The Creative Process

Here's a brief summary of the creative writing process. As mentioned in recent posts, I've written "dialog" for chapters 1-6. There are 12 chapters in Ecclesiastes so at this half way point I jump in at Ecclesiastes 7:1.

Mr. Q says, "A good name is better than perfume."

I muse over this, pondering what a classroom of 20-somethings might think of this statement. I know how the class has responded to the first six chapters of Mr. Q's lectures so I'm not entirely adrift; there are precedents, patterns, and familiar (although still nondescript) characters.

I jot a student's initial response, "Finally Mr. Q is giving us something practical we can use." (There's been a history of complaints by the students regarding Mr. Q's pointless laments about the pointlessness of life).

Another student chimes in summarizing what they think Mr. Q is getting at, "A reputation that stinks can't be eliminated with cologne."

Another says, "A pleasant impression that lasts comes not from a bottle but from good behavior."

A fourth says, "It's better to work on our insides than our outsides."

This is all pretty benign stuff and is my attempt to flesh out the point of Mr. Q's words. Knowing, however, what Mr. Q's next words will be I set up a gag with student number five, "Thank you, Mr. Q! My hopes for this class have been restored." (end of six panel strip).

(beginning of next six panel strip). Mr. Q: "And the day of death is better than the day of birth."

I softened the first half of verse one (perfume comments) in order to highlight the hard edge of the second half of verse one, "death is better than life" to which student five on the previous page now laments, "My optimism just vanished."

Frequent readers of Ecclesiastes may gloss over the absurdity of Mr. Q's last comment. My ambition as a writer/artist is to say, "Not so fast! Did you hear what Mr. Q just said?" With dialog and (eventual) cartoons I hope to give Mr. Q a voice, a hearing, an opportunity to explain himself (through student's words) for his outrageous comments and Ecclesiastes 7:1b is one of the more outrageous.

I'll record the completion of this teacher/student exchange in my next post. But first another note concerning process. There are 222 verses in Ecclesiastes. If I chop each in half (or thirds) and give each it's own six panel cartoon strip, I'll be creating between 450 and 500 strips. Since the setting of these strips is inside a university classroom there will be no car crashes, leaps from tall buildings, or exotic beach scenes. It's going to be a lot of talking heads. This sounds boring so my ambition is to create exquisite caricatures and dialog.

To keep the dialog crisp and engaging I will expunge every superfluous word, arcane reference, and lumbering sentence. To do this I am walking the fine line between past, present, and future. I know what I've written in the first six chapters (past) so there is some context (present). And I have a general grasp of what Mr. Q will say (future). But...I do not look ahead more than a few verses to see what's coming. The circle of light cast by a flashlight illumines one's steps only a few feet at a time; the scope of light I'm working with is only a few verses at a time. I really do feel like I'm groping in the dark, step by step, verse by verse, slowly marching to the end of chapter 12.

Once dialog for all 12 chapters is complete I'll do "grand" editing, checking for flow, lags, lulls, and lumpy prose. For example, I introduced Mr. Q's TA in about chapter five which was a mistake. She should be introduced earlier since her role will be to elaborate on Mr. Q's utterances.

So this is the process. Next post: how I turned perfume and death days into grist for philosophical reflection.