Super excited to share my new article that was published today at Women on Writing! Check it out. 🥳
3 Exciting Ways Creating Art Enhances Writing
By Melanie Faith
Have you always wanted to try (or get back to) painting, drawing, making videos or music or fiber arts, dancing, sculpting, photographing, making jewelry, making hybrid work, pottery, or another art form but felt like it was out of your reach, you didn’t have enough time or the right skill level? This article is for you! You have great company. Including me.
As a creative writing teacher and author, I didn’t consider myself a visual artist and I didn’t allow myself the time until recently to explore, dabble, and create the other things I really wanted to make.
It took me a lot of years to realize one of the reasons. Art class in sixth grade was required for all students. How I loved noodling around with the supplies and chatting to classmates at our art tables, making jokes and attaching feathers and sticks and other items to our mobile projects, getting charcoal smears on our hands as we tried our hands at drawing of a vase of flowers and then our classmates’ profiles. It was just like elementary-school art, only better, because the lessons were more challenging and covered diverse types of art. Then something unfortunate happened.
Seventh grade art was an invitation-only club. And I didn’t get an invitation to join. I’m pretty sure that’s the point at which I stopped even trying to just make things for the fun of making them. The exclusion of it settled: art-making is for others.
So for years, I carried cameras and photographed all matter of artsy things without calling myself a photographer or trying to get published. I visited museums and student art shows and doodled in margins of journals but never showed anyone. I never talked about it (like I told oodles of people about my writing), and I never took classes. Sometimes, I grabbed scissors and glue and made collages from old magazines that I put on my door to amuse myself, but I never considered just how happy it made me to create these things, just how contented and relaxed I was in the making process, because I didn’t think I was talented at it.
Eventually, I started to take baby steps. I started to share my photography, first with friends and then submitting to magazines. A few years ago I treated myself to a “real” sketchbook where I could stretch out across the page and make bigger marks. I gave myself more space to make, and it enhanced my writing life.
I’d love to encourage you to explore whatever arts appeal to you as well. Don’t wait for permission or until you feel it’s comparable to a famous artist or even to the quality of something you’ve seen a friend do. Begin now. See what you can do. No stakes, no pressure.
Let’s take a look at how practicing an art—any art—can deepen and inspire your writing process.
It boosts play and discovery.
I’ve long been a fan of serial cartoons, one-panel comics, and graphic novels. I love the multitude of options for telling a visual story well. As a young kid, I devoured Cathy, Frank and Ernest, Peanuts, Hägar the Horrible, and Garfield in their daily installments in my parents’ newspapers (and made a scrapbook of them one year), and once I started teaching and graphic novels became part of the high-school curriculum, I discovered afresh the amazing story and character possibilities in comics through Persepolis, Maus, and Scott McCloud’s craft book, Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art. I began doodling a little caricature of my face and my waving hand that I enjoyed adding to cards for friends and my nieces. This year, I finally gave myself a fun new challenge—to write a 3-page comic I called “I Could Have Been Veronica.”
I worked for about a month, from conceiving the story to hand drawing the panels, to revising the story and drafting twice before the third, final, draft. And had the best time! Is it professional? Nope! I’ve got some (okay, many) slanting lines, and I redrew more times than I’d like to admit (here’s looking at you, waving hand that looked gnarled and pair of tap shoes that were a terror to draw in scale), but did that ultimately matter? Not one jot. I spent many pleasant afternoon and evening breaks with my colored pencils, pens, and notebook, adding to the three-pager until it was time to share at my blog.
It halts perfectionism, the inner editor, and the competition-fair mindset.
The important thing was never that the comic should be perfect or professional quality. The goal was to get lost in the joy of seeing how I would create this three-page comic. To evolve and stretch the limits of what I could draw and say within the tiny frames. To relish the moment of creating for prolonged, short bursts. That is, the goal was not to compare it to anything I’ve read and adored in graphic novels, comic strips, and cartoons, but to make my own something. A pure, untainted, joyous flow of creativity. Making art for the sake of making it. Very satisfying.
It facilitates joy. (Who couldn’t use more of that?!)
It matters less and less that I’m not naturally talented in the visual arts I’ve chosen to enjoy (I will pick up what I need to know through making things, exploring, reading about them) or that I wasn’t seen long ago as a good candidate for art club (that was so 7th grade!). I like to make things now, want to make more in the future, and that’s enough. Whatever I make will encourage my perceptions, challenge and inspire me, and engage the side of myself that likes to reflect and dream. Refreshing.
Join me for my August Art Making for Authors class, which begins August 2nd. You’ll get a chance to break out some supplies and practice the kind of projects you’ve been wanting to make. You can pick any form of art you fancy for each assignment, and we’re not looking for perfection or comparison—we’re looking to savor the making process. Learn more and sign up at: clickety-click.
