Poet and cartoonist, Rebecca’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. She was also a long-time DIY MFA columnist, writing about books with words and pictures, and she continues as part of our extended team as a contributor at large.

Rebecca has an MFA in creative writing from ASU, where she has been a landscape design professor for 25+ years. She grew up in Berkeley, California, and lives with her family in Arizona. Her book-length work includes A Land Between, By the Forces of Gravity, Water Marks, and her new book, Doodling for Writers, which released October 2020.

In this episode Rebecca and I discuss:

• How writers can get out of their own way and reclaim their love of drawing.
• Why writers need to embrace searching as a part of the writing process.
• The importance of finding tools you love (and she shares her favorites!).

Plus, her #1 tip for writers.

About Rebecca Fish Ewan

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.

You can find her on her website or follow her on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

Doodling for Writers

Drawing and doodling in the margins, on napkins, anywhere can contribute to your writing process and fuel your creativity.

In Doodling for Writers, memoirist and cartoonist Rebecca Fish Ewan combines her wit and wisdom with practical, engaging prompts and activities to illustrate how simple sketching can get you over hurdles, bring back memories, and even provide a roadmap for where your story needs to go.

Full of encouragement and anecdotes, Fish Ewan’s cartoon-self accompanied by a few sidekicks will guide you through the basics of drawing and then show you how to apply it to your writing process through character sketches, place maps, and more.

In the author-illustrator’s words, ”This book is not about getting writers to abandon their craft so they can become artists. For one, writing is an art form, so they’re already artists. For two, this book is about letting drawing enrich their writing life, not replace it.”

Pick up this book, pick up a pencil and erase the notion that you can’t draw.

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 356

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Until next week, keep writing and keep being awesome!

The post Episode 356: Doodling for Writers – Interview with Rebecca Fish Ewan 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.

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.