Something Every Day
Inspired by Mandy Ord’s comic, When One Person Dies The Whole World is Over, and Matthew Dicks’ exercise, Homework For Life.
What you need:
Paper
Pen or pencil or whatever
A journal or computer or something you can make notes in
Post-It Notes
Instructions:
At the end of each day, take five minutes to write about one moment or one thing that happened. It doesn’t have to be profound, just something that sticks out. If that thing makes you feel feelings, even better. Write down any dialogue or details you feel might slip your mind, but just do it quickly, you don’t need full sentences - just enough to remember what happened.
Copy it into a spreadsheet for later use.
When you have some time to make comics, return to the spreadsheet and take whatever you need to make an interesting short story.
Example 1:
Example 2:
Example 3:
Thoughts:
At first this exercise can feel exhausting, but it’s worth it. After about two weeks of writing something down every day, and drawing a few times a week, I started to get a sense of which moments and situations would make interesting stories to tell and draw.
There is an interesting cumulative effect with this exercise as well. Taken individually, each story is self contained, a little snapshot of life, but read together they begin to paint a more dynamic picture, where themes and interests connect and imply deeper, more complex meanings. Mandy Ord’s book (mentioned above) is a great example of that kind of cumulative, emergent meaning.
That and, just generally, this exercise helps me remember stuff.
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