Under the Covers (Lisa Chellman)

I just got to pet an opossum, a baby alligator, an armadillo, and a baby ostrich. I also got a close-up look at a tarantula and helped carry a 9 foot, 80 pound (baby) Burmese python around the auditorium.

My job rocks.

We hired zoologist Dr. Robert James to do his Animal Encounters program for a packed auditorium (about 85 people, and there were people who went disappointed). He brings a half dozen animals with him and walks the aisles with each as he talks about them.

You're allowed to touch all of them except for the tarantula—which made the stroll upon a little girl's hand. You're allowed to take pictures and video (I did not, sorry to say). The only rule is no talking.

All the animals are rescues who will be rehabilitated and released to the wild or orphans who have imprinted on humans and cannot be released. The animals are attuned to Dr. James's voice, to the point where they expect it. When he's on the other side of the world, back home his animals listen to recordings of his voice.

Dr. James said that after he spent time as a POW he vowed he would never cage an animal again, so he's very anti-cage, anti-leash. He guided the ostrich through the aisles with verbal commands in Spanish.

He also talked about appreciating diversity, not making judgments about an animal or person without having met them first, not making generalizations about a whole species/ethnicity/whatever based on your experience with an individual. Nevertheless, there were still people (adults, need I say?) who shrank back in fear/disgust when certain animals came their way. Sad.

More take-home points:
- Armadillos are hairy in spite of their leathery skin.
- Some possums have very pretty, clever faces.
- Alligators are dumb, have no saliva (so they don't eat unless they're in water to lubricate their meals), and bear a glassy-eyed expression similar to my dog when she's blissed out.
- Pythons feel like one really long, intense, chilly muscle and get freakin' heavy after 10 minutes. Also, they have two three-inch-long vestigial legs that retract into their bodies near the tail.
- My job, again, rocks.

I'm still avoiding the sestina. If I'm ever bedridden for several months at a time, maybe I'll get around to it. Until then, don't count on it.

Meanwhile, the next exercise in The Ode Less Travelled is to write a pantoum. Stephen Fry compares it to bells tolling, but I thought that with a few more exclamation points it would suit the circular mentality of my dog Carly very well.

Pantoum of a Canine Spaz

I leap up from my latest nap—
ohboyohboyohboyohboy—
charge to my water dish for a lap,
jump-attack my favorite toy.

Ohboyohboyohboyohboy!
There’s so much I’ve gotta do:
slobber up my favorite toy
andchewandchewandchewandchew.

But that’s not all, there’s more to do!
Bite the heads of squirrels and rats!
Andchewandchewandchewandchew
the tails off little kitty cats!

I’ll bite the heads off squirrels and rats,
show them all that I’m the boss—
and not those stupid kitty cats.
Each of us must bear a cross,

and mine’s to prove that I’m the boss.
There’s cunning in my doggy head,
an intellect you dare not cross.
But now it’s time to go to bed;

I’ve overtaxed my doggy head.
I race to my water dish for a lap,
turn three times, flop into bed.
It’s time to take another nap!

That actually could have gone on another ten stanzas, come to think of it. We'll just pretend that was Carly on a 90-degree day, when her energy level is below average.

This week I also participated in Laura Salas's 15 Words or Less poetry challenge, inspired by a delicious photo of a pomegranate.

Yat-Yee Chong has this week's Poetry Friday round-up. Check it out!

Gray weather, gray moods. On the bright side, I've been trying to clean off my desk at work—partly by doing things that need to be done, partly by stacking everything else in a tidy procrastination pile—and came across a paper scrap that's been sitting here since, um, January.

I kept moving it around because it resonated with me and I didn't want to throw it away. It's a quote from author Eva Ibbotson, from her wonderful interview on the Just One More Book podcast. She's talking about the value of writing novels, especially for children, in which everything comes out all right in the end—even though reality rarely treats us so. She says this:

I find it quite difficult to maintain happiness. It has to be fought for. (4:10)

Totally.

Anyway, now that it's here on the blog, I'm going to recycle that scrap. Yes! Four more square inches of desk revealed!

Here's another gem from The Day I Became an Autodidact, by Kendall Hailey, apropos in a week in which I've decided I've done enough banging my head against the wall on one project and must work on something else for a while:

The truth is, I don't know how I am to go on writing at all, since I am pretty well convinced it's all excrement. But who knows, there is always the vague chance it's just shit. The only thing is, I'm going to have to ask soon and if anyone tells me it's anything but brilliant, I'll die. I type with one hand and hold my nose with the other, but at least I feel I'm getting something done. (p. 73)

That about says it.

Since Carey turned me on to The Teenage Liberation Handbook: How to Quit School and Get a Real Life and Education, by Grace Llewellyn, I've adopted a pretty critical stance toward formal education. (Actually, my husband would probably tell you this is a vast understatement.) Subbing in the Chicago Public Schools for six months and dealing with inane school assignments at the library for three years have not improved my opinion.*

I was very successful in school, and school did benefit me in certain ways, but I cannot say that it was a very happy experience over all or that I think my time couldn't have been spent more productively elsewhere. My real life as a teen was outside of school: Girl Scouts, art classes, camping and camp counseling, church choir, church youth group, GLBTQ youth group. Going to the theatre with my parents, riding bikes and hanging out in the woods with my friends, writing stories in my notebooks, baby-sitting, riding my bike to the library, sketching in the park, learning to cook.

I realize I was very lucky. I grew up in an area where there were lots of outside-of-school opportunities and you didn't need a car to get everywhere. I had smart, supportive parents. And I'm a pretty driven person who does well with self-directed learning and self-discipline. In other words, while unschooling may not be the right thing for every kid in every situation, I think I would have been an ideal candidate.

I think most smart adults become autodidacts once they get their diplomas—taking up a new musical instrument or developing their skill on an old one, learning a new art or craft, studying a foreign language, traveling the world, writing books, making films, reading about everything under the sun. It stretches the definition of autodidactism, but I think taking community center classes should count, too, because they're voluntary and you do most of the work independently. No one is grading you. It's all up to your own interest and self-discipline.

Don't you ever wonder what you could have done if you'd had all those hours you spent in classroom drudgery to pursue your interests? I didn't need formal schooling to become a librarian, writer, or web designer. I might even have found my path sooner without school in the way.

Anyway, enough kvetching about my misspent youth. (It's all grist for the mill, after all.) The other day Collecting Children's Books mentioned a book called The Day I Became an Autodidact and the Advice, Adventures, and Acrimonies That Befell Me Thereafter, by Kendall Hailey. It's the memoir of a teen girl who left formal schooling in high school and pursued autodidactism. Clearly I needed to read it.

I started it today and am already in love. The narrative voice is charmingly old-fashioned (though it was published in 1988), and there's so much humor to it. I've wished it wasn't a library book so I could go through with a highlighter. There are so many gems. Some snippets that have stuck out to me already...

Upon receiving a summer reading list:

I read (rarely skimming) everything school tells me to from the middle of September to the middle of June, but the summer is mine. And being told what to read during summer suddenly made me realize that I don't really like being told what to read during the fall, winter, and spring either. (foreword)

Upon reading about the life of Tolstoy:

It turns out that to be a great literary genius, not only do you not have to go to college, you don't even have to be very good at educating yourself. I always like to begin a new phase of life on a comforting note. (p. 4-5)

Upon finishing Anna Karenina:

His novel has aroused in me many doubts about how we can hope to do good things. I dreamed last night that the only way I wouldn't feel guilty spending my life being a writer would be to cure cancer first—and even then I would still feel a little guilty. (p. 5)

On sleep:

I hate sleep and I hate how much time I spend doing it, but, quite frankly, I think it is the only thing that keeps human beings from going mad: the illusion that life is not one continuous stream, but the more manageable concept of days. A day, contemplated in its entirety, is hard enough to deal with. A life, contemplated in its entirety, is an impossible concept. (p. 10)

I could go on, but you get the picture. I look forward to reading more!

*No offense intended to the teachers out there. I know you do the best you can with what you've got for curriculum, NCLB standards, etc. And there are tons of families out there that could never pull off unschooling, and those kids need you! But is school everything it could/should be? I don't think so.

Saturday I attended a little workshop at my library, "How to Write Comics," presented by Russell Lissau. He's a Chicago-area journalist and also a writer for DC, notably the Batman Strikes series for kids. He had some interesting things to say, much of it applicable to writing in general as well as comics in particular. Here are my notes.

General process for big (non-indie) comics

- Writer writes script.
- Editor reviews script, works with writer to make changes as needed.
- Penciller draws the action of the strip... in pencil. Writer and editor proof pencil drawings, only requesting changes if there's something vastly wrong.
- Inker, a/k/a finisher inks the drawings, adding weight, depth, etc.
- Letterer adds dialogue balloons and "special effects." In most major comics today, lettering is done by computer.
- Colorist colors the art. This, too, is usually done by computer these days.

A comic book script is written like a movie script.

Panel by panel, writer sets the shot, describes the characters and action, and provides dialogue. Lissau's scripts run about 25 typed pages for a 22 page comic. He outlines before he starts writing so he can be sure to meet the page limit. He usually starts with a good idea of the beginning and the end and works out the middle as he goes.

Three-act structure: beginning, middle, end

The first act establishes character and ends with an "inciting incident" that puts the characters in danger. The second act is where all the "good stuff" (i.e., action, series of challenges) happens. The third act contains the finale and resolution.

Lissau challenged us to draw a three-act comic using just three panels. This was harder than you might think. He recommended checking out Mad Magazine's "Spy vs. Spy" as a perfect example of simple, three-act comics.

Comics, Lissau said, used to be like soap operas, "all second act" with no final resolution. This has changed over the years. The money is now in trade collections, so publishers are looking for finite plot arcs spread across 6+ issues.

Panel layouts

In the old days, pages had a rigid grid of panels so that as much action as possible could be crammed in. Now there's more variety. You might have four small panels across the width of a page, followed by a single "widescreen" panel, etc. Or you might even have a full-page "splash" (for something super-super-important).

Tips on pacing

A panel is a captured moment in time. It includes one or more more-or-less simultaneous (or at least rapid-fire) actions. Combine panel action/dialogue when you can. He cited Brian Michael Bendis, "enter a scene late and leave it early." (That's advice I, literal-minded writer that I am, can never hear too often.)

Lissau talked about building tension and momentum by varying panel layout. All page real estate, area-wise, has the same weight, so a big panel should contain a weightier/more important moment that the reader spends extra time with, while small panels contain quick action or dialogue that the eyes can skip quickly across.

He compared this to music: a widescreen panel is like a whole note, a series of narrow panels side by side is like staccato quarter notes, etc. Lissau attributed the "comics as music" analogy to Warren Ellis.

Cliffhangers should always be placed in the bottom-right panel, so the reader is compelled to move to the next page. It's even better if that cliffhanger is on the right-hand side of the page, so the reveal occurs after the page-turn.

You can also compel the reader forward by breaking dialogue with an ellipsis and continuing on the following page. This also works well for scene transitions. I wish I could explain this one better, but when I try it gets too complicated.

Also

Dialogue should be written in the order that the characters appear in the panel, left to right. If you need to switch that up, you should warn the artist that the characters' positions will need to be switched. Depending on the scene, you can see why that could be a tricky proposition.

Recommended reading

- The DC Comics Guide to Writing Comics, by Dennis O'Neil (Watson-Guptill, 2001)
- How to Draw Comics the Marvel Way, by Stan Lee and John Buscema (Fireside, 1984)
- The Complete Idiot's Guide to Creating a Graphic Novel, by Nat Gertler and Steve Lieber (Alpha, 2004)