Joy, Joy, Joy, Joy of Drawing

Rather then cook up characters out of thin air I thought I'd peruse my collected drawings for candidates. I have boxes and boxes of stuff I've drawn over the years and I kept them "in case I could ever use them in the future." That future is here!

I then plop myself on our living room couch and think graphically!

I didn't leave clear directions when plotting chapter one so I'm using sticky notes to figure out who is sitting where.

I then sketch the character on rough Draft Five. I'm coloring them in, too, just for the fun of it. Pictured above: the character I've named Karenoia (the anxiety queen), and Joker (the bon mot king). I've also got preliminary drawings of Dr. Q, TA, and a few others.

This new stage of creation has my adrenaline pumping, dopamine surging, and serotonin gushing. The pleasure is hard to describe but take my word for it, few endeavors bring me this much joy.

Completed Draft Four!

Don't ask me how I did it; I'm as astonished as anyone. But after six months I'm done writing, and after what seems like 200 years I'm done arranging dialog boxes. Art Spiegelman did 'em by hand; I used technology. I hope that by doing so I haven't given the book a mechanical look. Anyway, I've been tweaking words for half a year forcing myself not to start drawing this thing. But the waiting is over and I'm giddy as a school girl.

This major shift in project management (moving from writer to artist) will be interesting to observe.

• Will my blog posts improve? My subject/predicate synapses will now be bored! 
• Will my whining about tedium decrease? Let's hope so! 
• Will my dopamine transmitters unleash euphoric brain chemicals? I can't wait!
• How long will drawing Draft Four (thumbnail sketches) take? 
• How will my initial readers respond? I've got 30 names I'm going to invite to "proof read" this thing with me. I'm going to ask them to invite their friends in secular university (age 18-22) to join us.
• Will I migrate to the drawing table I set up?
• Or will I be able to do these prelim drawings on the couch where I've planted myself?
• Will my decision to start drawing thumbnails rather than making full character design pages help or hurt? I plan on making up each character on each page and collect these into individual folders for each individual character. 

It's too dark to make a video so here are some photos of my labor since last Dec. 

You've seen this before (64 pages)

228 pages with scotch tapes faces inside

The world's most boring photo! (228 pages of scribbled character seating arrangements)

My pride and joy, Draft Four (229 pages waiting for thumbnail sketches)

The whole she-bang (with chapter division chart)

NOTE: As I add thumbnail sketches to Draft Four I'll be calling it Draft Five.

Further Tricks on How I Stay Focused When Bored by Tedium

This strategy is somewhat quirky but if it helps others stay focused, great. It’s complicated, so hang in here. We begin with three mental images: 1) Superman, 2) time lapse photography, and 3) high speed photography.

1) In the TV show Smallville, Clark Kent (Superman) runs really, really fast. When he does, the world around him slows down. From his point of view, he’s just plodding along. But compared to the world out there he’s lightening fast. It’s a “relativity of time” sort of thing. At first glance it seems like that would be a cool skill—speed up you, slow down time. At second glance, however, if we all lived at a Clark Kent pace 24/7 we’d eventually want more time. It’s human nature; if we were given a 36 hour day it wouldn't be long until we’d want a 48 hour day. It’s the human condition for our reach to exceed our grasp.

Okay, got this “relativity of time” thing in your head?

2) Now, think of all the things around you that slowly decrease, little by little. Over time I can barely see the amount of coffee grounds in the one pound coffee can in my kitchen slowly diminish. I barely see the toothpaste in the tube gradually empty out. But if we were to take a time lapse photo of the coffee can or toothpaste tube every day and then watch them sped up, our cans and tubes would empty instantly. In real time it takes weeks to empty those things. Like those sped up shots of growing plants, moving clouds, or blooming roses--time is condensed. We need not take actual photos to visualize this; with our imagination we can see time sped up.

3) Finally, think of all those high speed photography Youtube clips you’ve seen of bullets slowly puncturing balloons, drops of water slowly falling into a sink, or the spray of germs from a slow motion sneeze. When filmed at super high speed (like Superman), and watched at a slower speed (like those of us not from the planet Krypton), fast actions slow down.

With these three goofy images in mind, let’s turn our attention to your tedious tasks using my tedious tasks for illustration.

When I see a pile of 428 pages each of which requires ten to fifteen minutes of tedious editing, my heart sinks. I shudder at the hours I’m going to “waste.” I cringe at the thought of missing out on sunshine, fresh air, and hanging with friends. To combat those negative thoughts I do the following.

I pretend I’m Superman running real fast and the world around me is moving real slow. While traveling at that super human pace I feel like Superman feels, just plodding along, tweaking one tedious page at a time. Even Superman feels like he’s going slowly, but he’s doing his best. This relieves me of the pressure I feel to “work faster.”

I pretend I’m taking daily photos of the stack of un-edited pages in front of me and in my mind I speed up the film and weeks of real time are condensed to a fifteen second video clip. The height of my papers magically shrinks. This relieves me of the illusion, “I’m not making any progress.”

I pretend each tedious task (clicking a mouse 100s of times on each page) is being filmed at high speed and will be replayed in slow motion. This reminds me of how many actions I actually do per page. What takes a tedious minute in real time looks in slow motion like an infinite number of muscle movements, eye/hand coordination, and precise acts. This relieves me of the faulty notion, “This is unskilled work.”

If the above mental tricks don’t work for you….repeat after me:

1. Instant gratification takes too long.
2. We over estimate what we can do in a day but under estimate what we can do in a year.
3. “He who gathers money little by little makes it grow.” (Proverbs 13:11).
4. "Moments tumble like grains of sand falling through an hourglass of time" is a stupid metaphor in this high tech age but sounds more poetic than “digital minutes on our cell phone alarms tick away.”
5. The world will beat a path to my door, folks will stand in the snow to get a glimpse of my work, and what doesn’t kill me makes me stronger.
6. Upon completion of this task I will win a Nobel Prize in one or more the following categories: peace, economics, literature, physics, chemistry, physiology and medicine.

Making Tedious Work Tolerable

As I near the end of Draft Four (oh joy, oh rapture) I wonder how I slogged through the weeks of mind numbing tedium. Here are the ideas I found helpful.....from the book of Ecclesiastes, of course. To make your tedious tasks tolerable I suggest you...


Fight aimlessness by answering these five questions 

1. What do people gain from all their labors at which they toil under the sun?
2. What do they gain since they toil for the wind?
3. What do people get for all the toil and anxious striving with which they labor under the sun?
4. What do workers gain from their toil?
5. For whom am I toiling, and why am I depriving myself of enjoyment?

In Ecclesiastes these five questions are existential, cosmic, and rhetorical and Qoholet’s specific answers are “Nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, and nobody.” If you don’t have time to be existential, if you've got bills to pay and tasks to accomplish, then write out your long term objectives, outcomes, and immediate goals. What are you going to gain from all your effort? What's the hoped for pay off?


Fight boredom with these seven reminders you’re not the first to feel this way 

1. What a heavy burden God has laid on mankind! 
2. I hated life, because the work that is done under the sun was grievous to me.
3. My heart began to despair over all my toilsome labor under the sun.
4. All their days their work is grief and pain; even at night their minds do not rest.
5. When I surveyed all that my hands had done and what I had toiled to achieve, everything was meaningless.
6. There was no end to his toil…
7. I applied my mind to observe the labor that is done on earth—people getting no sleep day or night. 

Fight slothfulness by repeating these eight calls to diligence 

1. Fools fold their hands and ruin themselves. 
2. Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might.
3. Skill will bring success.
4. Whoever watches the wind will not plant; whoever looks at the clouds will not reap.
5. Through laziness, the rafters sag; because of idle hands, the house leaks.
6. Invest in seven ventures, yes, in eight; you do not know what disaster may come upon the land.
7. Sow your seed in the morning, and at evening let your hands not be idle, for you do not know which will succeed, whether this or that, or whether both will do equally well.
8. For there is a proper time and procedure for every matter, though a person may be weighed down by misery.

Fight tedium by repeating these thirteen positive affirmations

1. My heart took delight in all my labor, and this was the reward for all my toil.
2. A person can do nothing better than to …find satisfaction in their own toil.
3. There is a time to build.
4. There is a time to weep (at the tedium) and a time to laugh (at completed tasks).
5. There is nothing better for people than to be happy and to do good while they live. 
6. Find satisfaction in all [your] toil—this is the gift of God.
7. Enjoy [your] work, because that is [your] lot.
8. God keeps [us] occupied with gladness of heart.
9. It is appropriate for a person to …find satisfaction in their toilsome labor.
10. Be happy in [your] toil—this is a gift of God.
11. Banish anxiety from your heart and cast off the troubles of your body.
12. I commend the enjoyment of life.
13. Joy will accompany [you] in [your] toil all the days of the life God has given [you] under the sun.

Recall the six factors that make work interesting

1. Complexity Labor with wisdom, knowledge and skill. Give yourself little challenges to increase complexity (and interest). I asked myself, "how many pages can I complete in an hour, how many pages in a day or a week?"
2. Competition All toil and all achievement spring from one person’s envy of another. We don’t want to covet another person’s job, but we can emulate and try to exceed other's skill.
3. Deadlines Remember your creator …before the days of trouble come and the years approach when you will say, “I find no pleasure in them.” Keep the grave in mind; we’re all in a race against the clock, the grim reaper, and the coming days of trouble.
4. Variety Better one handful with tranquility than two handfuls with toil. Take breaks, break up the tedium with leisure…change work locations. I'd go from the living room couch to the kitchen table to my office desk.
5. Ethics: Follow the ways of your heart and whatever your eyes see, but know that for all these things God will bring you into judgment. There are lines which should not be crossed and staying within those bounds requires creativity.
6. Completion: The end of a matter is better than its beginning. Dangling finished task in front of you eggs us on. 

I've turned the book of Ecclesiastes into a "how to" book which it definitely is not. Yet, because I've marinated my brain in absurdities, ambiguities, and anomalies for the last seven months I give myself permission to throw hermeneutics out the window. 

Boredom Busters and More Maus

I must not hate whining enough to quit, because here comes another whiny rant. I am simply not cut out for the tedium of connecting word balloons. There are personality strengths which allow some people to engage in repetitive work day after day. Bless them! Somebody's got to assemble lap tops, pick lettuce, or paste labels on cans of corn. But I am not possessed of those strengths. I need frequent breaks!

I just completed page 347 (arranging pages, word balloons, speakers' positions, etc). Less than 100 pages to go. I am aiming to be done by July 1 (7 days). But I've been at it for hours today and gotta shake up the slumbering synapses.

Why I’ll not win a Pulitzer Like Art Speigelman

1. Art began his project at age 24, I at age 59.
2. Art did massive background research, I none at all.
3. Art’s story is rooted in history, the “central trauma of the twentieth century.” My story is abstract, obtuse, rarefied, talking heads.
4. Art varied his time line, mixing chronologies. I, sticking to the text of Ecclesiastes line by line, am strictly linear.
5. Art used multiple locations; I’m stuck in a university class room.
6. Each of Art’s drawings went through multiple permutations, thumbnails, sketches, and drafts. I plan on doing just one rough and then ink the thing.
7. Art took eleven years. I plan on finishing my work in one year.
8. Art’s subject matter is gripping: suicide, genocide, survival. My subject matter will appeal only to the depressed.
9. Art put himself in the book, self disclosing to the nth degree, and readers get to know him. In my work I make two or three goofy cameo appearances only and readers won’t know me at all.
10. Art uses real characters (parents, guards, Poles, etc). My cast is entirely fictional.
11. While creating his graphic novel he began meeting with a psychiatrist. Me, no.
12. Art grapples with history; I grapple with existentialism, theodicy, theology, teleology, and faith.
13. Art drew in black and white; I’ll draw in a pleasant, decorative Tin Tin style.

 Why I Might Win a Pulitzer

1. Both of our works are “laced with despair.”
2. Both of our works grapple with “crystalline ambiguity.” P. 33
3. Both of our works ponder evil in the universe.
4. Both of us “write what we know.” He knew Holocaust; I know epistemological perplexity.

Okay...back to those mind numbing word balloons.

Musings on MetaMaus by Art Spiegelman

To break up the mind numbing tedium of tweaking panels and word balloons I gave my synapses a break and devoured Art Spiegelman's memoir of how he created the Pulitzer prizewinning graphic novel, Maus.

Here are comments I found most stimulating.

“…in making this kind of work, one has to inhabit and identify with each character. You have to act out their poses, you have to think them through…it is true that there is a kind of gestalting necessary just to be able to inhabit each character.” P. 35

I've written elsewhere about sub-personalities but this was a nice reminder that I am in my creation.

“I’d conceived of making some long comic book that needed a bookmark…and had to find something actually worth doing. I didn't have the stamina to devote myself to a one-hundred, two-hundred, three-hundred-page book just to serve up a lot of yucks or escapist melodrama.” P. 42

I relate. My work includes humor because "the sweetness of lips increases learning," (Proverbs). But humor isn't the point. My pictures and text will serve a greater purpose, simplifying one of history's most under appreciated existential texts.

“I guess I've always preferred research to writing or drawing.” P. 43

I'm doing hardly any research (other than arranging with a college professor friend of mine permission to take reference photos inside a large classroom). I'm making no trips to Poland or the New York Public library. 

“I remember a line from Shoah. A Jewish commander of the 1943 Warsaw ghetto uprising says, ‘If you could lick my heart it would poison you.’ It indicates just how complete the absence of sunlight can be. To find a tone that could be informed by that bleakness and not be an inevitable prescription for suicide was difficult…To avoid that and still allow for the small moments that are what make a life worth living demanded a tone that I needed to find in Maus: how to avoid despair or cynicism without becoming fatuous. And Pavel’s discussion of what it means to soberly take stock of just how fucking meaningless everything is and what one nevertheless does from moment to moment was very useful for me—not just as a cartoonist, but as a model to aspire to.” P. 70

Dr. Q's bleak pessimism could inspire suicidal thoughts in the vulnerable, so my purpose is to validate his pessimism (if world affairs don't make you depressed you're not paying attention) while hoping to call attention to as Art says, what one nevertheless does from moment to moment. This is the existentialist challenge.

“In 2007 the Anne Frank House published a fictionalized color series of graphic novels specifically for an international teaching aid about the Holocaust. They’re very earnest and drawn in a pleasant Tin Tin style.” P. 127

Oh-oh. Tin Tin has been my inspiration. Looks like Ecclesiastes University will be drawn in a "pleasant" style.

“During that period of groping for a style, I also thought about cutting between the present and the past by having black and white line drawings intercut with gray wash drawings, or using full-color, which would have been way too decorative….” P. 145

And EU will be drawn in a decorative style! If the medium is the message, and the medium is pleasant and decorative, how will that "carry" the angst? The in-congruent juxtaposition may serve me well: an absurd linkage of pleasant decoration with philosophical nihilism may just be the absurd boost I'll need to pull this off.

More musings later.

My References and Favorite Commentaries

Status Report

Just finished page 289 (Eccl. 8:9) in Draft Four.

Each successive draft takes longer than the one previous. I would not have predicted this. I thought things would go faster as time passes. Alas, I am very wrong. The reasons for the slow down? In earlier drafts one could slop any old idea together. As one nears completion one becomes more careful knowing the days of editing are nearing an end.

Draft Four is 428 pages of hard copy with completed text, word balloons, and panel arrangements just waiting for pencil roughs. When I do the pencil sketches on Draft Four do I still call it Draft Four? Draft Five doesn't seem right. How about Draft Four, Part Two?

The stage (as I now imagine it) will be an angular, straight lines, interior class room. The characters will be lumpy and round and flexible. Lumpy characters on their angular stage will be "carried" in panels which themselves are angular, square, rectangle, and uniform. The six panel "grid" for each page gives me leeway to combine panels in about 6-8 configurations. But they're all very orderly and not cartoony at all. This raises an interesting question about graphic novels. When does the art serve itself rather than the text? I don't want to get so fancy with drawing that story flow is sabotaged.

Creating is evolution; evolution is creation. As I tweak dialog and word balloons I'm tantalized by the visual jokes I anticipate making (pictures on student tee shirts, caricatures, Power Point slide shows, lap top screens). The odd thing is....I don't know what those jokes will be but I'm confident they'll show up when I need them.

I purchased METAMAUS by Art Spiegelman. He won a Pulitzer for his graphic novel, MAUS. As I read METAMAUS I'm hoping to find tips on how I too can win a Pulitzer. There are so many differences between our creations that I'm not holding my breath. At the same time, I am highly inspired by his process.  It took him eleven years! I'm giving myself one to two, max. He started when he was 24. I'm almost 60. Were I young I'd perhaps be more careful and thorough. Sadly, I gotta get this book done soon as there are other tasks I need to accomplish in my third third (age 60-90).

Ecclesiastes Deserves Its Negative Reputation

In college I learned the difference between snarl and purr words. Snarl words grate on us, irritate us, carry a negative connotation. Purr words soothe, comfort, and assuage anxiety.

Neuro Linquistic Programming (NLP) puts great stock in paying attention to how many snarl words clutter our vocabulary. The theory being, replace snarl words with purr words and thereby improve one's outlook on life.

Qoheleth never got the memo. Here, for your reading enjoyment, is a list of the snarl words in Ecclesiastes. Read 'em and weep.

1.                  affliction

2.                  afraid

3.                  afraid of heights

4.                  alone

5.                  anger

6.                  angry

7.                  anxiety

8.                  anxious striving

9.                  appetite never satisfied

10.             bad

11.             bad smell

12.             bitten by a snake

13.             bitter

14.             breaks

15.             bribe

16.             broken

17.             burden

18.             cannot enjoy

19.             cannot understand

20.             cares

21.             caught in a cruel net

22.             chains

23.             chance

24.             chasing after the wind

25.             contend

26.             corrupts

27.             crackling of thorns

28.             crime

29.             crooked

30.             curse

31.             cursing

32.             danger

33.             days of darkness

34.             days of trouble

35.             dead flies

36.             death

37.             depriving

38.             desire no longer stirred

39.             despair

40.             despised

41.             destroy

42.             die

43.             dim

44.             disaster

45.             do not know the way to town

46.             drag

47.             drunkenness

48.             dust

49.             endangered

50.             ensnare

51.             envy

52.             error

53.             evil

54.             extortion

55.             fail to enjoy his prosperity

56.             faint

57.             fall

58.             fall unexpectedly

59.             fate

60.             fear

61.             few and meaningless days

62.             folly

63.             forgotten

64.             frustration

65.             goads

66.             great misfortune

67.             grief

68.             grievous evil

69.             grinders cease

70.             harm

71.             hate

72.             heavy burden

73.             house leaks

74.             idle hands

75.             injured

76.             injustice

77.             jealousy

78.             judgment

79.             know nothing

80.             lack sense

81.             laziness

82.             madness of folly

83.             meaningless

84.             miserable

85.             misery

86.             misfortune

87.             mistake

88.             mourning

89.             never satisfied

90.             no comforter

91.             no further reward

92.             no longer heeded

93.             no one can discover

94.             no one knows what is coming

95.             no one to help

96.             no pleasure

97.             no rest

98.             no sleep

99.             not content

100.         not finding

101.         not go well

102.         not plant

103.         not reap

104.         nothing gained

105.         offenses

106.         oppressed

107.         oppression

108.         overpowered

109.         pain

110.         perishing

111.         pit

112.         pity

113.         poor

114.         poverty

115.         prison

116.         protest

117.         provoked

118.         rafters sag

119.         realm of the dead

120.         rebuke

121.         revile

122.         rights denied

123.         ruin

124.         sad face

125.         schemes to do wrong

126.         severed

127.         shadow

128.         shattered

129.         shouts

130.         siege works

131.         sin

132.         sinful

133.         sinner

134.         slaves

135.         snake bites

136.         snare

137.         sorrow

138.         stoop

139.         stupid

140.         stupidity of wickedness

141.         taken in a snare

142.         tears

143.         times are bad

144.         toil

145.         toil of fools

146.         toilsome labor

147.         trap 

148.         trapped by evil times

149.         tremble

150.         troubles of your body

151.         unclean

152.         warning

153.         weapons of war

154.         wearisome

155.         weighs heavily

156.         wicked

157.         wicked madness

158.         wickedness

159.         without meaning

160.         woe

161.         wrong