Author Spotlight: Simon Moreton

This week, in my comics/graphic narrative class, we were fortunate enough to have a Skype conversation with British cartoonist, Simon Moreton. It was way too late his time, but he was gracious enough to spend the better part of an hour answering our questions.

We’d all read Simon’s latest book, the beautifully rendered Plans We Made (Uncivilized Books). To tell this poetic autobiographical coming-of-age story, Simon uses simple pencil line drawings with minimal text. Some of the pages have only two lines on them (that form an “x”, or an airplane, depending how you look at them), or are intentionally left blank. [Side note: Our class had an interesting discussion about the similarities between comics and poetry, with their heavy use of images and white space.]

One of my favorite spreads!

Anyway, reading Simon’s book really opened up the world of visual storytelling for me. Give me a blank page and ask me to draw a scene, and I’ll happily do so – with words! But for some reason, I have a block when it comes to rendering things visually. In our conversation, he told us that he used to obsess about getting things perfectly right on the page. But he quickly grew tired of perfection; you can never make something look exactly as it does in a photo or in reality. So he asked himself—what’s the point of making something super detailed? The most important thing is that your reader understands what’s a tree and what’s a person. I find this notion very freeing!

Trying my hand at Simon Moreton-inspired minimalist drawings

This shift allowed him to focus on the story more than the visual details. He says he asks himself these questions when he’s creating one of his comics. What’s the essence of the story? What feeling are you trying to elicit? From there, he follows the drawings and isn’t afraid to explore where the drawings take him—something that all art forms and artists have in common, I think.

As someone who also obsesses about place in my writing, I really enjoyed the place-based aspect of his story. Plans We Made has some really beautiful landscapes, and I could feel his connection to this small town where he grew up. As it turns out, Simon is geographer, which prompted me to ask him what connections he sees between his professional life and his artistic life. He said that the two work in conjunction with each other, and that the artwork deepens his intellectual experiences at work.

I was fascinated to learn about the trajectory of Simon’s comics career. He started self-publishing his comic, SMOO, in 2007. Since then, he has put out 10 issues and has amassed a strong following of SMOO supporters. The coolest part about it is that he printed and cut all of these zines himself, distributing them by mail and at comics festivals around the world. He told us that this was how he learned how to make comics – by making them and getting them out into the world. In doing so, he figured out his style, what worked for him and what direction he wanted to move in. But the most important thing for him was to be creating work. Clearly, his DIY style has worked out very well for him.

There is a quiet quality to his work that I find truly beautiful and inspiring. It was awesome of him to stop in and chat with our class, even if it was the middle of night across the pond!

As for me, I continue to stay restless. This weekend, I’ll be traveling to New York City to give a reading with my fellow Art Farm writers at The KGB bar, a "New York literary institution." The reading is Sunday Feb 14^th at 7 p.m., so please come on by if you’re in the area. It’s free of charge!

I am also pleased to share a new publication at the Normal School, a “hermit crab essay” that mimics a Wikipedia article to explore my relationship to my HAIR. I hope you’ll check it out and tell me what you think!

Revere your Reader

Last week, I read two very different books (for very different classes): Chomp, a young adult novel by the Florida all-star, Carl Hiaasen, and Stitches, a graphic novel by David Small. 

In our conversation about Chomp during my middle grade novel class, we all came to the conclusion that Hiaasen, not quite understanding how to write for kids, dumbed down his writing for a younger audience. We see no subtext in his language, besides in overly sarcastic remarks (mostly about bodily functions). Everything he writes literally means we he is saying (or the complete opposite when it comes to sarcasm), therefore lacking depth and nuance. He leaves nothing for the reader to discover on their own. Moreover, the story is event-driven rather than heart-driven, meaning that it reads more like an action-packed thriller with little emotional substance. 

Stitches, on the other hand, has very few words at all. Having had one of his vocal chords removed as a child, Small chose this medium - the graphic novel - to tell his very silent story. 

I'm not entirely new to this genre. My dad being from Belgium (where comic books are practically a religion!), I "read" a lot of Tintin and Asterix growing up. I remember spending hours with these books, taking in each image and detail. I loved every story and never tired of going through them again and again.

As I flipped through Stitches, I found myself creating an inner dialogue and essentially building the story in my head. It was amazing how invested I became in the story considering how little writing there was. As I read, I wondered: What can images do that words can't? And how can I as a writer evoke authentic emotions and true silence without over-writing?

What Small does beautifully in Stitches, and where Hiaasen fails in Chomp, is in trusting the reader. Our job as writers and artists is to bring to light the human condition in a way that is accessible to our reader or viewer. We draw the dots, but it is up to the reader to make the connections. Therein lies the pleasure of reading, or contemplating any art form. We take it in and make it our own.

My goddess writing teacher has an exercise called the red chair. She tells the class to picture a red chair, any chair. We all visualize this in our minds. Then, she tells us to imagine a red tuffed armchair with gold tassels from the 1970's. As you may have experienced, this chair is much harder for you to envision.

If we do not give our readers the space to make those leaps in their mind, how will they connect to the story? The truth is that you cannot write emotion on the page. A writer's job is to draw the dots that help your reader feel the emotion on their own.

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Shameless plug for the yoga/writing retreat I will be co-leading in Jamaica this Memorial Day! 

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