one hand, but my initial goal was never to do that. It was to simply get myself sitting down and writing. So I must say, I’m looking at my official 32,532 words with great pride.

Here’s what I’ve discovered: for me, the biggest obstacle is the first step of sitting down and opening up my writing software. Once I place my fingers on the keys, the magic happens. I’m not sure why I have such a block about sitting down and just doing it, since I really enjoy the process so much. But one step at a time, right?

Starting tomorrow, I will have a new widget thingie on the sidebar, showing my word count for whichever novel I’ll be working on. I wasn’t able to keep going with the NaNoWriMo novel these past few days because of deadlines, and also because it suddenly seemed to me that I had to change the narrative from third person omniscient to first person, but only for the scenes involving the main protagonist. Who also wants a name change, too. (I’m not too sure about that one.)

NaBloPoMo: I was actually on track with blogging every day in November (despite what the dates on the posts tell you – I personally count a day as that period of time before I sleep and wake up to the next day. Blogging software has a more rigid, machine-driven view of “a day”.) And then I went and forgot to post yesterday!

So I very nearly posted every day here. Not too shabby, I think.

Art Every Day Month for November: I couldn’t keep up. Too many deadlines, and I also discovered that the writing took priority. I only did four pieces of work, and only posted three of them because I truly didn’t like the fourth one. I may do this challenge again, but probably not until the new year.

It’s been a good month. Ive still not had the time to check out all my favourite blogs regularly, but hopefully, because the deadlines are lighter in December, I’ll be able to get back to it. It’s one of the most enjoyable things about blogging, I’ve been discovering.

One of the sweetest things about Dylan is that he insists on seeing everyone out the door when they leave. We all get this special treatment – he’ll race to the front door to give hugs and kisses before you go, and then you can’t forget to wave as you’re walking by the front windows, because he’s planted himself there, waving at you ahead of time.

When Ward takes Dylan out to clay class or for speech therapy, Dylan always insists that not only should Mommy get a kiss from Dylan, she should also get a kiss and a hug from Daddy. To prove his point, he drew this picture the other day:

Mommy and Daddy Kissing

Mandala No. 3

I spent far more time today with my nose buried deep in my work, and the funny thing is, I worked slower and ended up taking far longer than I expected. On the weekend, I had reversed this – I had worked in a focused way, but with lots of fun little breaks, and I ended up getting more work done in less time.

So there’s a lesson for me there!

Dylan’s Day Yesterday

Yesterday, Dylan had a busy day. I had to stay home, of course, since I’ve got these deadlines (you know, the ones that have been coming out of my ears all week?), so it was just Dylan and Daddy. First they went to speech therapy:

Mommy: How did speech therapy go?

Dylan: Good.

Mommy: Did you have fun?

Dylan: Yes. (with a very nice emphasis on the “sss”, I might add)

Mommy: What did you do?

Dylan: I don’t remember.

(Yes, I think he’s trying on teenager-ese for the fun of it.)

But then after speech therapy, he did something fun – he and Daddy only had an hour before his chess lesson, so: “Mommy, I went to Ol’ McDonald’s and I got this!” (flourishing a little metal car which was part of his Happy Meal. Of which, Daddy reports, he ate the fries and nothing else.)

We had a more eloquent report about the chess lesson (which we’re doing with a group of homeschoolers and a private instructor – Dylan’s the youngest there, and we were a little bit hesitant at first because it’s a two-hour class. But it worked and he loves it.)

Mommy: Did you have a good time at chess?

Dylan: It was deee-lightful.

Dylan Draws: People!

He had a lot of fun this morning – he’s discovered that he likes drawing people! Note: he supplied all the titles.

Girl sleeping on a pillow.

Boy with a whistle.

Girl with hair.

But then I thought to myself:

Did I enjoy making this?

Absolutely! I started it on Tuesday, and in my spare moments, would pick a colour and add more blobs or shapes. I really love “painting” with these new gel pens of mine.

And isn’t that the point of AEDM? To have fun being creative?

At this point, my inner me was starting to sound just a tad sappy, but that’s okay. She has a good point. Making this mandala made the deadlines fade. I had fun. It was soothing. Meditative.

And anyway, I’m so through with the self-judgment thing. This post is proof.

Organic blob.