Paperless Office? What’s That?
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!)