The Writing Bag
I have a writing bag.
If I’m intending to spend any significant chunk of time writing, it will usually be away from home. I find I’m able to focus much better if I’m away from the distractions of the telly, laptop and fridge. I also enjoy writing in different environments; it becomes a part of the process. So I need a bag to transport my writing tools with me.
As my creative time has become more precious, I’ve started to realise that the content of the bag has become more important to the process. Sometimes, I need ideas. Sometimes, I’m lacking inspiration. And of course, I also need the basic tools for the jobs – which now includes drawing as well as writing.
So, choosing what to put in the bag has become an exercise in smart thinking. What are the fewest items I need to cover both inspiration and productivity? Yes, I know that I can have everything I need on an iPad, but I only find technology helpful in specific ways. The physical presence of a book or a card is a thousand times more effective than just another page displayed on a screen.
What’s great is that it works. And just in case you like the idea, here’s what my bag currently contains (details underneath):
The writing bag contents!
The Pot Boiler – a book by Spike Milligan
I love Spike’s work. He loved what he did, and it shines through his work. From simple sight gags to nonsense poetry, his material is best described as ‘simple genius’. A true inspiration.
‘No rules. Just write.’ – a free sampler from the Teach Yourself series of books. I love this because it’s packed with tips and is very light to carry.
Notepad – themed with Andy Warhol‘s work. This is a great little book that has diary pages, to do lists and note pages. I list everything I’m working on in here, and set target dates for all my projects. I also use the diary to make sure I’m booking onto events – like the Writer’s Toolkit in November – that will inspire me.
Notepad – A4 from Paperchase. I’m using this to write the first draft of my novel. It goes everywhere with me. It’ll probably be the first time ever that I use every single line of a notebook. I find it much, much easier to write in this rather than on an iPad or computer. I’d be gutted if I lost it.
Drawing pad – square from Paperchase. All of the cartoons are drawn in here before being imported onto an iPad for completion and colouring. The paper is very good quality.
Autobiography of Jacob Epstein – hardback, bought off abebooks.co.uk. Jacob Epstein is my favourite sculptor and has become even more so since I started reading about his life. This copy is 72 years old!
Van Gogh-themed notebook – my go-to book for writing down and expanding on ideas. This is my favourite book to write in, and usually results in some useable stuff.
Raindrops postcard – I just like the design of this. And it’s useful to have a card to just pop in the post to someone.
Art postcard – ‘Crash Head’ by Eduardo Paolozzi. Paolozzi’s sculptures are bonkers. This card came from the Pallant House Gallery in Chichester. It’s not my favourite of his works, but it makes me think of the others of his that I’ve seen.
Comedy Fix zine – it’s important to carry around at least one example of a project I’ve seen through to the end, so so that the evidence is there that I can do it!
John Clare postcard – a reminder that poetry can be serious and beautiful, and not just comic. This card came from a John Clare exhibition at Peterborough Museum.
Lizz Lunney postcard. Lizz’s creations always make me smile, and remind me that I should be aiming to up my game in the drawing stakes!
Greetings card – Gemma Correll. A reminder that simple ideas, when brilliantly executed, can and do sell.
Just a Note – ideas notebook. Hardly used, as I mostly use the Warhol book for quick ideas, but I do love the brand – yourstrulycards.co.uk
Blank notecards – for general use.
Sketching pencils, artist pens, writing pen, iPad stylus, eraser and sharpener – essential tools!
Oh yes – and finally, this is the bag. (Guess who was a teenager in the ’80s…):-
The writing bag
Do you have a writing bag, or does technology provide everything you need?
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Adobe Ideas
It’s a frustrating experience for me that I love visual art, but can’t actually produce anything decent of my own. Words, I can do. But ask me to draw you a picture of a horse, and it will doubtless end up looking like something totally unrelated, like a teapot. Or a mouse. Or a 1970s Triumph Dolomite.
For a long time, I’ve pondered about learning the art of cartooning. It would certainly come in handy. Even writing long-form comedy such as sitcoms can produce material that can be useful in other forms, such as cartoon strips. And I often have disjointed ideas that don’t exist as part of a larger project that I would love to slot in somewhere without having to shoe-horn it into other work.
So – I’m learning how to draw cartoon characters with the aid of a superb book by Christopher Hart entitled ‘Modern Cartooning’. It takes you through different techniques step-by-step, so that by the end of the book, you are equipped with enough knowledge to draw cartoon characters with confidence – from developing appropriate facial expressions, to getting the body type right, and most importantly making everything as funny as it can be.
This type of step-by-step book suits my learning style perfectly. I wrote Spectrum games as a teenager using one, as well as HTML back when roll-over images were the height of sophistication.
So, having bought a sketch pad and some artists pens and pencils, I sat down to learn how to draw. Which is when I realised how technology really can help make things much easier. Because a couple of weeks earlier, I’d downloaded an app onto my iPad called ‘Adobe Ideas’, which is a drawing program. It was fun to use, but I dismissed it after a while because it was too difficult to draw with any kind of accuracy. That was a massive error of judgement.
Because after a while sketching out my cartoons with old-fashioned paper and pencils, I realised that drawing is a very messy business. Instead of a clean-looking cartoon face, I’d be producing a face, yes, but a face covered with the scars of rubbed-out lines and smudged graphite. It’s the sort of thing you don’t see much of on ‘The Simpsons’.
So I began to think: what if, once I’d finished a cartoon, I could upload a copy of it to this app, which I could then use to clean up the image. I could even colour in areas of the drawing without having to resort to felt tip pens (which I always thought looked crap at school, because you could see all the pen strokes, as well as where the pen had started to run out, which made it look rubbish.)
And happily, it turned out that I can indeed do just that. In fact, I can do more. Because Adobe Ideas lets you import an image and keep it on a separate layer, so you can trace over that image from scratch – meaning that you can produce variations of the same drawing – very handy if you want to produce the same character with different expressions in three panes of a cartoon strip. Cheating? Nah. It’s called using the resources available to you. So all I have to do is take a photo of my drawing with my iPad, and then upload it to the app to then alter. Easy!
Now let me reassure you that I don’t suddenly believe I’m an artist. But what I can now do is produce drawings that are good enough to back up my writing – that I could either use as end products in themselves, or as ways of supporting the presentation of my ideas.
See what you think. The character is my own creation and is the first of two that illustrate a set-up/punchline gag. The first picture is the real sketch, and the second is the final result made on Adobe Ideas. I think it works really well!
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