Creativity Is Weird Options

[Ron Fortier]

After self-publishing my graphic novel, The Boston Bombers, Rob Davis and I discovered a few lettering typos in the book. I made a quick list of them (which I will gladly send anyone who has bought this book as is) and Rob put aside some time to make the corrections and upload the files at Ka-Blam. He’s almost done. Anyway, he writes to tell me while doing these corrections, he fell into rereading the comic again and was pleasantly surprised at how much it holds up to second readings.

In my reply to him, I said his feelings mirrored my own in that when I first got a copy of this collected edition, I sat down and read it cover to cover and loved it. Despite those pesky typos. Thing is, while reading and enjoying it, it was as if someone else was telling me this particular story. But I wrote it. Shouldn’t I be so familiar with every single line and dialog that it not appear new to me. Maybe it’s artwork combined with my words that evokes this feeling that is not mine, but a separate thing apart from me completely. It’s a weird feeling, almost as if I didn’t write it. I wonder if that happens to my fellow writers here. Do you ever look back on something you’ve written and then get a totally alien feeling as if someone else apart from you had done it?

Such is creativity, a magical, miraculous gift. And always a very mysterious one.

[ChadStrohl]

I've discovered that when that happens you have truly tapped into the muse during the creative process. I consider most creative process akin to an out of body experience. It's kind of funny the looks I'll get from people when I make a comment like... "I know if I'm going to draw a good picture when I can see it before I even make the first line." Another fun one in relation to writing is when I get excited and say, "I found out what (enter character here) is doing" as if I'm not actually creating the story rather than it's being dictated to me from somewhere else.

I like to think that the people I write about exist in some alternate reality and every so often I get a vague glimpse into their world and do my best to transcribe it to mine. I also like to think I'm not a complete lunatic for thinking like that

[Cary]

I find myself laughing at stuff I've forgotten I even included in a given script. I suppose it's a good thing that I still find it funny even though I knew the joke going in, but then that could just be my own twisted mind at work. And I've definitely read back over issues I've written and found them seeming distant, like the memory of doing the writing had almost worn off somehow. It's kinda cool though. I get so sick of dealing with a book after I've written it, corrected edits, seen the pencils, seen the inks, seen the colors, done the letters, uploaded it twice, converted the files, done post production and wrapped it that I can hardly stand to see it by the time it shows up in hard copy form. It's kinda nice actually liking it once the trauma of production madness fades!

[Ron Fortier]

Hahaha, good point Cary, about living with a project for so long and really just wanted it ...gone. Chad, you totally are in the groove about good stories all but telling themselves, we writers in the end becoming mere scribes to get it all out...from wherever it comes.

[Lainey]

I think you are a complete lunatic Chad.

[pinocchio]

painting and drawing is much the same for me, in the beginning there is the terror of the blank space but when it works you can see the thing on the page before you draw or paint a single line. And the idea that your characters exist, guess what, Stephen King has built his career on that belief. The flip side is I hate looking at my own work because all I can see are the things that don't quite work, but I guess thats why I work in classical realism, you have to be a bit ( a lot ?) OCD.

[Ron Fortier]

There is a true spirituality attached to creativity. Somehow as creators, we have a need inside us to tell stories, either with words or pictures...or sometimes both. It is a unique gift that enhances not we the creators, but hopefully our audiences as well. It is that storytelling that unites all of us. Powerful stuff and again, back to our topic here, I wonder how much of it we actually control...or does it in the end control us?