“I’m a doodler. This has never gone over well. In high school, it convinced teachers I wasn’t really listening, and in my various jobs over the years, it has convinced bosses that some part of me is still in high school. Which is true, obviously, but that’s hardly the point. The point is knowing what works for you.
The thing is, I think better when I’m dragging a pencil across the paper. I always have. And with fiction, doodling is my way back into the story. Sometimes when I’m stuck with words, I’ll start fixating on something small that I know is somewhere in the scene at hand: a key ring, a toy car, a crumpled phone number written on a wrapper. I will shade and erase and refine, and I know it is working when I start seeing the lines before I’ve drawn them—a light trace on top of the paper that I know can’t really be there but I follow like faith. Soon enough, the words will start coming: snatches of dialogue, a single sentence that has to be written down. And even if it’s just the smallest bit, I know that it’s something I can come back to and fill in, something that will get clearer and more defined with every pass.”
—Mira Jacob, author of The Sleepwalker’s Guide to Dancing (Random House, 2014)
Photo credit: In Kim
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grizbear replied on Permalink
Doodling by John W. Stevens ussales@pshift.com
Oodles of doodlers
Trying to cope
Doodle out doodles
Without any hopeW
Of pulling a Pulitzer
Copping a prize
Accepting accolades
Or, uplifting eyes
But once in a while
One will step from the pack
And doodle a ceiling
While flat on his back
And, nobody cares if he stood or he sat
Or, whether he's skinny or whether he's fat
Or, whether he's neat or a real messy slob
They don't even care
He laid down on the job
'Cause a real classy doodle
Lives on and lives on
While the doodler's forgotten
Soon after he's gone