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It’s spring! Time of renewal and creativity everywhere. Then WHY am I in a ‘brain fog?
Well there are lots of reasons probably…from lack of sleep (!?), to allergies, to ‘it’s still cold in VA!’ to …who knows! I just read a fun newsletter piece about just this from Simone Kaplan… check her out at simone@picturebookpeople.com . Loved her honesty in admitting she has ‘brain fog’ too, so here I am joining her honesty.

And it’s good to admit it when it hits. Use it! Take a break and step back from your projects…writing, illustrating, personal, whatever! If you are having trouble being clear, focused, concise and creatively fresh, don’t try so hard! Step away from the project if possible…maybe for a few weeks or more, and take a new look later. We only want to send out OUR BEST always. You only get one chance to make a good first impression. You can also ruin a good reputation by passing on unfinished or inferior work. Sometimes a deadline requires a ‘finish’…then you have to gut it out. But a step back of a few hours…take a walk, work out in gym or garden… might make all the difference in clearing the brain fog and letting the creativity break through! When are we and our work ‘finished?’ Well probably when the book is published! or the conference talk given! or time has run OUT! But we hope to feel that it’s THE BEST we can do with the situation… the plot is tight, the characters are real and credible and YOURS ALONE, and you’ve added something evocative and provocative to the world. Big order…not really. It’s just breaking through ‘the fog’ and seeing the day and its unique promise! enjoy the possibilities!…..

Image from Priscilla Burris who keeps clear always!

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Need a website that's both functional and fun? In addition to my work as a freelance blogger, I am also a freelance webdesigner.

Visit Rock the Rock for examples of my work and a list of my clients.

If you would like me to create, design, redesign, update, and/or maintain your website, email me or leave a comment below!

     

     

To see the larger versions of these designs and other sites, please visit Rock the Rock.

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we’ve shared with you before one of our artists Priscilla Burris’s wonderful truly heart felt young characters and their special worlds.  Well one of them Heidi Heckelbeck is a most popular little girl as it turns out!

Heidi won 1st place for fiction series at the New York Book Show!!!
They announced it last night at the event. Exciting!  WAY TUGEAU (ooops To Go!) Little Simon and Priscilla!  wow and wow!

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by Deren Hansen

In a discussion about narrative conflict, someone suggested that there are only three kinds of conflict: inner, personal, and universal, where personal is conflict between persons and universal is conflict with forces larger than your social circle.

As I played with the idea, I hit upon the exercise of characterizing the kinds of stories you get when the protagonist and antagonist come into conflict in terms of the nine combinations of the inner, personal, and universal dimensions.

In the following table, read from the protagonist's row to the antagonist's column. For example, if the protagonist's concerns are primarily internal and the antagonists are personal, you have a coming-of-age story or a story about establishing one's place and identity.

		Antagonist
		Inner	Personal	Universal
P r o t a g o n i s t	Inner	Psychological	Coming-of-age; Establishing one's place and identity	The socio-path or super man
	Personal	Intervention and healing	Romance, mystery, thriller, speculative fiction, etc. (i.e., Most kinds of narrative conflict)	Rebels and underdogs
	Universal	Fatalist and extremists	Order vs. chaos (anti-rebellion)	Epic and political struggles

What I found most interesting about this exercise is that the primary locus of conflict in most stories falls in the center square (personal vs. personal). Many other stories fall on the diagonal (inner vs. inner or universal vs. universal). Asymmetric stories (e.g., personal vs. universal), are rarer.

I suspect this is because as social animals inter-personal conflict is the easiest to understand. Even if your story depends on another kind of conflict, your narrative will generally be most effective if you can put a face on the enemy for your readers. Your band of freedom fighters may be up against an empire, but your readers will identify with the dark lord who makes finding them his personal quest than with the legions of faceless soldiers he deploys. Similarly, readers will find a psychological struggle more accessible if there are other actors who symbolize the inner conflict.

It's also interesting to consider where different genres cluster in the matrix. For example, romance and mystery generally land in the upper left quadrant while speculative fiction and thrillers land in the lower right (with all, of course, overlapping in the middle).

Stories, clearly, aren't limited to one kind of conflict, so this analysis is only useful when we're considering the primary mode of conflict. Still, the moral of this story is that conflict is best when it's personal.

Deren Hansen is the author of the Dunlith Hill Writers Guides. Learn more at dunlithhill.com.

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I just found Blog30. I liked their questionnaire and thought I'd share my own answers:

Where do you look for inspiration?

Life. Truth. Music. Stories. Nature. People.

What's your favorite book?

I have favorite books in different categories. My favorite books include, but are not limited to:

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll (fantasy classic)
The NeverEnding Story by Michael Ende (fantasy)
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald (modern classic)
Body Bags by Christopher Golden (contemporary thriller)
The Boys are Back in Town by Christopher Golden (contemporary horror)
The Westing Game by Ellen Raskin (mystery)

What's your favorite movie?

As with books (and anything else you can categories), I have favorite movies in different categories. For example:

Favorite musical picture: Singin' in the Rain
Favorite film noir: The Strange Love of Martha Ivers
Favorite Hitchcock film: North by Northwest
Favorite screwball comedy: Bringing Up Baby
Favorite Barbara Stanwyck comedy: Ball of Fire
Favorite John Hughes film: Ferris Bueller's Day Off
Favorite Cary Grant/Irene Dunne performance: My Favorite Wife
Favorite Jack Lemmon/Walter Matthau movie: The Odd Couple
Favorite book-to-miniseries adaptation: Anne of Green Gables, 1986 version starring Megan Follows
Favorite Disney animated musical: The Little Mermaid

Again, give me a genre, theme, time period, director, writer, or actor, and I'll tell you my favorite film for that topic or person.

What's your favorite line from a play?

I just realized I don't have any lines from plays listed on my page of favorite quotes. I'm going to have to think on this and get back to you.

What play or production changed your life?

Since I've been on the acting/performing/writing/creating path since birth, I don't know that any play has changed my life, but many have touched me - either the script or the storyline really spoke to me, or the experience I had performing them. This includes but is not limited to Spring Awakening, The Polar Express, and the first school play I ever did. I'm also a writer - screenwriter, playwright, (hopeful) novelist, and poet, so I've performed original works, and had works published, and all of those experiences mean a great deal to me.

Is there anything you still dream of doing?

Everything I haven't done yet, but will: Have a great career, working regularly in television (including work as a series regular), film, and theatre (both musicals and straight plays) as an actress, writer, and director, creating and sharing roles and shows and songs that make me happy and inspire others.

I feel most like myself when I... am performing, singing or acting - or discussing something I'm really passionate about, or retelling the story of something I've experienced.

What is your best escape?

Performing. Writing. Reading. Watching films and TV.

What's the one thing nobody knows about you?

If I told you, then someone would know.

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It’s impossible to choose a favorite thing in Jerusalem is so far, but right now I believe it may be the Bulgarian feta with hyssop and sun-dried tomatoes.

The skies at dusk are also spectacular — eerily Biblical, which I guess makes sense. The night before last, Max and I stood looking out at the Wailing Wall as the sun set. Above us roiling tufts of gray clouds swept over a pale but insistently glowing blue canvas. We had just come from the chaos of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, where priests of various sects tried to pray more loudly than priests of other sects, pilgrims and holy persons kissed Christ’s grave and pressed foreheads, scarves, and full water bottles against it, and groups of tourists, including a lot of American Methodists from Alabama, milled around.

I’m here for the book fair, where Mark Sarvas, Boaz Cohen, and Naomi Alderman and I spoke yesterday about books, the Internet, and writing and creating art from a place of passion and authenticity.

Mark and I don’t see each other nearly often enough these days, and it’s been wonderful to roam the city and catch up. Boaz is smart and charming; it’s easy to see why his radio show and his blog are beloved here. And I adored Naomi, whose first novel, Disobedience, I praised on this site years ago and whose game-writing I’ve always wanted to know more about. She and I nerdily compared iPad apps and promised to meet up in New York to talk about being ex-

Max and I spent Monday in the Old City, which is so mind-blowing I’ve barely had time to start processing it, and had drinks dinner that night at Mona (yum) with the writer Menachem Kaiser, Israel Museum Director James Snyder, and some other fine people. Yesterday was all about book fair stuff, concluding with drinks at the National Library, and then Max, Mark, and I slipped off to dinner at Eucalyptus.

This morning Max and I head to Bethlehem for a few hours, and then we’ll meet up with Mark at Yad Vashem. Tomorrow we head to the Israel Museum for the new Herod exhibition, and then to the Mount of Olives and Garden of Gethsemane. Early Friday morning — a little after midnight — we head home. So far, thanks to jetlag, I’m averaging three-and-a-half hours’ sleep a night. But with so little time and so much to see, I doubt I’ll get a nap in.

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Happily going over some notes I made while listening to the speakers at the conference… and want to share.  Didn’t make every speaker of course, but I’ll try to hit the ideas and quotes that spoke to me and I hope will speak to you! Highlights….

I’ll start with the most WONDERFUL opening talk from artist SHAUN TAN. at 8:35 Friday morning of the Artist Intensive.  What a way to wake up….truly the ‘WAY TUGEAU!”  It was about “Developing a Personal Style.”  His overall point was that your personal style needs to be free and encouraged to just ‘emerge.’  He talked about how drawing and painting at a very young gave him his ‘source of power,’  and how it was wonderful to work and not worry about how it was ‘received.’  He reminded all that ART is a distortion of reality…it’s NOT literal but more theatrical and manipulated.  How you do this grows into your style. It’s often good to let the viewer SEE this manipulation…be aware of the painting. The Deep Style that is or will become you is not so much how you draw or paint, but how you THINK.  That approach will change as the story and image changes, and your personal style can be ‘found’ at the intersection of where all the work meets.  (love that!)

You don’t choose a personality for yourself or a style really.  They evolve and happen from the interests of the day-to-day realities.  One way to teach yourself to know and appreciate others styles however is the age-old practice of copying master artists to LEARN from the effort…HOW and WHY it was done a certain way.  He likes to divide work into two parts…the ‘public’, known part, and the ‘private’ exploring, developing part.  Good to “think of yourself as a train station that ideas pass through.” (!)  Allow the dream to ‘bubble up’. The deep style just comes… it’s a conversation with yourself. “Swing with the current.”  Style often turns out to be ”what you do in an emergency” which he quoted from someone else…and isn’t that a truth!

Well that’s a touch of one talk I just HAD to share…wonderful.  Check out Shaun Tan’s work up…interesting talent and personality.

More tomorrow from others there at the WINTER SCBWI CONFERENCE 2013!

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Bill and I  shared our 44th wedding anniversary with Grand Central Stations 100th on Friday Feb 1 while at the SCBWI Winter Conference and Art Intensive ! and what a party! here see the big band and light show in windows…people from all over smiling!  NY at it’s best.  And upstairs we had a fabulous conference too! more on that to follow……

 

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I am most honored to be part of the Friday Feb. 1st Artist Intensive for the SCBWI Winter Conference (Grand Hyatt 42nd) this coming weekend!  Our panel discussion is “WHEN DO I QUITE MY DAY JOB?” and I’m looking forward to the subject and opportunity to share the basics (and not so basic) to the business of being an Illustrator.  Brenda Bowen (editor, now Lit Agent, and writer) and Jan Constantine (general counsel for The Authors Guild) and I (20 year artist agent) will be moderated by David Diaz.

The SCBWI conferences are always so very inspirational and done so professionally and with such care for the market and those who participate in it, that it’s always a joy to be part of and/or attend.  I’ll also be one of the judges for the Art Show which is a wonderful part of these events.  Sat. and Sun are full of other talks and sessions for writers and illustrators (or both) and an almost overwhelming opportunity to get an ‘insiders’ look at the children’s book industry. And you meet and chat with so many interesting people!

If you are planning to be there, please make yourself known to me.  And if not this year, do try to attend in LA,CA (Aug.) or NYC (Feb) at some point…invaluable!  See you there!

(“CAT”artist Melissa Iwai’s got the right idea about books!)

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For Tin House’s site, I write about finding solace for the slow pace of my own novel in the writing of Donna Tartt and my friend Alexander Chee.

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from CAT artist Priscilla Burris with one of her so special visual moments……  we all wish you all many of these enjoyable, loveable, shared, cozy moments in your future!

HAPPY NEW YEAR TO ONE AND ALL !

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No matter what the year seems to bring to us all, this time of year will bring LIGHT and HOPE and JOY to grab.  Thank your ‘higher power’ and rejoice!

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There will be no visuals with today’s post.  There can be none that wouldn’t further break our collective hearts.  I brought my three children up in Ridgefield CT for 30 years…just a short drive from Newtown.  I know people there effected by this horror I’m sure, and I hope they know my pain and hope is with them.

We are lovers of children’s stories and books, and much of that involvement comes from a love for innocent, learning, growing children and their promised hope for the future.  It’s inconceivable that any evil comes to sweet children anywhere, but of course it does too often.  This was just an extreme event of random evil that just can’t be truly taken in.  My family just celebrated the birth of a new granddaughter, our 7th grand child in fact.  We were, and are still, feeling very very blessed at this blessed time of year.  Suddenly we also feel betrayed and helpless.  What can we really do to protect anyone…even ourselves.  Life doesn’t always make sense.  It’s not always joy and blessings or even quiet unmemorable moments!  How to grasp that and move on into life, but we do, and must.  This holiday season is a time of sincerely warm spirit and deep emotion…. and we need to still allow that story into our hearts, as this other horrific story has forced its way in.  We need to hold onto the story of  love, sharing, caregiving of family and the future’s hope for all. Particularly for those devastated families in Newtown. We need to hold onto our loved ones and feel the blessings of their being.  Just their being here with us.

 

 

 

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Hello, hello! Just checking in. Plans had to change because along with Auntie M came Bookman’s mom. Auntie is off to Duluth this morning, mom is staying through Sunday afternoon. We visited Mill City Museum yesterday afternoon. Bookman and I had never been but had heard good things about it. We were both pleased with what a wonderful place this is. Worth every penny of the price of admission. Plus we learned some new things about our adopted city. Much of Minneapolis grew up around the flour mill which was at one time the largest mill in the world. It was really fascinating stuff. If you ever come to visit Minneapolis, you must put this museum on your agenda!

We made a trip to the Mall of America in the evening. People from out of town are always eager to go to this monstrosity. People who live here tend to be rather indifferent to it. I suppose it isn’t such a bad place though since it provides lots of jobs and someplace to take people from out of town.

Today will be a low-key day. Bookman and his mom are on their own and I have to work. I do have a couple of bookish links you might find interesting:

• Because I read Ann K recently Is Anna Karenina a Love Story? was an especially interesting article. It talks about the movie, the book, and whether Tolstoy meant for Anna’s to be viewed as a tragic love story.
• With Philip Hensher’s book, The Missing Ink, getting buzz lately, Some States Buck the trend and preserve penmanship caught my eye. California, the state in which I grew up, is one of the few states that still require students to learn cursive in school. It’s still taught in 3rd grade, just like when I was a kid. Ah memories.
• Not really news to us, but a recent study shows that reading, writing and playing games helps aging brains stay healthy. “Reading the newspaper, writing letters, visiting a library, attending a play or playing games, such as chess or checkers, are all simple activities that can contribute to a healthier brain.” I am so glad they didn’t say crossword puzzles or sudoku. I am not a fan. More power and puzzles to you if you are.

Off to work now. I hope you all have a wonderful weekend!

Filed under: Links, Personal

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Unlike so many other people in our city, Max and I are fine. Heartbroken, but fine. Like everyone else in our situation, I’m looking to volunteer and help out however I can. Taking ideas in the comments. Also tweeting, of course.

(Image of Red Hook flooding taken from Sam Sifton’s Twitter feed.)

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This borrowed from PW Bookshelf :  I found myself smiling at her, and his, views so many years ago… and the encouragement she could give to a YOUNG up and coming Sendak. 50 years ago he began…not knowing where he was going.  Do any of us?  Does it matter?  Just putting another stroke (step, word, etc) down and continuing the fun and torment and LIFE.   There is always more in us….and better!  onward….

and to illustrate this…from Michelle Henninger….

The story behind it is that Sendak, illustrating a children’s book by Tolstoy, began to doubt himself and wrote a letter to Nordstrom detailing all his self-doubts. Here is part of what she wrote back:

You reminded me that you are 33. I always think 29, but OK. Anyhow, aren’t the thirties wonderful? And 33 is still young for an artist with your potentialities. I mean, you may not do your deepest, fullest, richest work until you are in your forties. You are growing and getting better all the time. I hope it was good for you to write me the thoughts that came to you. It was very good for me to read what you wrote, and to think about your letter. I’m sorry you have writers cramp as you put it but glad that you’re putting down “pure Sendakian vaguery” (I think you invented that good word). The more you put down the better and I’ll be glad to see anything you want to show me. You referred to your “atoms worth of talent.” You may not be Tolstoy, but Tolstoy wasn’t Sendak, either. You have a vast and beautiful genius. You wrote “It would be wonderful to want to believe in God. The aimlessness of living is too insane.” That is the creative artist—a penalty of the creative artist—wanting to make order out of chaos. The rest of us plain people just accept disorder (if we even recognize it) and get a bang out of our five beautiful senses, if we’re lucky. Well, not making any sense but will send this anyhow.

This was SENT in a letter….no emails then.  No blogs to share, no quick anything…just slow mail or phone.  Thank the Lord…words are saved…. messages shared.  again….enjoy!

The story behind it is that Sendak, illustrating a children’s book by Tolstoy, began to doubt himself and wrote a letter to Nordstrom detailing all his self-doubts. Here is part of what she wrote back:

You reminded me that you are 33. I always think 29, but OK. Anyhow, aren’t the thirties wonderful? And 33 is still young for an artist with your potentialities. I mean, you may not do your deepest, fullest, richest work until you are in your forties. You are growing and getting better all the time. I hope it was good for you to write me the thoughts that came to you. It was very good for me to read what you wrote, and to think about your letter. I’m sorry you have writers cramp as you put it but glad that you’re putting down “pure Sendakian vaguery” (I think you invented that good word). The more you put down the better and I’ll be glad to see anything you want to show me. You referred to your “atoms worth of talent.” You may not be Tolstoy, but Tolstoy wasn’t Sendak, either. You have a vast and beautiful genius. You wrote “It would be wonderful to want to believe in God. The aimlessness of living is too insane.” That is the creative artist—a penalty of the creative artist—wanting to make order out of chaos. The rest of us plain people just accept disorder (if we even recognize it) and get a bang out of our five beautiful senses, if we’re lucky. Well, not making any sense but will send this anyhow.

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Sad to hear of the death of critical theorist Mark Poster:

It is with deep sadness that we share the news that our esteemed colleague Mark Poster, Emeritus Professor of History and Film & Media Studies, passed away in the hospital earlier this morning. Mark Poster was a vital member of the School of Humanities, and for decades one of its most widely read and cited researchers. He made crucial contributions to two different departments, History and Film & Media Studies, and played a central role in UCI's emergence as a leading center for work in Critical Theory...

Mark Poster was a major figure in the rapid development of media studies and theory in the USA and internationally. While as an intellectual historian he could draw on Frankfurt School thought as well as on cybernetics, he was particularly interested in the potential of poststructuralism for media studies. From his translations of Baudrillard to his dissemination of Foucault, Poster played a highly influential role in the study of media culture, including television, databases, computing, and the Internet; he continued to offer crucial commentary on the relevance to technology and media of cultural theory, and his numerous articles and books have been translated into a number of different languages. Reflective of the breadth of his interests and expertise, Poster held courtesy appointments in the Department of Information and Computer Science and in the Department of Comparative Literature. First hired at UCI in 1968, Poster had recently retired after 40 years of service to the School and the Campus (more...)

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I just had to share this photo of the presentation of two incredible QUILTS that I humbly was a small part of (the ‘black cat napping’ square!) for two special new Mom’s of SCBWI National’s team, Sarah and Chelsea! BIG surprise for them….bet there were loads of happy tears!!!  Linda R. Bernfeld and the energetic group from SCBWI Florida got the wonderful idea and put this together. They asked those of us who had been involved with their regional conferences over past couple of years to paint a square if we wished. WELL of course!  Laurent Linn, from Simon and Schuster, and I were there this past June doing an artist intensive, and one of the ‘CAT artists’ and SCBWI Art Coordinator and board member, Priscilla Burris, was there last year for the same event.  Others contributing squares were Paul Zelinsky, Mark Teague, Ethan Long, Pat Cummings, Linda Shurte, Brain Pinkney, Tomire dePauola, Leeza Hernandez, Dan Yaccarino, Marla Frazee and other talented people.  Kimberly Lynn Strickler put the squares together into this wonderful result.  What works of art they are… literally!  So happy to have been a part of this kind and wonderful artist venture!

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Putting together my first package for Quarterly Co. feels a lot like assembling the cards and songs and books and other objects I used to send friends and boys in college, except with 100% fewer stickers: Here’s this thing I’ve been reading! Here’s this other, related thing! Here’s a long, gushy letter telling you all the reasons I am sending them to you — and oh, yeah, here’s this other thing that suddenly seemed so important and connected, I had to unseal the package and shove it in there, too. There are even post-it notes.

Jason Kottke described Quarterly — “a subscription service for wonderful things” — as a cross between a store and a magazine. Sasha Frere-Jones called it the future, but with a post office. The Wall Street Journal journal explains how it works, and makes me wish I had a 3D skull of my own design to include.

My shipments, which Quarterly sends out at $25 each, will be all about storytelling. Here’s how I described my focus for the site.

As a child I lived in novels as much as I did in the world, stumbling around hunched and dreamy, tearing through my alloted seven library books and then begging my mother to take me to check out more. Nowadays the challenge isn’t getting my hands on books, it’s finding stories that excite me, as a reader, writer, and critic.

My passion for unusual, well-told stories sends me foraging not just through bookstores — though I do spend a ridiculous amount of time circling the staff recommendations tables at McNally Jackson — but all kinds of media: TV, movies, magazines, blogs, apps, whatever. I still love books best of all, but it took me a while to know that for sure after devouring The Wire.

My Quarterly objects will be books and other great stories that I hope will make you cancel plans or miss your stop or ignore the doorbell. Sometimes they’ll be juicy and suspenseful; other times they’ll be weirder, less about sinking into a story than thinking about the way we tell them. Occasionally they’ll be both, so you can experience them, and ponder them, and then experience them again.

If you’re interested in signing up, I’m told the window for the first shipment closes this Thursday, the 16th.

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As many of you know, a few months back, my wife and I brought home our very first human baby.  In advance of the birth, I had made a point of leaving Mary cute little sketches of what our baby might look like — most all of which she deemed “terrifying.”  I thought I’d share them with readers …

 

 

 

 

And now, here’s the real deal!  This is Penelope Fern Auxier.  Not quite as many fangs as I’d imagined …

 

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My plane from the US landed on Friday afternoon, and yet I'm still not wholly back: piles of papers and books are still where I left them while unpacking, my photographs are uncatalogued, and a stack of emails remains to be answered.  I promised myself, however, that at least the traditional con report would be done before the convention itself was more than a week over (update: well, close

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My wife’s grandmother, Maxine Burke Markam, passed away this weekend.  Today is her funeral.  Maxine was a delightful woman who raised four spectacular children–all of whom were present when she passed.  She was smart, beautiful, tough, and the meanest canasta player I have ever seen.  Here’s a picture of us cutting a rug at our wedding five years ago:

Death is never a terribly fun thing, but without it, I’m not sure life would seem quite so wonderful.  All last week, I couldn’t help but remember two scenes from different plays.  The first is Thorton Wilder’s Our Town in which Emily has passed away in childbirth, but has been given one last to look at her old life before disappearing to her grave: 

EMILY:  It goes so fast.  We don’t have time to look at one another. [...] I didn’t realize.  So all that was going on and we never noticed.  Take me back — up the hill — to my grave.  But first:  Wait!  One more look.  Good-by, Good-by, world.  Good-by Grover’s Corners. … Mama and Papa.  Good-by to clocks ticking … and Mama’s sunflowers.  And food and coffee.  And new-ironed dresses and hot baths … and sleeping and waking up.  Oh, earth, you’re too wonderful for anybody to realize you.

The second is Vladmir’s speech near the end of Waiting for Godot:

VLADMIR:  Astride of a grave and a difficult birth.  Down in the hole, lingeringly, the grave digger puts on the forceps.  We have time to grow old.  The air is full of our cries.

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Summer, as always, was too short…or too long…but full of adventures of all sorts.  My wonderful Ohio son Jeremy (and CAT artist!) and his wife Nicole (T2 agency) and my three grandkids from that Clan were here over Labor Day…a busy and noisy and so appreciated visit! Good to have them play with the 3 boys from my Wmsbrg son Morgan’s family crew of three boys and wife Stef.  So that was the “period” on the summer.  Now they all, and WE are ‘back to school’ and thinking Fall, Holidays, and Winter.  wow….

So the CAT artists wanted to share with you four BACK TO SCHOOL visuals to get you in the mood….and we’ll be sharing lots more in the months to come…. HERE on” THE WAY “, and in the mail, and in person perhaps!  So check us out over and over for the new and different… www.catugeau.com as well as here on our blog.  Change is in the air….lets hope it’s all good!  now open your new ‘box of Crayolas’ and create fun for Fall!

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My husband and I are just back from a mini reunion in CT with “The Originals”…a group of guys who came together, for my husband, in 5th grade through Jr High, HS, college and onward to our present ‘newly medicare’ status…  over 50 years!  I’ve known them since I was 16 and started dating the love of my life…but that’s another story.

What I NOTICED is that though we sometimes don’t see some of this group for 20+ years at a time, it’s only moments till we are all comfortable and ‘back’ together.  The old stories and the belly laughing starts, and it’s SO good to experience!  Friends like that take a life time to create…and it did. That coming together also reveals our TRUE CHARACTERS.  Gone the ’executive’ or the ‘naturalist’ or the ‘egg head.’  They are all just boys…and they KNOW each other’s core.  We girls also revert to a bit ’our younger selves’ as well. Though I’ve also noticed that the girls have perhaps grown more into who we always were…wonderful to see.  Just like writing or drawing good characters!

It takes a life time (however long your life time is so far!) of experiences and careful visual ‘noting’ to be able to come up with GOOD CHARACTER.  Stories are so often all about character.  You must get into your character big time to make your audience believe in him/her.  Explore all the tips and tricks you can to create the best.  REALLY KNOW THEM.  How would they be with old, old friends? new personalities? How would they react if something went wrong, or someone disappointed them?  How would they take a bike ride, swim in a lake, ride a hot air balloon, open a business, care for their aging parent?  This might not be in your current story, but if the character will be ’real’ you have to know how he/she would react in most life events.  Now, we who have lived a few years, know a character might surprise us big time with how they react to an event….and you need to be aware of that too.  The story, drawn or written, might just be in that difference of your character but it’ll only work if you and your audience really know the ‘normal’ for your character.

I just have to include a photo of five of ‘the girls’ (second from right is me) because we took this same photo 22 years ago at the last reunion and needed to revisit our characters in photo style.  Yes we’re that much older, as are our husbands, but we ARE OUR characters now and it shows.  Not all bad ladies!  Get into your characters…pull at them, test them with life, give them tough challenges….  THEN write or draw your story!

cheers ’girls’!

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