Jen Frankel - The Writer's WayUsing Art to Break the Blocks
Jen Frankel gets sketchy I actually attended a vocational art school after high school - not that much of it rubbed off on me. What I mostly learned is that it's a dangerous thing to insist that an art teacher also be a working, producing artist. I'd rather in retrospect have had teachers who had great technical skill and little ambition. Probably would have made little difference to me; the truth is I was at art school at the absolute wrong stage of my development. There was no way I would have thrived there under any circumstances. I used to spend a lot of time before art school sitting in cafes or on what passed for a table at home (my electric bass case propped up on two milk crates) with my sketch book, pencils, erasers, rulers, acrylic paints I used like watercolours and watercolours I applied thick like acrylics... I did the drawing to the left for a performance by actor Amelia Lenz, the preliminary sketch for a three-faced mask I built representing the Fates. 
I love to draw while I write. Sometimes it's to make maps of the places I'm writing about. I did these two drawings when I was trying to get the geography straight for my first novel, THE LAST RITE. I also had to keep myself straight on what was Maggie's public school, so I could separate it from the one I actually went to... which was remarkably similar for some reason... Sketching, even crappy pictures, works as a way to get past a mental block. At the very least, if I can't find something to write about, at least I've added a layer to my conception of the character. 
I drew a lot of pictures when I was writing my first novel, THE LAST RITE. I mostly drew the main character, Maggie. She's... well, she's mostly me at thirteen, introverted, always just a little pissed off. And she had long dark hair. I liked trying to get the look in her eyes right. Then, I felt I had to write, because she'd become a little more real, and she would turn that pissed-off attitude on me if I didn't finish writing her story.
It may be a little perverse, but one of the fun parts about writing for me is to take the central character, likely the one I identify most strongly with, and put him/her in immanent physical jeopardy. Here, I was imagining Maggie (in the sequel, when she's 16) being kidnapped by her nemesis, Mr. Hunt. I really shouldn't be so pleased about the grin on his face... poor Mags. Susan By Greyhound - cover image When I was writing a novella, SUSAN BY GREYHOUND, I had already thought that I might someday turn it into a graphic novel, and this is the image I came up with for the cover -- the woman on the Greyhound bus who stole the innocence of children, aging them prematurely, to return her to youth.
I'm not a great believer in sleeping on a problem -- going to bed and letting the subconscious work things out. It's probably because I love dreaming, and I always have a slight concern that if I use my sleep to problem-solve, I'll miss out on the best part of slumber. So instead, I'm training myself to remember that a rest is as good as a breakthrough. When I hit a roadblock, whether related to an issue in plot I can't immediately solve or just a dip in my energy, it helps to get up and do something else. Of course, I could do dishes, or put away the laundry. However... well, I'm prepared to state absolutely and with absolutely no proof whatsoever that doing something creative works through the block faster. It's definitely more fun. And having fun will stimulate creativity better than any amount of anything else I can name. Jen finds other uses for drawing
This picture happened because a friend once posed a question to a bunch of us over Mexican food -- if you had to be handcuffed to a guy you liked, would you want it to be right-to-right hands, or left-to-right? Since we were seventeen or so, we all became giggly and completely swept away by the possibilities. Ah, seventeen. So naughty...
And then, sometimes when I'm totally blocked, and happen to be working as a receptionist in a tattoo parlour, this kind of thing happens:
For more of Jen's writing, you can visit www.jenfrankel.com -- or come back here periodically for more on the creative process.
“A writer is dear and necessary for us only in the measure of which he reveals to us the inner workings of his very soul.” Return from Using Art to WILDsound Filmmaking Feedback Events home page.
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What art school did most of all was nearly remove from my makeup any desire to put pen to paper for any but the most alphabetical of pursuits. Fortunately, I am nothing if not difficult to cure, especially of a creative habit.
