Eight Minutes

“ Complex ecosystems are more resilient, and complex species seem to have significant advantages over simpler ones when the environment in stable. However, during times of change, complex species are more likely to die off. At those times, the hardiest species are those which are very simple, such as viruses and bacteria. Simple organisms are hardier because they are less dependent on their specific surroundings. That simplicity is significantly beneficial when the ecosystem is subjected to major change such as that might occur if a large meteor struck the earth or a large volcano eruption caused a major drop in temperatures. When the climate changes, dependency on the previous climate is a significant disadvantage.

— Curtis Faith, Way of the Turtle

“ What writers know is that, ultimately, we learn to write by practice, hard work, by repeated trial and error, success and failure, and from the books we admire.

— Francine Prose

“ Those who are alive receive a mandate from those who are silent forever. They can fulfill their duties only by trying to reconstruct precisely things as they were, and by wresting the past from fictions and legends.

— Czeslaw Milosz

There is a vitality, a life force, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and there is only one of you in all time. This expression is unique, and if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium; and be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is, not how it compares with other expression. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open. You have to keep open and aware directly to the urges that motivate you. Keep the channel open. No artist is pleased. There is only a queer, divine dissatisfaction, a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive than the others.

—Martha Graham

What is it about education in America, that you walk into a room full of six year olds and say, “How many people here can draw?” and every hand goes up. “I can draw. I can draw anything.” And then you walk into a classroom of graduate students and you say, “How many people here can draw?” and almost no one thinks they can. What kind of an education system is that?

- Chancellor of Vanderbilt University, quoted in Slideology

A book should try to accomplish something more than just to repeat a child’s own experiences. One would hope rather to make a child laugh or feel clear and happy-headed as he follows a simple rhythm to its logical end, to jog him with the unexpected and comfort him with the familiar; and perhaps to lift him for a few moments from his own problems of shoe laces that won’t tie and busy parents and mysterious clock time into the world of a bug or a bear or a bee or a boy living in the timeless world of story.

- Margaret Wise Brown

Margaret Wise Brown's Only House (Maine)

Few details at the Only House had been left completely to chance or the elements. Rainwater for bathing was collected in a large tin basin on the roof. The well doubled as a refrigerator, with various ropes leading down into it tagged “Butter,” “Milk,” and son on. One pulled the rope for the thing one wanted and, with luck, up it came.

Bottles of wine could sometimes be pulled from this remarkable well, and Margaret liked to surprise visitors on picnic hikes through the woods by absently reaching down into the running stream beside them to fish up a properly chilled bottle just as thoughts were turning to lunch. When wine was wanted at the Only House, she might also send a guest outdoors with certain instructions. “Go past the big black rock. Turn left and walk about eight paces. Look down and you’ll see a stone that looks like it might be loose. It is. Lift it up…”

- Leonard S. Marcus, Margaret Wise Brown: Awakened by the Moon

“

I don’t remember what my ambitions had been before that moment, but I decided on the spot that I wanted to be a writer. Any lingering doubts I might have had were dispelled the next morning, when Graham allowed me to observe at a distance the writer at work. An early riser, he appeared on deck fully dressed at first light, placed himself in the shade of an awning, and took from his pocket a small black leather pocket notebook, of the kind sold in expensive English stationery shops, and a black fountain pen, the top of which he unscrewed carefully. Slowly, word by word, without crossing out anything, and in neat, square handwriting, the letters so tiny and cramped that it looked like an attempt to write the Lord’s Prayer on the head of a pin, he wrote over the next hour or so exactly five hundred words.

He counted each word according to some system of his own, and when he reached exactly five hundred, he stopped, screwed the cap back on his pen tightly, stood up and stretched. “That’s it, then,” he said. “Shall we have breakfast?”

I was later to discover that Graham’s self-discipline was such that he stopped at five hundred words even if that left him in the middle of a sentence—it was as if he brought to writing the skill of a watchmaker or a miniaturist, or perhaps it was that in a life full of moral uncertainties and confusion, Graham simply needed one area in which the rules, even though they were self-imposed, were absolute. Whatever else was going on, his writing, like a daily religious devotional, was at once sacred and completely in his control. Once the daily penance of five hundred words was achieved, he put the notebook away and did not think about it until the next morning.

— Michael Korda, Another Life, pp. 313-314.

“

How do you create a picture book?

Most of the few picture books I have done have each taken about a year to complete (although The Arrival took 4-5 years). Much of that time isn’t necessarily productive in any visible way - true of many creative projects I think. It involves a lot of thinking while doing other stuff (eg. washing dishes) and playing with many ideas that may or may not work, making loads of scribbly notes and doodles in sketchbooks.

With a blank piece of paper in front of me, my imagination is not especially fired up. I could start drawing, but everything would end up looking the same - and most likely stuff I’ve done before. So I actively look to absorb foreign ideas and influences, which is one key lesson learned from years of illustrating different SF stories. Good ideas don’t just turn up, you have to go looking for them.

Research - reading, looking at pictures, playing with different media - provides freedom from the creative paralysis that comes with infinite possibility. I need specific points of reference to develop ideas, and also a kind of resistance to my own stylistic ‘default settings’ so that I think outside the usual circles, and actually learn something new.

Painting and drawing for me is not about creation but about transformation. It’s not so much about expressing preconceived themes or a mastered delivery of statements but rather a process of slightly absent-minded discovery, of seeing where certain lines of thinking take you if you keep following them. I know I’m on the right track when there is a sense of unfamiliarity about what I’m doing, that I’m actually being surprised by the way mixed drawings and words make their own novel sense, and I can coax them into surrendering whatever meaning is there through repeated drawings.

— Shaun Tan

“ My subject material, with a few exceptions such as Calico the Wonder Horse, comes directly from life. I literally draw my books first and write the texts after - sort of “cart before the horse.” I pin the sketched pages in sequence on the walls of my studio so I can see the book as a whole. Then I make a rough dummy and then the final drawings and, when I can put it off no longer, I type out the text and paste it in the dummy. Whenever I can, I substitute picture for word. Each new book is a new experience, not only in subject material and research, but also in learning a new medium and technique for the drawings.

— Virginia Lee Burton