In fact, I started out writing a novel about Elisabeth (as I called her, although in some sources they refer to her as Louise—the French double-first-naming thing is tricky). I thought at first it would be another in my growing oeuvre of young adult historical novels. Although her youth in a convent school and her father’s death when she was twelve were poignant—as well as her training and friendship with pastellist Rosalie Filleul—I soon discovered that the most interesting parts of her life occurred when she was an adult. She was under thirty when she became Marie Antoinette’s official portraitist, and had an inside view of court life.

However, Elisabeth fled Paris in 1789, when it was clear her ties to the court made it unsafe for her to remain. She spent the Revolution traveling around Europe from court to court, painting portraits and being celebrated. Her husband divorced her in absentia during the Terror to preserve his own life (he’d stayed behind, she took their daughter with her), and she didn’t return to Paris until 1800. 

Early attempts

After I figured out that Elisabeth’s story should be an adult novel, I started writing it in the first person. I think I got about fifty pages in and realized that I was just sort of rewriting her autobiography. I didn’t want to do that. I figured I’d have to switch to third person at the very least.

In the meantime, I thought I’d find out what Elisabeth had to say about her chief rival, Adélaïde. After all, they’d both exhibited publicly for the first time at the Académie de Saint-Luc salon in 1774, and were elected to the Académie Royale at the same time, in 1783. Surely they knew each other.

The advantage to reading something as an eBook is that you can search the text. I searched all three volumes of Elisabeth’s autobiography for every version I could conjure of Adélaïde’s name, and—nada. I found a couple of places where she made a veiled reference to her rival, but she never mentioned her by name.

Hmmm.

And the manuscript thickens

This started me thinking: What did the two women artists, the most famous women artists of their time in Paris, know of or feel about each other? How might they have interacted? For that, I had to dig into research about Adélaïde.

I was soon frustrated by the relative paucity of existing material. Thank heavens for Laura Auricchio’s book, Adélaïde Labille-Guiard: Artist in the Age of Revolution (The J. Paul Getty Museum, 2009). That source, along with a much earlier short biography by Roger Portalis (1902) furnished most of the information I was able to glean about her life and career.

Armed with this, as well as some fascinating research about Rosalie Filleul—who drew portraits of her neighbor in Passy, Benjamin Franklin, and was guillotined during the Terror—I wrote a massive (for me) novel with three points of view.

Writers always look for beta readers when they have a draft polished enough for people to read, and I’m so grateful to my friends who slogged through that manuscript. I also workshopped it, and submitted it for a meeting with an editor through the Muse and the Marketplace conference.

Response was virtually unanimous: It was just too much. And the character that resonated most with everyone wasn’t Elisabeth or Rosalie, but Adélaïde. She was the one who had to struggle in her career. The true underdog. She was also the one who became involved in the politics of the Revolution, worked (unsuccessfully) to reform the Académie, painted a portrait of Robespierre, and fled Paris (but not France) during the worst years of the Terror.

Kill all your darlings

So, I started again. I had some material I could salvage from the earlier draft, but really, it was a complete rewrite, which I began in 2020. After several drafts, many revisions, and chopping off the first fifty pages, The Portraitist: a Novel of Adélaïde Labille-Guiard came into existence. And this focused, more manageable novel is a vast improvement over its predecessor.

I was able to make a logical progression of Adélaïde’s career, of the choices she made or might have made—lack of documented history can be a boon to a fiction writer. Reader, I invented stuff. I hewed closely to the known facts, but that still left a lot of room for filling in motivations and emotions.

I fell so in love with Adélaïde. But that left me still wondering about Elisabeth. She had made such different choices. And even with the abundance of information available, an autobiography is notoriously unreliable. She wanted to control the narrative about her life. Why? I wasn’t finished with her.

Elisabeth will rise again

I have already written enough to make an entire second novel about Elisabeth Vigée Le Brun. But I’m not going to do that. Instead, I’m creating a series of novellas, called Behind the Painted Fan, which I have yet to figure out how to publish so readers can enjoy them as a gloss on The Portraitist. As I deepen my acquaintance with Elisabeth, I’m finding so much more in her to celebrate that gets beyond the rather egomaniacal self-portrait in words. As always in such cases of professional rivalry, the two women probably had completely mistaken views of each other.

The novellas are my attempt to give modern readers a chance to get to know not just Adélaïde as I envision her, but Elisabeth, too. Whichever one of them was more successful, they both faced similar challenges and found ways to survive and prevail. And that’s nothing short of inspiring.

Susanne Dunlap is the author of twelve works of historical fiction for adults and teens, as well as an Author Accelerator Certified Book Coach. Her love of historical fiction arose partly from her studies in music history at Yale University (PhD, 1999), partly from her lifelong interest in women in the arts as a pianist and non-profit performing arts executive. Her novel The Paris Affair won first place in its category in the CIBA Dante Rossetti awards for Young Adult Fiction. The Musician’s Daughter was a Junior Library Guild Selection and a Bank Street Children’s Book of the Year, and was nominated for the Utah Book Award and the Missouri Gateway Reader’s Prize. In the Shadow of the Lamp was an Eliot Rosewater Indiana High School Book Award nominee. Susanne earned her BA and an MA (musicology) from Smith College, and lives in Biddeford, ME, with her little dog Betty.
You can find her on her website or follow her on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.

The post Why the Underdog? Or, How I Came to Write a Novel about Adélaïde Labille-Guiard appeared first on DIY MFA.

Here is your May 2022 Leisure Learning List:

10 Art Works Inspired by Great Summer Reads

Sometimes, familiar themes presented in new contexts spark an area of interest our brains have otherwise deemed “dormant.”  Summer reading usually implies breezy reads, but here are ten pieces of visual art from some of the world’s greatest art museums that will hopefully provide just enough interest to goad you into picking up that piece of literature you’ve always wanted to get around to reading or could review, now that you have some decades of experience in the real world. 

Click the link above to get a glimpse into Dali’s Alice in Wonderland or Picasso’s surprisingly stark Don Quixote. Just a casual glance at the list guarantees either your literary or visual arts knowledge will be enriched.   

Vacation with Substance: Questions On Choosing the Right Getaway Reads!

I had planned on using the above link for a recommended feature alone, but found myself falling into the rabbit hole of The Book Family Rogerson. 

This family of bibliophiles, based in England’s Peak District (i.e., beautiful countryside situated in the middle of England), boasts a personal library of over 2,000 books. In an effort to educate their school-age daughter and expand their own interests, this trio seamlessly incorporates reading into their everyday lives. They often plan entire vacations around literary settings and use their social media to show off independent bookshops they both seek out and stumble across.  

If you’re going to Europe or already in it, check out their literary trip bucket list. Whether England is on the itinerary or not, their documentation of these 42 U.K. sites is worth the armchair perusal. Did you know there is a German Fairy Tale trail, where you can see the real-life inspirations made legendary by the Brothers Grimm? 

Perhaps most importantly, if you’re feeling really inspired (as you should be because this family’s word nerdiness is authentic and heart-warming), plan your own bookish holiday by starting at your local library.

The World’s Most Magnificent Libraries

Ever consider getting lost in a library of maps? Want to take home a museum-quality snowy owl? How about comparing the feel of different pelts so that you can get a better idea of what our human ancestors considered “outerwear”? 

This 16-minute YouTube video profiles exceptional lending collections and reading spaces where one can get lost among a number of things not traditionally associated with the word “library.” I promise, it’s worth every minute.

The Neapolitan Quartet & Ferrante Fever (documentary)

We are all aware of how a book can transport us to distant lands, filled with characters that seem to live their own lives even when we’ve shut our literary adventures for the day.

If you’re not going anywhere this summer, give your staycation a foreign, gritty, worthwhile destination in post-war Italy. Elena Ferrante’s 4 book series, known collectively as The Neapolitan Quartet, makes for an epic yet intimate experience detailing the 60-year friendship between two highly intelligent women. 

What exactly is intellect when at play in the real world? Think The Godfather with less crime and more philosophy. It makes for a great series to consume over an entire summer. Are you a Lena or a Lila? 

Alternatively, check out the HBO series, “My Brilliant Friend,” which is an adaptation of the first book. Plans are being made to round out the quartet over several seasons under the “Brilliant Friend” moniker. I do warn you, however, that if you can’t watch just one episode at a time, you will most likely be compelled to read the entire series.

(As quickly as possible.)

As a companion to the series, I point you to the documentary “Ferrante Fever,” which sounds like a standard Bio-Doc, but actually focuses on one of the most intriguing aspects surrounding The Neapolitan Quartet: the fact that no one knows who Elena Ferrante really is. It’s a pseudonym, crafted and guarded over decades. 

Add dimension to your reading by questioning the novels with Jonathan Franzen and Elizabeth Strout. “Ferrante Fever” is a book-club-meets-masterclass-meets-speculative-whodunnit that is worth checking out for the eyebrow exercise alone.

Make a night of it and invite your brainiest friends to join you while consuming some post-pandemic prosecco.

50 Modern Literary Tattoos

If “Ferrante Fever” night should go late, you might find yourself waking up with a tattoo that you might not exactly “remember getting.” Have some class and consult these examples before opening that 3-5” binder everyone else pulls from. Consider something like the green light from across the lake in Gatsby or an inspiring line from Amanda Gorman.  

The best stories stay with us throughout our lives. Their details become special treasures, while their themes weave themselves into our own personal philosophies. It seems only fitting that such thoughts should become permanent parts of our bodies. **If you’d like to share your literary tattoo(s), please do in the comments. Why not show them in a forum where they’ll be appreciated?**

Tell us in the comments: Which of these May 2022 Leisure Learning picks are you most excited to try?

Melissa Haas is the author and illustrator of Catula: The Misadventures of Dracula’s Cat and The Night Before Christmas (NOW WITH CATS), among other books. Follow Catula’s whereabouts on Instagram @CatulaTheCat or download a free coloring page at www.catulathebook.com.

The post May 2022 Leisure Learning appeared first on DIY MFA.

Rajani was born in India, raised in Kentucky, and now lives in the Boston area, where she practices medicine and writes award-winning novels and picture books. 

She has always been an omnivorous reader, and now she is an omnivorous writer of fiction and nonfiction, novels, picture books, prose and poetry. 

She finds inspiration in her family, her childhood, the natural world, math, science, and just about everywhere she looks.

In this episode Rajani and I discuss:

• The importance of showing different approaches to problem solving and thinking.
• How she represented sibling dynamics in her picture book, Bracelets for Bina’s Brothers.
• Why she starts with a story and her unique approach to character building.

Plus, her #1 tip for writers.

About Rajani LaRocca

Rajani LaRocca was born in India, raised in Kentucky, and now lives in the Boston area, where she practices medicine and writes award-winning novels and picture books, including Midsummer’s Mayhem (2019) a Massachusetts Book Award Honor; Seven Golden Rings (2020), the 2021 Mathical Prize Winner for Grades 3-5; Red, White, and Whole (2021), an Indie Next Top Ten and Junior Library Guild Selection with multiple starred reviews; Bracelets for Bina’s Brothers (2021) part of the Storytelling Math series, Much Ado About Baseball (2021), a Junior Library Guild Selection with a Kirkus starred review, and more. 

She’s always been an omnivorous reader, and now she is an omnivorous writer of fiction and nonfiction, novels and picture books, prose and poetry. She finds inspiration in her family, her childhood, the natural world, math, science, and just about everywhere she looks. 

You can find Rajani on her website or follow her on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Goodreads, and Clubhouse. You can also find her as @rajanilarocca on Clubhouse.

Bracelets for Bina’s Brothers

For the Hindu holiday of Raksha Bandhan, Bina is determined to make beaded bracelets for her brothers all by herself. She finds out which colors her brothers like and dislike and sets to work. Working with her every-other-one beading pattern causes Bina to discover something new about patterns–and her brothers.

Storytelling Math celebrates children using math in their daily adventures as they play, build, and discover the world around them. Joyful stories and hands-on activities make it easy for kids and their grown-ups to explore everyday math together. Developed in collaboration with math experts at STEM education nonprofit TERC, under a grant from the Heising-Simons Foundation.

If you decide to check out the book, we hope you’ll do so via this Amazon affiliate link, where if you choose to purchase via the link DIY MFA gets a referral fee at no cost to you. As always, thank you for supporting DIY MFA!

Link to Episode 372

(Right-click to download.)

If you liked this episode…

Head over to iTunes, Stitcher Radio, Spotify, or Google and subscribe so you’ll be first to know when new episodes are available.

Also, remember that sharing is caring so if you know anyone who might enjoy this podcast, please tell them about it or leave us a review so other listeners will want to check it out.

Until next week, keep writing and keep being awesome!

The post Episode 372: The Magic of Math and the Art of Picture Books – Interview with Rajani LaRocca appeared first on DIY MFA.

Make no mistake, this kind of writing is rife with pitfalls. We often get too didactic, too preachy, and no reader likes to be told what to do. Other times, we end up preaching to the choir, only persuading those who already agree with us. (Now, there’s a legitimate argument that this, too, serves a purpose in validating your reader’s perspective, or outrage, and spurring them to action.) A related problem is when our focus is too limited, tied to one culture, subculture, place, or time period. (Like when I was a high-schooler writing endless op-eds about eliminating home room.)

None of this to say writing for change is a bad idea. Where we would be without books like Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring that changed people’s minds about pesticide use or Martin Luther King’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail” that spurred people to protest for racial justice?

That’s one thing I want to emphasize: never forget our first job is to write well and true, to make art, to move reader’s and maybe change lives

Another is this: All change, arguably, comes from stories. Stories move us  

Here’s one more: Good writing for change should also be about change.

Change happens in the action of the story: change in the world, in the character or the narrator.

Change also happens in perception: the narrator’s, the character’s … and the reader’s!

Let’s look at five particular ways to approach writing for change:

1. Bear witness for yourself 

Many years ago when I was assigned my first class teaching memoir writing online, I was shocked by how many stories I read about abuse, emotional and physical.  Perhaps ten of the fifteen students wrote about it. I thought “What are the chances?” Then I taught another class, then another, each one had about the same number of hard stories. Finally I realized: This is the world in live in. 

Memoirists often ask: Does the world need another story about X?  The answer is YES. I needed to read that many stories to recognize how widespread abuse is in our culture. Ditto for disability, for racism, for misogyny. So many hard subjects are swept under the proverbial carpet. The first step to changing any problem is recognizing it exists!  This is what writers of autobiography or memoir or creative nonfiction can do!

In “Black in Middle America” Roxane Gay simply describes her experiences as a black woman in mostly-white communities, the way she can never escape feeling out of place. She bears witness to effects of racism that are more subtle than those of overt discrimination.

2. Bear witness for others 

Writers of creative nonfiction can also write about something that has happened or is happening to others. This can be in the form of investigative journalism or it can take a more lyric form. In “Dawn and Mary” Brian Doyle bears witness to the heroism of two women by packing their stories into 750 words, using only their first names, using the tools of poetry: repetition, refrain, sound to pack a punch. One pitfall of bearing witness for others is when you become condescending or when you appropriate a story the subject could writer for themselves. In “Dawn and Mary” Doyle eloquently gives voice to these women who are no longer alive to tell their own stories.  

3. Use myth or allegory … and turn up the volume!

You can use a mythical figure or an allegory to expose a person or a dynamic without pointing a finger directly. (Animal Farm by George Orwell is a classic allegory of how socialism can go awry.) Native American writers Robin Wall Kimmerer uses the figure of “The Windigo” to decry the behavior of many Americans, and one in particular, without naming names. It arguably allows her to be even more scathing than she would/could be otherwise, to “turn up the volume” on her voice. 

4. Write a letter … to the future

The epistolary form can be means of creating intimacy. In “Dear Soon-to-be-Sprout” Elizabeth Rush uses it, unexpectedly, as a call to arms for collective action to combat climate change. The letter form personalizes her urgency, but also reaches out to the reader. She addresses most of her letter to “you,” her unborn daughter, but she slyly also slips in an occasional “we” as in this sentence. “I want to say to you, little seed, change is that only thing that is true, and it starts when we join one and one to make more than two.” And just that, the reader is implicated and invited, too. 

5. Try a “found essay”  

I mentioned earlier the danger of appropriating someone else’s story or voice. One solution is to quote them, as in “Transgender Day of Remembrance” take snippets of other texts and put them together. (How long did it take you while reading to realize this was the case?) This technique is most often used in poetry, in what are called “found” poems, but Torrey Peters takes it a step farther in creating this rightly harrowing “found essay.” 

PROMPT Option 1: Write a letter

List three experiences you have lived that others may not share (perhaps you were raised rural or in a nontraditional family, maybe you have a disability or identify as L.G.B.T.Q) 

Choose one and write a letter to a child-to-be about this experience and what you hope will change for him/her/them

OR Write a letter to your former self reassuring him/her/them of all that has changed

PROMPT Option 2: Bearing Witness

Write about someone acting heroically, big or small, at some risk to himself, someone you know about or someone you’ve heard about recently in the style of “Dawn and Mary”

OR Try a “found essay” with bits and pieces of news articles or testimonials that speak to the experiences of an underrepresented group in the style of “Transgender Day of Remembrance”

Ana Maria Spagna is the author of several books including Uplake: Restless Essays of Coming and Going, Reclaimers, stories of elder women reclaiming sacred land and water, Test Ride on the Sunnyland Bus, winner of the River Teeth literary nonfiction prize, 100 Skills You’ll Need for the End of the World (as We Know It) a humor-infused exploration of how to live more lightly on the planet, and two previous essay collections, Potluck and Now Go Home. Her first novel for young people, The Luckiest Scar on Earth, about a 14 year-old snowboarder and her activist father, appeared in 2017. Ana Maria’s work has been recognized by the Society for Environmental Journalists, Nautilus Book Awards, and as a four-time finalist for the Washington State Book Award. You can find her at www.anamariaspagna.com and on Twitter @amspagna

The post #5onFri: Five Approaches to Writing for Change appeared first on DIY MFA.

Jason is an award-winning artist and designer based in NYC. He is known for his bright colors and even brighter messages. His work has received tons of awards and recognition, including the Golden Novum Design award and two CLIO Fashion&Beauty Bronze medals. He has also been featured on HGTV and the Discovery Channel.

In 2018, Jason was named by BUMBLE as one of the 100 Most Inspiring New Yorkers, and his colorful creations have found partnership with brands like Coach, Guess, Pepsi, and Maybelline. Jason’s mission is to spread color and positivity across the globe. His brightly colored designs and positive words reflect his zeal for life, his quest for joy and his love of LOVE.

In this episode Jason and I discuss:

• The ways his book is a visual version of the perfect mixed tape.
• How negative space and imagination work together to create a story.
• Why people see the same colors differently (hint: it’s rooted in science!).

Plus, his #1 tip for writers.

About Jason Naylor

Jason is an award-winning artist / designer based in NYC, known for his bright colors and even brighter messages. Jason’s work has received global recognition including the Golden Novum Design award and two CLIO Fashion&Beauty Bronze medals. Jason has been featured on HGTV and the Discovery Channel. In 2018, Jason was named by BUMBLE as one of the 100 Most Inspiring New Yorkers, and his colorful creations have found partnership with brands like Coach, Guess, Pepsi, and Maybelline. Jason’s mission is to spread color and positivity across the globe. His brightly colored designs and positive words reflect his zeal for life, his quest for joy and his love of LOVE.

You can find Jason on his website or follow him on Twitter, Instagram, Goodreads, Pinterest, and TikTok.

Live Life Colorfully

Live Life Colorfully is a quirky, illustrated mix of inspiring words, tips and tricks, and challenges from award-winning artist, designer, and creative director Jason Naylor. 

This colorful book is based on one of his strongest messages, Live Life Colorfully, and will inspire everyone who picks it up. 

• Find the silver living, taste the rainbow, and colorize your life with this vibrant book
• Filled with bright, colorful illustrations
• Sure to motivate anyone who needs a boost

Naylor spreads joy and kindness around the globe using his signature bright colors and even brighter messages with typography, illustration, and large-scale worldwide murals.

Live Life Colorfully is a succinct way to say, “Be yourself, be brave, be proud of who you are, be kind, be loving, be happy, and be colorful.”

• An inspiring book with a little bit of edge and a lot of confidence
• Taking a moment to deliberately notice colors in the world around you can significantly enhance your moment, your day, and your life.
• Perfect pick-me-up gift for self-help, motivation, and happiness seekers, as well as lovers of pop art and bright colors
• Add it to the shelf with books like 52 Lists for Happiness: Weekly Journaling Inspiration for Positivity, Balance, and Joy by Moorea Seal, Steal Like an Artist: 10 Things Nobody Told You About Being Creative by Austin Kleon, and Start Where You Are: A Journal for Self-Exploration by Meera Lee Patel

If you decide to check out the book, we hope you’ll do so via this Amazon affiliate link, where if you choose to purchase via the link DIY MFA gets a referral fee at no cost to you. As always, thank you for supporting DIY MFA!

Link to Episode 341

(Right-click to download.)

If you liked this episode…

Head over to iTunes, Stitcher Radio, Spotify, or Google and subscribe so you’ll be first to know when new episodes are available.

Also, remember that sharing is caring so if you know anyone who might enjoy this podcast, please tell them about it or leave us a review so other listeners will want to check it out.

Until next week, keep writing and keep being awesome!

The post 341: Live Life Colorfully: The Intersection Between Words and Art – Interview with Jason Naylor appeared first on DIY MFA.

In October 2020, two years to the month since I started writing for DIY MFA, my book, Doodling for Writers, released. It’s a tiny bundle of joy collecting a lifetime of my love of drawing, aimed particularly at helping writers let doodling into their writing life. This month I did my first online doodling workshop. As a teacher for 40 years, I’m more accustomed to in-person classes, but it was wonderful to share my doodle love with people in other places. Also, the webcam enabled me to do close-up drawing demonstrations, which made the intimate nature of my doodling practice more accessible to other people. I need to take some time now to figure out where this is going. Either way, I will doodle on.

Like everyone on the planet, I’ve been holed up at home since March pondering what matters.  Fretting about each breath. My generation was reared on shame, fed endless tripe about how we must always strive for more rather than be content with what we have. Especially women. And people of color. And queer folk. Or people without excess wealth. We were never enough. Or too much of the wrong thing. Either way, shame and discontentment with the self were in surplus.

I watch the generations that have come after mine and am hopeful for the future. They are my children. They are my students. My friends. They reject the burden of shame. They reject the myth of moreness. Of otherness. They embrace small joys. They are the Butterfly Effect.

What does any of this have to do with doodling?

Everything, really.

In April, I’ll turn 60, so I think I can say with certainty that it takes me a really long time to figure out how to live a joyful life. Doodling is what I do, what I’ve always done, to help me engage with a world that overwhelms me. It’s a tiny gesture that keeps me tethered to humanity. For most of my life I have not acknowledged the boundless wonder of drawing. It’s been a lifeline for me, yet I haven’t allowed myself to accept it as my calling, because, well, it’s such a trifle. Surely there were other things I should be doing. Like lamenting some unmet expectation. Or becoming someone real, like a doctor or a beauty queen. A person of value as determined by some mysterious other who knew better than me about how to be me.

Well, eff that.

I resolve to draw more. To mingle words with doodles. To explore the vast universe of small blank pages. I resolve to share my joy of doodling. To invite timid doodlers from time to time to join me on this grand adventure. I resolve to always be encouraging. I resolve that this is plenty enough to build a beautiful life for today and however many tomorrows I have left.

This post is an opportunity for me to say farewell as a regular columnist singing the praises of books with pictures. I’ve loved having a reason to give a deep read of the amazing books I’ve reviewed for this column, but 2021 needs to be about paring down my life so I can focus on living what’s left of it with joyful conviction. Not to be an ostrich, hiding from the world, but instead to strive to be the hummingbird that Dr. Wangari Maathai spoke of during her amazing life as an activist in Africa:

“We should always be like a hummingbird. I may be insignificant, but I certainly don’t want to be like the animals watching the planet go down the drain. I will be a hummingbird, I will do the best I can.”

I’ll leave you with some doodles from my book as a well wish that you resolve for 2021 to venture into the doodleverse and that you fret not one bit about drawing badly by mistake. Heed the wisdom of Miles Davis and Bob Ross. And me. And Doodle On!

Peace out!  

Poet/cartoonist, Rebecca Fish Ewan’s passion is mingling text with visual art, primarily in ink and watercolor, to tell stories of place and memory. Her hybrid-form work has appeared in After the Art, Brevity, Crab Fat, Survivor Zine, Hip Mama, Mutha, TNB, Punctuate & Under the Gum Tree. Her illustrations and essay, “The Deepest Place on Earth,” were published in the Literary Kitchen anthology, Places Like Home. Rebecca has an MFA in creative writing from ASU, where she has been a landscape design professor for 25+ years. Rebecca grew up in Berkeley, California, and lives with her family in Arizona. Books/chapbook: A Land Between, By the Forces of Gravity, Water Marks, and her new book, Doodling for Writers, which released October 2020.

The post Resolving to Doodle On appeared first on DIY MFA.

Dwayne Booth (Mr. Fish) has been a freelance writer and cartoonist for twenty-five years, publishing under both his real name and the pen name of Mr. Fish. His work has appeared in numerous publications including the LA Times, LA Weekly, Village Voice, The Atlantic, The Nation, Vanity Fair, Harper’s Magazine, and more.

He was the subject of a 2017 award-winning documentary by Pablo Bryant called Mr. Fish: Cartooning from the Deep End. He’s published several books, with more forthcoming, but today we’ll be discussing one book in particular: Long Story Short: Turning Famous Books into Cartoons.

In this episode Mr. Fish and I discuss:

• What ambitious idea was the inspiration for Long Story Short.
• Why he enlisted the help of colleagues to help him accomplish his project.
• How visual art has a truth that resonates both emotionally and intellectually.

Plus, their #1 tip for writers.

About the Author

Dwayne Booth’s most recent books are Go Fish: How to Win Contempt and Influence People (Akashic Books 2011), WARNING! Graphic Content (Annenberg Press 2014), And Then the World Blew Up (Fantagraphics Books 2017), Long Story Short: Turning Famous Books into Cartoons (Akashic Books 2020), Nobody Left (Fantagraphics Books 2020) and For Christ’s Sake (Fantagraphics Books 2021).

You can follow Mr. Fish on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook.

Long Story Short

The Catcher in the Rye. Lolita. Moby-Dick. Infinite Jest. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. A Room of One’s Own. Native Son. These are but a handful of classic works spectacularly distilled by Mr. Fish and a very talented group of painters, illustrators, graphic designers, and political cartoonists into succinct snapshots that are at times funny, sad, inspiring, rude, crude, beautiful, profound, stomach-turning, and mind-blowing.

Includes original artwork from: Mr. Fish, Ted Rall, Stephanie McMillan, Sarah Awad, Eli Valley, Wes Tyrell, Tamara Knoss, Keith Henry Brown, Sam Henderson, Lodi Marasescu, Surag Ramachandran, Tami Knight, Eric J. Garcia, Marissa Dougherty, Siri Dokken, John G., Andy Singer, Tara Seibel, Gary Dumm, Clare Kolat, Nate Ulsh, Benjamin Slyngstad, Ron Hill, JP Trostle, John Kovaleski, and Beth McCaskey.

If you decide to check out the book, we hope you’ll do so via this Amazon affiliate link, where if you choose to purchase via the link DIY MFA gets a referral fee at no cost to you. As always, thank you for supporting DIY MFA!

Nobody Left

The renowned political cartoonist sets out to ask the burning question: Is nobody LEFT any more?

The fearsome political cartoonist Mr. Fish investigates the meaning of progressive politics in the 21st century by comparing the New Left with the Newer Left and interrogating public intellectuals, comedians, writers, and politicians who have been part of the liberal cause from the 1950s to the present day.

Nobody Left includes interviews with and essays about Norman Mailer, Christopher Hitchens, Howard Zinn, Lily Tomlin, Graham Nash, Joan Baez, Dennis Kucinich, Tariq Ali, Calvin Trillin, Mort Sahl, Robert Scheer, Paul Krassner, Jon Stewart, and others. Mr. Fish sets out to answer the burning question: Is nobody LEFT any more?

If you decide to check out the book, we hope you’ll do so via this Amazon affiliate link, where if you choose to purchase via the link DIY MFA gets a referral fee at no cost to you. As always, thank you for supporting DIY MFA!

Link to Episode 327

(Right-click to download.)

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The post Episode 327: Cartoons and Visual Language – Interview with Mr. Fish appeared first on DIY MFA.

I’ve wanted to express myself for as long as I can remember. … No, that’s not it either.

I’ve wanted.

Now we’re getting somewhere.

I want.

Yeah, right there.

Writing is another form of digging all the way to the truth.

Pursuing any subject of study, trade, or art form with an orientation towards bettering self and community, improving social structures, and transforming modes of interaction between individuals, does the exact same thing: it acts as an excavation tool to a plane of existence beyond the simply visible.

When writers, artists, businessmen and women, housewives, students, professionals, retired seniors pursue a passion relentlessly, it leads to grasping of the deeper layers – of the psyche, history, nature, market forces, and familial turbulences – that possess the obscure roots of what we see manifested through our eyes.

Let’s try again:

I have wanted to get at truth for as long as I can remember. … Nah, too ambitious. You kept running away.

I have been blind and deaf and angry and overflown, like wine in glass, with resentment. True, but this isn’t about writing.

Oh but it is, because until you realize that you’re not the problem, you’re not the writer’s block, you keep lashing yourself – a form of self-punishment for perceived self-failure.

Anyone who writes (or practices any form of art or branch of science) has to be comfortable with failure if they’re trying to get to the truth – their experiential truth (I’m sensitive), a natural truth (people are born, people die), or scientific ones, like e=mc².

The moment the ego takes charge: pushes its spectacles up the nose and crosses its arms across the chest, writer’s block is inevitable. Judgment, though necessary to navigate life, is also the enemy of creativity who is thick friends with imperfection; whereas play, also friends with creativity, is the enemy of perfection.

Here goes:

I have wanted to play and but have been pushed toward perfection for as long as I can remember – a woman is kind, generous, sincere, puts others before herself, never gets angry, never talks back, anticipates needs of others before her own and is designed to successfully navigate complex relationship matrices without batting an eyelid. She is a healer, a counsellor, a cook, a cleaner, a laundromat, a financially savvy working professional outside of these jobs, and a self-actualizing bit of human species (‘coz she must have hobbies too). This woman can be modest in social settings and the damnest cur in bed.

Funny thing is, nowadays tech companies make machines that are advertised as having traits mentioned above. Not one android fulfils all the above criteria, though the dominant desire visible from the marketing seems to be to ultimately pack it all-in-one. You should check some of them out. Go on; invoke GG (the God Google), search for home bots, companion bots, healthcare bots and recruitment bots.

We’ll try this one last time:

I lost the art of playing and began writing to regain it. A few years later, goaded by perfection, I decided to go all in, threw my safety nets down the Grand Canyon (metaphorically, of course) and emulated what writers in the early decades of the twentieth century had done. I self-exiled. Now, they did it because they had no choice. I did it out of ambition and arrogance. And one fine day I found myself starving spiritually, nearly physically disfigured, blind and deaf with anger, and frothy with resentment. And I thought, did it go like this for T. S. Eliot? Did Oscar Wilde disintegrate to bits like this in jail? No wonder Virginia Woolf decided to kill herself. And that gorgeous poet put her head in the oven.

Writers are human beings after all, possessing a life force oriented towards community, stability and creation just like other people.

Wasn’t it a symptom of how badly we’re teaching the skill of the writing arts, creating this sharp dichotomy between imitation and originality, if we’re eulogising people’s lives going to shit, despite which they created such enduring works of art? Despite. The pain.

Imagine how it could be if we could build communities that assuage the pain so that creation need not cost emotional, psychological or physical lives.

So that growth, instead of rejection, may be the norm; and acceptance need not come at the cost of having to be so utterly perfect – in submission formats and writing, or in life.

DIY Your Writing

Nowadays I write to get at the truth of how things can be if we all come together and give each other a chance. Part of this was to give myself a chance, therefore the writing and self-publishing of 101 Stories in 101 Words. I picked one writing example that I have loved for more than a decade and decided to pay homage, hence the constraint of writing a tale in 101 words. 101 of them because the repetition appeals to the part of me that dwells within rhythms.

Writing this book was a chance I was able to give myself after four years of being part of the DIY MFA community and taking DIY MFA 101, after writing a decade of messy half-drafts for Nanowrimo, and years of participating in Story-A-Day.

The 101 course was crucial to developing a mind-set of growth and seeing failure as a learning opportunity rather than something that paralysed me. The community of people taking the course together, meeting for critique calls, discussing specific roadblocks, solutions and sharing milestones was essential to sustaining a writing practice. Even being a silent part of discussions about individual challenges and therefore, distinct clarifications did wonders for me.

Be kinder to yourself, expand the opportunities to play, the chances to build creatively and be part of supportive communities geared towards growth and expression, not despite the pain, but because of it.

So when are you giving yourself a chance?

Neha Mediratta is a writer based in Mumbai though she enjoys gallivanting around the globe virtually and in real life. Her decade-plus career spans multiple kinds of writing, editing and physical manifestation of unwieldy, avant-garde or truly ancient ideas, but writing poetry and coming up with entertaining fiction remains her first love.

The post DIY Writing: Are you giving yourself a chance? appeared first on DIY MFA.

One way I’ve found to settle my mind and distract it for a while from the terror I feel for my family, for my community, the nation and all of humanity, is to draw. When I draw, I don’t think of it as escapism. I think of it as essential therapy.

Drawing, for me, and I think for many people, came before written language. Somewhere in my boxes of memories of my kids as children I’ve tucked away the first circle my son drew and the drawings of dogs my daughter made, all drawn before they could spell their own names or write the ABC’s. Drawing has the capacity to return us to our child mind, before we recognized how big, complex and potentially scary the world beyond us could be.

Drawing takes us on a journey. It returns us to Neverland, the Hundred Acre Wood, Whoville, Where the Wild Things Are, and that place Just Around the Corner. 

Draw Anything

In graduate school at Cal Berkeley, I had two wonderful drawing teachers, Chip Sullivan and Joe Slusky. I was their TA for a freshman drawing course, but I learned so much from listening to them teach. Their way of drawing is collected in Impulse to Draw, including this poem fragment of something Joe said in class:

“To Draw is to take a poetic leap.

The leap connects us to the world,

The leap is the translation.”

Like Joe and Chip, and the many amazing drawing teachers I’ve had, I want to offer encouragement to draw. To draw anything. To draw nothing. To draw badly. You can draw alone, at home, under quarantine. You don’t need to share your drawings to have them work their magic on you. All it takes is a pencil or pen and some paper. You can draw digitally, if you have the technology at hand. If you’re isolated and without any of these materials, you can draw with your finger on your palm. I’ve watched enough National Spelling Bees to know this kind of invisible mark-making activates the mind and conjures memories.

Drawing is a joyful act. Even a person consumed by sorrow can appreciate this. Vincent van Gogh, for instance, no poster boy for happiness, said: “I sometimes think there is nothing so delightful as drawing.”

A Drawing Prompt

I’ve been working on a book, Doodling for Writers, that was going to be released through Books by Hippocampus this June, but has been postponed to the Fall, because the pandemic has given us all more pressing things to give our attention to. I’m sad not to have it coming out sooner, but trying not to die is more important than making a book right now. The book is designed to help writers let drawing be a part of their writing life. In it there will be doodle prompts. But why wait? If you’d like to give drawing a go, here is a doodle prompt from the book to get you started.

This one is a prompt to help you play around with drawing tools:

What you’ll need:

1. Pencils
2. Pens
3. Paper (a variety or one kind, can be in your doodle journal)
4. Permission to Play

Preparation:

Have you ever had a cat walk across your page while you’re writing/reading/editing? They dance over the work in an effort to seduce you into giving them all the attention you had been devoting to the paper under their paws. Think of this dance while you make a page of squares, each about the size of a cat’s paw.

Fill these small funny little kitty paw squares with doodles. For each square, you can play with a specific pencil or pen. You can use the white space around the paws to make notes about how you feel about each drawing tool.

You don’t have to draw anything in particular in the squares. Just play with what the tools can do in your hand. Press hard, be soft, try curly lines, go dark.

Try this prompt using different types of paper. Some choices to consider:

• Regular bond (plain copy machine paper)
• Rough toothy paper
• Newsprint
• Lined paper
• A thick smooth surface like a 100-pound smooth surface Bristol.
• Envelopes

Make notes in the white space (or whatever color paper you’re using).

I’ve been teaching myself to make fast-drawing videos that I post on Instagram (@rfishewan). I did one for this prompt to give you an idea of what you can do with your kitty paw squares. I grabbed what was at hand and didn’t pause or plan, because I want you to see that doodling can be done anywhere, anytime, with just about anything. It doesn’t need to be a masterpiece, just a delight in the making.

Draw, have fun, and find some peace of mind at a time when so little exists out in the world.

Wishing you all good health!

Rebecca Fish Ewan, a poet/cartoonist/writer and founder of Plankton Press, teaches in The Design School at Arizona State University. She grew up in Berkeley, California, and now lives in Arizona with her family. Her cartoon/free verse memoir, By the Forces of Gravity, was published in 2018 through Books by Hippocampus. You can connect with her at rebeccafishewan.com 

The post Drawing from Home appeared first on DIY MFA.

Today I have the distinct pleasure of having acclaimed writer and actor Michael Imperioli on the show!

Though Michael is best known for playing Christopher Moltisanti in the The Sopranos, a role that earned him an Emmy for Best Supporting Actor, he is also an accomplished screenwriter. He wrote five episodes of The Sopranos and was co-screenwriter for the film Summer of Sam which was directed by Spike Lee.

While still acting and writing for film and TV, with several upcoming projects in the works, Michael has also turned his artistic talent to novel writing with his debut The Perfume Burned His Eyes.

Listen in as we chat about this amazing book, and how to know when you’ve found the story to take all the way to the end.

In this episode Michael and I discuss:

• Finding your story and taking it to the finish line.
• Adding layers to your story with a unique narrative framework.
• When to use an epilogue and how to do it right.
• The advantages of novel writing vs. screenwriting.
• The fine art of book covers and why you need the right one.

Plus, Michael’s #1 tip for writers.

About Michael Imperioli

Michael Imperioli is best known for his starring role as Christopher Moltisanti in the acclaimed TV series The Sopranos, which earned him a Best Supporting Actor Emmy Award. He also wrote five episodes of the show and was co-screenwriter of the film Summer of Sam, directed by Spike Lee. Imperioli has appeared in six of Lee’s films and has also acted in films by Martin Scorsese, Abel Ferrara, Walter Hill, Peter Jackson, and the Hughes Brothers.

Upcoming projects include Bruno de Almeida’s Cabaret Maxime, The Last Full Measure alongside Peter Fonda, Christopher Plummer, and William Hurt, and ABC’s Alex, Inc.

The Perfume Burned His Eyes is, his debut novel, is available now.

To learn more about Michael and his novel check out his profile at www.akashicbooks.com.

The Perfume Burned His Eyes

Matthew is a sixteen-year-old boy living in Jackson Heights, Queens, in 1976. After he loses his two most important male role models, his father and grandfather, his mother uses her inheritance to uproot Matthew and herself to a posh apartment building in Manhattan. Although only three miles away from his boyhood home, “the city” is a completely new and strange world to Matthew.

Matthew soon befriends (and becomes a factotum of sorts to) Lou Reed, who lives with his transgender girlfriend Rachel in the same building. The artistic-shamanic rocker eventually becomes an unorthodox father figure to Matthew, who finds himself head over heels for the mysterious Veronica, a wise-beyond-her-years girl he meets at his new school.

The novel is written from the point of view of Matthew at age eighteen, two years after the story begins, and concludes with an epilogue in the year 2013, three days after Lou Reed’s death, with Matthew in his fifties.

If you decide to check out the book, we hope you’ll do so via this Amazon affiliate link, where if you choose to purchase via the link DIY MFA gets a referral fee at no cost to you. As always, thank you for supporting DIY MFA!

Link to Episode 193

(Right-click to download.)

If you liked this episode…

Head over to iTunes, Stitcher Radio or Google Play and subscribe so you’ll be first to know when new episodes are available.

Also, remember that sharing is caring so if you know anyone who might enjoy this podcast, please tell them about it or leave us a review so other listeners will want to check it out.

Until next week, keep writing and keep being awesome!

The post Episode 193: The Aesthetics of Writing — Interview with Michael Imperioli appeared first on DIY MFA.