Learning to Draw and Learning to Write, Again

In the last post, I heralded the future potential of graphic novels. And I will continue on this theme in future posts. But it is easy to to sit back making proclamations about the future. The question is - are you will to put your time where your mouth is? And my answer is - yes I am. I am going to learn how to write graphic novels. I doubt very seriously that I will ever write The Great American Comic book. But, then, that is not really what I am after. I want to learn this skill so I can apply it other things.

Many years back I decided that I need to learn how to write. I am sure I have told this story elsewhere in this blog. So I will just hit the high points here. I enlisted a group of friends, students and colleagues who I put on a listserv and promised to send out a chapter every week. I used some of the people on the list as the basis for characters in the story. The result, after several online novels, was that I had honed my writing skills considerably. Although I never published any fiction, which was not really my intention, I did seriously boost my writing skills. And those skills have paid off in all the writing that I do including this blog. In addition, I am better at storytelling which is an important skill in blogging, lectures, and even academic presentations. So, it was well worth the effort.

But, traditional writing, both fiction and non fiction is very different from writing for graphic novels. I am not prepared, at this stage to articulate those difference. However, I will at some point. But, those writing skills will become very important in developing more compelling lectures and presentations. And, I hope to carry them forward into the world of distance education which is badly in need of something.

But, it isn't just writing. I have to learn how to draw. Initially, I am not very ambitious here. I will see how it goes. If I can learn how to draw simple clip art I will call it a success. This alone is worth the trouble as 'borrowing' clip art from the web may become a problem in the future if I develop classes online from which I derive revenue. There is free clip art but it looks cheesy compared to custom clip art that is drawn specifically for a situation. If I can develop these skills and want to take on more challenges, I will create a cast of characters which I can use in producing educational materials. If I get really ambitious, I might use these skills to write educational books.

If you are astute, you might be thinking - there are a lot of professional artists and writers out there. How can I compete with them. That is an important question. But I do have an answer. First of all, most graphic novels are created by writers and artists. That is two people working in collaboration. I think I can learn to do both. Can I do both as well as the professionals? No, but then I don't need to. I have another advantage as well. I can provide content. So, I become the single person - writer, artist and content provider. And there are precious few of those. Further, as far as I know there are none in my areas of expertise. So, this seems like a good bet.