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A Letter From a Friend

Colleen Doran — Sat, 26 Mar 2016 00:39:32 +0000

I’ve written many times about toxic fan groups, and one of my oldest friends in fandom wrote me a letter about it. Printed with permission and light edits to remove personal information. Yesterday I got into a twitter-spat with a friend from many years ago. It was really kind of terrifying, but it gave me the opportunity to reflect on one of the things I am most thankful for.: Having known you. That fellow and I were once quite tight. What’s scary is that looking back I was well on my way to ending up like he has. The man I spoke to yesterday was once just like me and is now sustained only by resentments and finds his self worth only in vitriolic hatred masquerading as righteousness. Knowing you when I did helped to blow fresh air on the dying embers of my self awareness. It inspired me to get the hell out of the emotional tar pit my social circle often was, and, as a wise person once said, stop “muddling through life with delusions of adequacy”. The seeds of sloth, cowardice and hate are within us all. A lack of self reflection and malignant associations are the water and soil needed to grow those weeds. Knowing you helped me catch myself, and be on guard against the self destructive aspects of my nature. For that I am forever thankful. I once had it out with this friend, and a few other friends, that the fan circle was dragging them down and keeping them in a place where they could never be outstanding in any way. The entire group were the biggest bunch of crabs in a barrel I’ve ever encountered. I could be pretty harsh, telling someone they were “muddling through life with delusions of adequacy,” which wasn’t a very nice thing to say. But it drove me crazy how often these talented, smart folks would settle for less, or worse yet, let their fan circle of “friends” deliberately drag them down and belittle them until they stopped trying for better. They were the sort of people who were always there to buy an alcoholic another drink, which is not a metaphor. You need serious emotional backbone to get away from that dreck. The worst fan art and fan fic were given golden trophies for participation, but by God, if you went pro or accomplished something in the real world, they’d piss on it. If you were one of the few pros in that circle, you’d better stay low enough not to rise higher than their egos. I recall one writer whom I’d known for years who became inflamed with jealousy when I started working with J Michael Straczynski! The jealous writer (you’ve no doubt never heard of him, he doesn’t write fiction) sent me furious emails about how my life would soon be ruined by all the hi-flying people with whom I was keeping company. Obviously, I was undeserving, and these people were just messing with me. As of 2004, he was still advising me to get out of comics as he’d done for years, since that comics gig was going nowhere! Whew, sure glad I didn’t listen to this dude! My response to the letter. I want you to know once more how much this meant to me. I realized a long time ago that many of my early friends in fandom and prodom were incredibly toxic people. They don’t like to see you change or get better at anything. They just want everything to remain as it was in 1987. I think I finally cut ties with all of these people and my life has changed for the better. I’m glad I didn’t steer you wrong. I can’t believe how angry, resentful, and full of self pity some of these people are, and so ready to drag other people down over the dumbest things. I think they were always like that, I just didn’t see it. Anyway, thanks again I haven’t spoken to that ass of a writer in well over ten years. Or any of the rest of these people. Good riddance.

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Why I don’t blog anymore

Colleen Doran — Sun, 18 Oct 2015 22:04:28 +0000

EDIT: I go into details about time investment in the comments below. Dear Colleen, I bookmarked many posts on your site for information about self publishing and contracts, but when I came back to read the posts later everything was gone. Now I get page after page of broken links and comments without posts. Did you know that most of your website is completely broken? Kelly Dear Kelly, I stopped blogging in public regularly almost 8 years ago, (UPDATE: I now blog on my Patreon behind a paywall, so the 15 million hits this blog once got will now pay me directly instead of an advertising service that pays me almost nothing). While I think it served a purpose at the time, now it is holding me back as an artist. Between social media and blogging, I am investing hours every week into activism that is costing me on a personal and professional level, and I am no longer willing to pay the price. When I started blogging, there weren’t very many websites that covered the same things I was writing about. Now there are, and you have many other resources to choose from. As for where the posts went, I loaded a blog security update that broke the site. The home page looked fine, and I didn’t look any further. So, when the site backups updated, they updated to a broken version of the site. This included both the blog and the comic inventory portions of the site. Many of my old posts were locked into a system that required each post be reformatted and imported one at a time. I don’t have the resources to do that. You will find that some of the material has been restored, but I will not make further efforts and am letting the rest go. It’s for the best. I’ve written of how expensive it is to work on my A DISTANT SOIL comic, and how I can’t carve out the time for it among all my other assignments. But after giving everything a really hard look, I come to the conclusion that if I’d invested just a fraction of the hours I’ve put into blogging over the years, I’d be completely finished with A DISTANT SOIL by now, and it wouldn’t have cost me a penny out of pocket to do that. There are 24 hours in the day, and if only 1 hour per day goes into blogging (and I used to blog daily,) then that is an hour I’m not drawing and writing stories. I’ve had a blog and/or message board for 15 years. Even half of that investment would have finished A DISTANT SOIL by now. A brutally realistic estimate shows me that my blogging and social media use is the time investment equivalent of three 200 page graphic novels. I’d rather make the graphic novels. Since 2010, my online presence has been great for sales and visibility, but that is something that must be carefully balanced with the art. For several years, when I was unwell and spending a lot of time in bed propped up on my pillows with a laptop, blogging was the easy alternative to drawing. But making comics is far more labor intensive than blogging. As I am getting more and more publishing work, and believe my best work is yet to come, I can’t justify blogging anymore. It is time-consuming, and it is often stressful as well as ephemeral. I don’t think I realized just how anxious and stressed online activity made me until recently. I am making the choice to self care, and spend less time engaging with things that don’t promote my well-being and the well-being of my art. Of course, I am posting on my blog to announce this, and I do intend to update periodically. I’m more than happy to post art on my Twitter and Facebook accounts. But I will no longer engage in activism of any kind, and will no longer blog about professional issues in publishing and fandom (my own business being the notable exception, of course). I will continue to maintain and update the A Distant Soil website, but my priority is finishing the final graphic novel which I fund at my Patreon. Thank you for your kind understanding, and I am truly flattered that you considered my postings helpful in the past. I am moving on, and I hope that your future will be filled with the great art and writing you will do. Family. Friends. Art. Nothing Else. My mantra.

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Hal Foster: It’s never too late to be great.

Colleen Doran — Mon, 08 Dec 2014 14:24:49 +0000

Whipped this up. Hope it is inspiration for you.

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Brain Fog

Colleen Doran — Fri, 07 Feb 2014 22:47:30 +0000

You used to be able to do long division in your head. Now you can’t do simple math on paper. You always knew what time it was, never needed a watch, and had the entire television schedule memorized. No one bought a TV Guide because they had you. Now you can’t keep up with your favorite shows because you can’t remember the storylines. Or when they were on. You never had to study because one pass over a book and you had it down. Now you can barely remember what you’ve read a half hour after you put the book away. You write for a living, but you stumble over spelling words like “who”. Brain Fog or Cloudy Consciousness is a cognitive disorder caused by…something. …inattention, thought process abnormalities, comprehension abnormalities, and language abnormalities…reduces quality of life by impairing work activities, social interactions, and driving, but it does not effect basic daily life activities such as dressing, personal hygiene, eating, shopping, answering the phone, or taking public transportation…may even exhibit normal cognitive performances, but overall productivity may suffer from inattentiveness and fatigue secondary to attention abnormalities…(Doctors) have a tendency to “psychologize” it and misdiagnose it as depression or apathy. So, I’ve been struggling with this for over a decade, and did not get a diagnosis or adequate treatment until 2012 (UPDATE: diagnosed in part, but underlying cause not addressed until 2016 – auto-immune disease. Bummer.) It got bad enough that for years there, I was pretty much disabled, producing only a few pages of work a month. I was so out of it that I had trouble remembering things like my middle name. Every day was one long comedy of errors – variations of not being able to find my keys. By 2006, I thought I was pretty much done and would not be able to work in publishing anymore. A close relative also had the same symptoms, and, as I did, later developed severe migraines. (For those of you who have never had a migraine, chronic migraines are debilitating. Mine include migraine aura, temporary blindness, and vomiting. Hit with migraines up to 21 days every month, as a writer and artist, I was simply unable to perform.) He was diagnosed with ADHD and given drugs that made his problems even worse. Only after years of bad reactions to the medication did a doctor finally figure out the real problem behind his brain fog was chronic Lyme Disease. My issue was an even more obvious and common problem – an endocrine imbalance (EDIT: alas, caused by that auto-immune disease that went undiagnosed for years. Can you say bummer, twice? I knew you could.) Once that was addressed, most of my brain fog symptoms disappeared (They can go into remission as the disease does, and come back whether you’re getting treatment or not. I got gobsmacked Fall 2016, but feel better several months later. Hope springs eternal.) After years of unproductivity, I’ve published a number of books over just the last couple of years. Brain fog isn’t just forgetfulness: it’s living in a bizarre twilight world where you are half in and half out of consciousness. Everything seems grey, and you don’t feel the passage of time. ( I could not remember the month, day or year it was.) You float through life, but it’s not a good feeling. You have an almost complete lack of awareness. You’re there, but you do not process what you’re experiencing. What memories you do manage to internalize seem as if they happened to someone else. If you’re a high energy person like me, you feel as if you’ve had a personality transplant – not a good one. You are listless, apathetic, and you don’t have the energy to fight to get better. What’s worse is it may seem like depression or ennui to others, when what you really have is a medical problem no one has caught yet. So you’ve got people telling you to snap out of it as if you have magical powers over your thyroid or your progesterone levels, as if you can talk yourself out of Lyme Disease, Celiac’s Disease, or Lupus. After a few years of dealing with all this, you do get depressed about it in the end. Back in the 1980’s I had chronic fatigue syndrome (they call it myalgic encephalomyelitis now, I’m told,) and when I began having brain fog problems, I was terrified that the viral infection had returned. I’d been symptom free for over 10 years. However, unlike chronic fatigue, my brain fog had no accompanying flu-like symptoms or fever (EDIT: not at first. Later came joint and muscle pain, but I no longer run a mild fever, which I always did when I was first hit with encephalomyelitis. I ran a fever almost constantly for years. Researchers believe that encephalomyelitis, which is an auto-immune disorder, may go hand in hand with the Hashimoto’s disease, with about 20% of patients having both diseases. Hashimoto’s also runs in my family. ) I wondered if a series of personal problems hadn’t plunged me into a depressive state. Everyone feels sad when people die or when someone embezzles your money. Most of us move on. I moved on, but didn’t feel better. Whatever, I felt lousy and couldn’t get stuff done. I was able to get some relief from my symptoms with over the counter energy supplements and herbal remedies supposed to increase pep and attentiveness, like Black Cohosh and green tea. Back in 2010, I blogged about “losing my mojo” and gradually getting back in the game. Even so, I was only working at about half the rate I used to. Now I feel pretty darned good and am working at about 80% of my prior work capacity. I expect that will improve in the coming months. But I wish my doctor had found out what was really going on, oh, about ten years sooner. Because I lost a heck of a lot of quality of life in there. There are many medical problems that can cause brain fog. It’s hard to deal with because you feel so listless and out of it that you have trouble finding the motivation and energy to find out what’s wrong. You may have something that affects a lot of people such as low testosterone or peri-menopause, or a thyroid problem. Or you may have a disease no one thought to look for. If you are unproductive, people tend to dismiss that as a character flaw. At first, I wasn’t very kind to myself when this was going on. I kept thinking if I exercised regularly, or ate the right foods, or stayed motivated, I’d snap out of it. I thought I’d gotten lazy. I’m sure lots of people thought so. People would joke about my absentmindedness, and when I was at shows, I’d be embarrassed by my inability to add up a total on a purchase, or remember things I’d worked on. Clients didn’t appreciate my spacey attitude. Friends who used to chatter on the phone with me wondered why that stopped. People I met at conventions were offended that I couldn’t remember them. I’d screw up orders and commissions. I’d forget entire assignments. Now that I know I have an medical problem, it’s easier to take. But I have a lot of catching up to do. My income plummeted for a long time, my medical bills skyrocketed, and I’ve lost years of prime productivity. When I first mentioned my spaciness, dizzy spells, headaches and other problems more than a decade ago on my old (now down) blog, several of you figured it out immediately, long before my doctor did! But a couple of you blogged that I must be a drug addict or drunk. That was sweet. I forgot a lot of things during all this, but I remember you. Several readers who also struggle with brain fog ask me to blog about how I deal with the problem. Sometimes, not so well. Sometimes like a champ. These days I’m much better, because hey, we know what’s causing this and the fix is pretty easy. But it’s a question of maintenance and I still have brain hiccups. For whatever reason you’ve got your brain fog, your working memory is completely screwed. You have to reduce stress and replace working memory with organization. Get organized, stay organized, and keep notes and records on everything. You will not be able to remember things other people take for granted. Think like an engineer, and back up, back up, back up. Redundancy is your friend. This is why I beg people to follow up with me, and to never make requests of me at conventions or other events. I simply won’t remember them, and then I have to deal with these people being pissed off later. Keep a blog or private journal, save every email, take notes on everything, and keep them in an organized format to which you can easily refer. Don’t try to reinvent the wheel with list-making: keep to a simple, easy to follow routine. Let the people who need to know realize that they must follow-up with you. You don’t have to give clients your sob story: few people appreciate it when they feel guilted into treating you differently. Everybody has problems and some are much worse than yours. Just send a friendly note once in awhile to let your associates know to follow up with you. OK, I’ll blog more about this later. I promise to remember. Acephalous made Work Bird. Work Bird made Acephalous write a dissertation.

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This is Not 0’s and 1’s

Colleen Doran — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 14:09:58 +0000

This is not cochineal, and lapis lazuli, and Indian lac, and alum, and linseed oil. The human being who made this image is not chlorine, and carbon, and magnesium, and sulfur. This is not 0’s and 1’s. The copy of this art is not 0’s and 1’s. The extraordinary human experience of art is not 0’s and 1’s.

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Guest Blog: Sarah Beach on The Metaphysics of Creativity

Colleen Doran — Tue, 29 Dec 2009 19:13:39 +0000

THE METAPHYSICS OF CREATIVITY About a month ago on another website, there was a discussion about fanfiction and professional writing, and the distinctions between them. Some of the posters contended that it was a matter of the quality of the writing, in terms of craftsmanship. Me, I think that’s a mistake. Some professional writers can be sloppy craftsmen, while some fanfic writers have exceptional talent. Colleen and I (we’d both followed the discussion there) continued a conversation spun from this discussion. Our conversation led into other territory, and it seemed to me it would make an interesting guest blog topic. So, here’s some wandering on where my thoughts went. Professionalism in creative arts certainly begins with craftsmanship. The fanfic writer might not be concerned with that aspect of writing, but anyone with professional aspirations ought to be. But the true distinction is not in the craftsmanship itself – whether in writing or art or music or acting or any of the creative activities. What is the true key lies in the creator’s passion for his or her work. The effect of the creator’s passion is difficult to describe. It seems ephemeral. Yet, everyone gets a feeling of “This is right” or “This is wrong.” Something gets communicated, something extra. I’ve occasionally called this effect “frozen telepathy.” What I mean by that is that some inner passion the creator has for the story, the characters or whatever, gets caught in the finished work and the audience can see it, receive it. For actors, it is perhaps most obvious – there are some actors who can take you all the way inside their characters, so that even though the character “isn’t showing anything,” the audience can actually see what is going on inside. Other actors who lack this ability end up seeming flat, and the audience only gets the surface (which might of itself be pleasing – many such actors are physically attractive and may have great smiles). They may convey to the audience a nice picture but no emotional content. Whatever it is in this invisible communication, it is harder to pin down in writers and artists. As I said, there’s a lot of “This works” or “That doesn’t work” in our responses to creative works. Additionally, individual creators seem to have some sort of internal signature that identifies the work as something from a specific creator. It is that unique touch that lets someone say at a glance of a painting, “That’s a Van Gogh,” “That’s a Rembrandt,” “That’s a Picasso,” “That’s a Hirshfeld.” Something similar can occur in writers as well: Hemingway’s prose is different from Faulkner’s; Robert Howard’s prose is different than that of his pastichers. Years ago, I read a book titled SENTICS, by Dr. Manfred Clynes. Clynes developed a finger pressure sensor that allowed him to measure emotional response to stimuli. It turned out that there were specific pressure signatures for specific basic emotions and the responses were consistent cross-culturally and across the sexes (meaning men and women are not really that different in their responses). Clynes then extended his research to human response to music. In doing so, he discovered that listeners would create similar pressure patterns in response to different works from a specific composer, even if they were unfamiliar with the works. And, by and large, the musical work created a consistent response in listeners. This meant that an American, a Japanese, a rural African each listening to a specific work would generate pressure signatures with a pattern distinctive to that composer. Apparently, the only major differences occurred when the listener was a strong individualist with his own distinct response to music. Conductor Leopold Stokowski frequently put his own stamp on works he conducted, and this showed up in his responses in Clynes’ studies (Clynes knew many notables in the classical music world). Reading Clynes’ studies gave me a lot to think about in this matter of the “invisible communication” in creative works. The fact that Clynes found a way to measure emotional response and that the results could be consistent and reproducible (an important factor in establishing a truly scientific measure), made me much more certain about the aspect of objective evaluation of art. Apparently, evaluation of creative works is NOT “just a matter of opinion.” If it was possible to measure emotional response to music, I extrapolated that it could also be done for visual and textual art. My point is (before I get sidetracked into issues of objective evaluations of art and literature) that it was now obvious that “something invisible and consistent” does indeed go on in art. And that something touches our emotional responses. We DO communicate something in our works (beyond the obvious intent of the art or storytelling), and the response of the audience will depend on (1) how much we (the creator) “put into” the work and (2) how much the specific audience member responds to our particular emotional brew. This is where distinctions between a Debussy lover and a Wagner or Philip Glass lover come in: neither listener is more right than the other, they are just preferring different emotional responses. Do some creators put into their work and “invisible something” that other might find repellant? Oh, yes. It is apparently a reflection of some attitude or outlook on the part of the creator that generates a negative response in segments of the audience. And that, perhaps, is one of the conclusions one can draw from Clynes’ studies: art (be it music, visual arts or writings) is more revealing of the artist’s own nature than is generally acknowledged. And when we say of some creative work “It speaks to me,” we are being much less figurative than we imagine. Art talks and it reveals the secrets of its creator. (Isn’t that a scary thought for the reclusive artist? 😀 ) Sarah Beach trifles with artwork, but applies herself to writing with much more diligence. She’s the author of THE SCRIBBLER’S GUIDE TO THE LAND OF MYTH, and uses material from the book as springboards for posts on her blog.

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Guest Blog: Julie Ditrich on Unlocking and Accessing the Darkness Within: 7 Keys for Comics Creators

Colleen Doran — Sat, 16 May 2009 13:28:05 +0000

[WARNING: Some comics, film and book plot spoilers ahead!] “Monsters are real, and ghosts are real too. They live inside us, and sometimes, they win.” Stephen King A few weeks ago at Australia’s Supanova (Brisbane) pop culture convention, I had the privilege of meeting US comics creator Jhonen Vasquez whose satirical work Johnny the Homicidal Maniac I greatly admire. Despite the fact that I’m not usually drawn to creative properties with the words “homicidal” or “maniac” in the title or indeed ones that hint at or overtly promise great acts of depravity, my business partner and artist Jozef Szekeres persuaded me to read it and I’m very grateful to him for doing so. Vasquez’s portrait of insanity in the form of a deranged serial killer was not only convincing but, in my estimation, was a multi-layered and brilliantly executed tour-de-force. Johnny is not quite my idea of the quintessential anti-hero, as his methods of dispatching victims would make even Dexter cringe. Yet in his quieter insular moments Johnny possesses a modicum of self-awareness and displays moments of a kind of distorted sweetness as he strives to find the meaning of life and ultimately find out who he is. In the ten minutes I spent gushing to Vasquez about the impact of the work on me, I asked him a question I’d been wondering while reading the series: “Did you do a lot of research on profiling and the psychology of serial killers or is this all you?” Vasquez paused for a moment and with a glint in his eye, which could have been interpreted in any number of ways, confessed, “It all came from me.” Vasquez’s revealing admission got me thinking again about something I’ve been grappling with for a long time – when my personal internal and seemingly benign archetypes include the healer and the seeker amongst others and when the genres I traditionally work in are fantasy or visionary (metaphysical) fiction, how do I step outside of my emotional comfort zone and into the darker side of myself in order to channel it into creative works? Outside of resorting to chemical means such as drugs and alcohol and the subsequent cliché scenario of spiralling down into a psychologically disturbed oblivion brought on by childhood trauma, I’ve identified seven practical keys that have helped me create some of the darker characters and moments in my own fiction work and that of the upcoming Elf~Fin: Hyfus & Tilaweed comics series. These keys could prove useful for both comics writers and artists to harvest the darkness within and ultimately redirect it into their storytelling. Before we examine them, it’s important to discern the necessity of introducing darkness into your stories. The actual argument in favour of it is threefold: – Without going into abject darkness how can a character experience the light in forms such as love, joy and redemption, which invariably accompanies traditional happy-ending plots? – Without understanding the evil lengths an antagonist and his/her allies will go to in order to fulfil their objectives, how can we create obstacles and conflict for the protagonist’s journey? – And without these stark contrasts, how can we get readers/viewers to identify with the lead character/s and in the process give readers a visceral experience that evokes a large range of feelings and emotions (which is one of my success measurement tools about whether or not a work translates into a rich reading or filmic experience)? The reality is that outside of creating a fiction work for pure entertainment value, many of us choose to step into the darkness in our stories in order to challenge a society in denial and to expose controversial themes that in the past were commonly excised from our attention. The objective here is to introduce these issues not for titillation sake but to shine a spotlight on humanity’s evil-mongers and hopefully provide solutions and hope to the lost and forlorn spirits out there who relate to the characters and situations. Audiences and readers have also reached new levels of sophistication, and black-and-white portraits of good and evil just don’t cut it any more. Characters actually need to be multi-faceted. Some of the best examples of deep and complex characters I’ve come across in the last few years are on the television series Lost and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. In comics and graphic novels, the aforementioned JtHM, as well as Neil Gaiman’s Sandman (the serial killer convention was quite extraordinary!) But getting back to the seven practical keys that can help you access multiple parts of yourself… (1) Personal Experience Dredging up traumatic or dysfunctional personal experiences and using them as the foundation for story and/or art is the most obvious key. Australian comics creators Christian Read and Paul Abstruse’s graphic novel WitchKing is a case in point. It’s a veritable blood bath. I cringed over entire sequences while reading it. Having said that, it’s also a stellar piece of writing and is quite brilliantly illustrated. At its very core it’s a story about chronic bullying and the aftermath – that is, what happens when a victim fights back against his perpetrators. When I talked recently to Paul Abstruse (whose body of illustrated comics work is characterised by dark themes) about how he approached the script he said he is usually attracted to the murkier stuff because it often parallels his own difficult upbringing. He related to the WitchKing material so much so that in his own eyes he became the embodiment of a tortured artist who descended into his own personal hell in order to channel those experiences onto the canvas. While working on the art, he specifically remembers recalling instances of his own anger, shame, and resentment, which echoed aspects of the script and, in turn, helped him endow the artwork with a powerful energy. Similarly, Colleen Doran’s graphic novel A Distant Soil (Volume II): The Ascendant offers up what I consider is the most shocking and confronting scene in the entire four volumes. It comes in the form of a ritual known as “The Choosing”. The Ovanon, she writes about, don’t believe children have souls until they go through a ceremony, whereupon adults in the upper echelons of the society’s hierarchy capriciously decide who is worthy of a soul and who is not. Children become disposable objects and in some cases are offered up for sexual gratification and profound physical and emotional abuse. Colleen didn’t directly experience the horror of this first hand, but during her childhood she witnessed several incidents that left an indelible impression on her psyche and gave her the starting point to explore these ideas in her story. At a very young age Colleen recognised that children – the most helpless and vulnerable people in our society – were not valued as fully fledged human beings and often underwent a kind of devaluation process. This even happened in the court system. Punishment meted out to the transgressors of physical and emotional abuse against children was less than that given to offenders who had abused adults. Children who could not articulate their pain and who had undergone horrific trauma were relegated to the roles of second-class citizens with no rights. In particular, Colleen witnessed an incident where a little girl who had been starved and tortured was wrested out of her abusive family situation only to be returned to the same family after she had sufficiently recovered. The family then picked up their bags and moved – never to be seen or heard of again – and Colleen has always wondered what happened to that little girl. Justice in this case was not served, and merely served to reinforce in young Colleen’s eyes that there seemed to be an habitual violation of children’s essential humanity. Your emotional reactions to traumatic events (or even seemingly minor injustices) are all fodder for your stories and characters. And for those of you who feel vulnerable and anxious about exposing too much – just remember that characters are actually composites/collages/patchwork quilts (all these synonyms and more). Writers rarely duplicate the living exactly, but usually borrow facets or idiosyncrasies of themselves and others, then add part research and then part imagination and sew all these pieces together like Doctor Frankenstein sews together body parts from various corpses to create his monster. Using personal experience can ultimately be therapeutic and cathartic – the act of reconstituting your own demons and darkness and channelling them into your characters can be liberating and healing. (2) Introspection and Self Analysis This key is closely linked to personal experience (mentioned above) but differs in the method – it’s a conscious and active process of getting to know yourself and releasing blocks that may impede or in fact shut down your creative facilities. This process often requires an element of detachment where you become an observer of your inner and outer life as it unfolds. You ultimately become a student of yourself. In the first instance, I encourage writers to experience various therapies to release negative repressed emotions that may be causing creative blocks, do psych tests such as the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator which identifies whether you’re an extrovert or introvert, are thinking or feeling oriented, intuitive or sensing, and perceiving or judging. Understand your archetypes (read Caroline Myss’s book Sacred Contracts for a comprehensive list) – these include advocate, warrior, rescuer, trickster and victim. Embrace the feminine and masculine traits you possess inside and identify how they manifest in your life. Examine your developmental journey through various ages. Strip away your barriers and lean into your authentic self so you can endow your characters with emotional honesty. If/when you experience emotions such as jealousy, obsession, rage, and resentment as a reaction to triggering incidents, ask yourself how you can translate them into words and pictures. Then ask yourself how characters could exhibit some of your personal characteristics, as well as traits that are alien to you, in various conflicts. Many creatives also talk about possessing a kind of split personality (not in the true sense of a Dissociative Identity Disorder but a disconnection nevertheless) – that is, they may find themselves participating in real life scenarios but also be observing (as if they’re outside themselves) at the same time. This observer part of them captures and imprints all the detail of the unfolding scene in their memory, and then, with a twist of the imagination, may play out that scene into several different takes with different resolutions. For example, a writer friend once told me that he cannot have an argument with his wife without his mind offering up several different simultaneously-dramatised scenarios about how the argument will unfold – in one she slams the door and drives away and the opposite end of the spectrum is that they tear off their clothes and make love on the floor there and then. Maybe we all need a dose of Eckhart Tolle’s The Power of Now to keep us in the moment, but the simple truth is that this ability serves our profession and our creativity. (3) Create Boundaries – Honour Yourself and Your Readers Differentiate between who the character is and how they act and who you are and how you act, but also be aware of crossing any boundaries that may undermine, conflict or betray your personal values and your essential self. This is not about pro- or self-censorship: it’s about making conscious choices and having a vision and a message of what you want to say about yourself and your stories in the world. If you want to experiment with genre and story and darkness then that’s great – it will be a personal challenge and a process of self-discovery. However, if it means betraying a personal core truth or belief system then be aware of the implications for yourself and for your audience in the short and long term. A few years ago I attended a publishing conference in the USA, where one of the key speakers was Eric...

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11 Things Designers Should Avoid: Guest Blog by Val Trullinger

Colleen Doran — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 22:33:10 +0000

Often I get interns and designers who are dab hands at InDesign and Photoshop, but lack crucial skills that aren't always taught in design classes. Namely, how to work with other designers, clients, and an art director. It's wonderful that you can design mind-blowing work, but if you can't get along with your studio, you're doomed. This is a hard lesson for some. Luckily, that's why the gods invented art directors: to school the uppity.

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