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I have two processes, one for illustrating, the other for writing. They bear little resemblance to one another, except that both use up an awful lot of paper. I do both writing and artwork on my drawing table (pictured), although with writing any comfy chair or sofa will do. Never in bed, and never after 10 pm, when my brain crashes….make that 9 pm.

Illustrating a book is pretty straightforward, bound by a number of design rules. When I start, the drawing table is clear (really!) Once I know what the trim size for the book will be, I decide where to break the text, and what the pictures should be. I send a rough dummy with sketches to my editor. Soon (if I’m lucky) a set of galleys arrives, with the type and available space for pictures neatly laid out by the designer.

Plenty of room to work!

I then proceed to destroy the designer’s hard work by cutting the galleys to pieces. The type gets glued into the dummy, and the measurements for each picture are penciled in. I toil away at improving the pictures in the dummy, decide all the drawings stink, and toil away some more. At this point the table has begun its inevitable return to messiness. When I achieve really, truly final, non-stinky drawings, they go onto a light box and are traced onto watercolor paper. Then I can start painting, but I always ruin three or four sheets of said watercolor paper before I get into the groove. More mess!

Once in the groove, it’s playtime — choosing pretty colors, swishing the brush around. Plus, it seems that painting only uses a small part of the brain, so I can listen to music or old movies - yes, just listen - while I work without getting distracted. A nice bonus.

Writing, on the other hand, is not straightforward. Sometimes it doesn’t go forward at all, never mind straight. So I’m not sure that what I do can really be called a “process.” Chaos might be a better description. But the exact same things have happened with every book I’ve written, so I guess chaos, confusion, acute suffering, and overindulgence in chocolate are my process. It starts with me sitting in my studio and stare at the blank page of a notebook. I get up, roam around, eat chocolate, and sit and stare again. This is known as “working.”  Eventually, an idea comes, usually when I’m weeding or folding laundry, etc. – never when I’m “working.” I start to write, cross things out, write some more, write, cross out, write, cross out…..

About now is when I begin to wonder why I ever thought I was a writer. It feels as though I’m slogging through a swamp, not sure where I am, or how to get out. And if I’m in this state, you can be sure the poor drawing table is also swamped. It’s worst when I’m writing non-fiction, because then there are piles of reference books giving a vertical dimension to the clutter. When the handwritten ms gets to where I’m barely able to read the smudged, jumbled conglomeration I’ve created, I hurry over to the computer and type in all the un-crossed-out text to see if there’s anything resembling a story buried in there. Amazingly, there sometimes is. Joy and celebration! (And then the editing begins!)

Where do I write? Where do I draw? At my desk, of course. And at the kitchen table, on the living room couch, in my bed. In my head. In my dreams.

My husband asked me last week, “how come you can write anyplace except at your desk?”

Kind of true. I brainstorm at my desk. I doodle. Dash off lines that sound brilliant. Scribble all around the images I’m conjuring up. Then I get good and overwhelmed, absolutely perplexed about what to do next, and I get up for coffee, email, to walk the dog – or – when I know I’m good and stuck, if I’m smart that day, just head on out to the YMCA for a swim.

My characters start to talk and my stories open up about half a mile in when my mind and body both know that I know I’m good and stuck for twenty more minutes of my 40 minute commitment to the water. When there’s not a piece or paper nor pencil in sight, my characters chatter and chant, they banter and battle, they interact, meet each other, and tease me. Last week I almost asked the lifeguard if she had a pen and pencil, alternately I thought to get out, go check in my locker for paper and pencil of my own. But the threshold to get to the pool and stay in is so much higher for me than pen and pencil that I just tried my tricks to recall and recapture the sequence and dialogue running its own movie in my mind.

The first of my magic memory tricks is to harness the idea and link it to a finger, just like I’m counting on my fingers, one trigger for each finger. I can also I just keep swimming, paying attention to what stroke I’m doing – much like enticing back a dream by going back to the body position I was in while dreaming, I find that coaxing a story or scene back needs to be grounded to something – the ceiling, the backstroke, the lifeguard’s blue flip flops . . .

Then I go straight home, grab whatever yellow pad or composition book or photocopy paper (preferably 11×17)  is nearby, and get down what I can, trying to not sound so serious that the play will shy away.

Tough to get it all on paper, isn’t it?