We Need to Have A Talk About Writing...

When I was 19 I went to visit my brother in Vietnam, he was working so I found myself with time to spare. I went backpacking by myself for a couple of weeks along the Mekong Delta , that kind of thing.

The whole time I kept a journal which I, not very imaginatively (but that was the point) , called Cu Ho (Little Boy Ho) Vietnam Travel Diary. I interspersed it with some little simple comic strips about me and Vietnamese peoples reactions to me. (tall, skinny (60kilo!) blonde, hairy, goatee). No idea where it is now but i impressed a few chicks with it afterwards. At one stage I made a website out of the entries with some of the photos I took (back in the days of film cameras!) I always intended to “spruce” up the comics, but never got around to it (writers refrain).

People used to make the mistake of thinking that I thought of myself as an artist first, and writer second. This was never the case for me. I grew up wanting to be a comic book writer and publisher, not a comic book penciller or comic book inker. I was, in a way, unfortunate to be able to draw just enough to give me a measure of delusion that I could pull off drawing for a bit while I got my small press publications out there amongst the throngs; and then the plan was to find real artists to work with. I produced some body of work over the years, all of dubious quality, and I eventually got burned out. I do find myself pining to draw something, every now and then, so who knows, on these pages you may one day find some new sequential art.

The beauty of comics is that when you boil it down into what is known as “slice of life vignettes”, it is not about story or about art. The driving craft behind it is simply communication.

My brothers partner bought me an awesome handcrafted journal made by people from his home village (by this stage he was a jet-setting textiles importer/exporter and fashion designer)

You will never regret keeping a journal. Especially a hand written one. If you feel you have “the worst handwriting”, a good trick is to write in capitals. For capitalisation rules (like sentence beginnings and names) just use bigger capitals. I wrote in capitals all through high school. It slows your brain down just enough to let your hand keep up with your brain. With repeated practice you will get faster at writing, and stay neat. It was also great practise for when I started to doing my own comics, haha. Not keeping a journal, writing in capitals.

Keep a written journal, but so yourself a favour like I did, and explore some of the situations /feelings in diagram/sequential art.


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