FEARS

June 10, 2013 By Katie Green in MAKING THE BOOK Tags: abuse, anorexia, anxiety, binge eating, book, comics, drawing, eating disorders, fear, flashbacks, graphic memoir, graphic novel, process, recovery, sexual abuse 2 Comments

This post is the first in a week-long series about a writing retreat I took in January 2010, to work on the first full draft of Lighter Than My Shadow.

Looking Back

I was afraid of being alone with all of my ‘stuff.’ I was afraid that putting myself back into an eating disordered mindset in order to write about it would make the behaviour all too tempting. I was afraid that in three weeks without anyone to check on me, I would find myself fully entrenched in a relapse.

I was afraid that I wouldn’t be able to cope with flashbacks or anxiety attacks, and that the pain would become overwhelming and result in a complete nervous breakdown.

I was afraid that I wouldn’t be able to work at all.

This illustration was created in 2009, before I signed the contract with Jonathan Cape. Some variations on the concept have appeared in the book, but this exact image didn’t find a place. However, it seemed perfectly fitting for this blog post.

AVOIDANCE

June 6, 2013 By Katie Green in MAKING THE BOOK Tags: book, comics, drawing, graphic memoir, graphic novel, graphic novels, illustration, mental illness, process, recovery, writing Leave a comment

I'll just write this email...

For a long time, I dabbled. Even after signing the contract and everything becoming real and official, I think there was a level of denial. The project still felt overwhelmingly big, the deadline incomprehensibly far away. There was always something else I found to do that was smaller or had a more immediate deadline. I told myself “I’ll just do this [insert justification here] and then I’ll really get started.” It took a few months of still not starting for me to notice the pattern.

Clearing Space

I decided the best way for me to clear a space was to go away. Away from my computer, away from my part-time job, away from my friends and family and other work. To be completely alone with just pens, paper and the story in my head, and no choice but to get the heck on with it. I went for three weeks (next week I’ll be blogging about what happened while I was there).

THE BOX

May 29, 2013 By Katie Green in MAKING THE BOOK Tags: anorexia, binge eating, book, comics, display, drawing, eating disorder, eating disorders, exhibition, graphic memoir, graphic novel, illustration, mental illness, process, recovery 2 Comments

Lighter Than My Shadow Display Box

In working on Lighter Than My Shadow as a college project, I knew I couldn’t tackle the whole thing. Instead I picked a few moments from different stages of the story to work up into comics, giving an example of what the finished work might look and feel like.

At that stage, I was a lot more shy about things being made public than I am now. I don’t think I ever really believed the book would be published, and I was horrified enough that my college work had to go on public exhibition. I set about thinking of a way to display the work that felt less exposing than hanging the images on the wall. I wanted people viewing the work to have the intimate, private experience of reading a book, but equally I didn’t want my exhibition to seem unenticing and visually dull.

I came up with this book-box-thing, housing each of the short extracts in a separate compartment. I think this helped the viewers/readers to understand that these were disparate parts of an incomplete project, rather than something finished. The box was displayed on a plinth, and above it I hung a wire sculpture of the snarling black cloud that appears in the first illustration. I WISH I had taken some photographs – the cloud was an unwieldy 3ft across and so I decided to throw it away after the show. Perhaps I will recreate it for the book launch…

These extracts, along with a vague synopsis and some notes about why I wanted to do the project, became my book proposal. I graduated in June 2009, and showed the pages to Jonathan Cape in September of that year. In January 2010, thrilled and in utter disbelief, I signed the contract that made everything real.

WHY V: CATHARSIS?

May 17, 2013 By Katie Green in THOUGHTS Tags: catharsis, comics, drawing, graphic memoir, graphic novel, illustration, writing 2 Comments

Catharsis?

The question I was asked most often whilst working on Lighter Than My Shadow was, ‘Is it cathartic?’ Usually with the assumption that it was, and that was why I was doing it. It’s true that it feels important to get the story ‘out’, but out in the world, not out of me. It’s one of my biggest worries that people will see the book only as an act of catharsis.

That said, I’d be lying if I told you there wasn’t catharsis in the first draft. There was the messy, stream of consciousness getting-it-all-out. But after that, I had to try and put the emotions I was stirring up to one side. I had to make objective* decisions.: whittling down the story to what was essential. What, frankly, was actually interesting.

What I’m trying to say is that working on the book was not therapeutic, and I didn’t expect it to be. Oftentimes I was voluntarily reliving trauma that no longer affected my daily life. If it was catharsis I was looking for, I would have given up when it got hard. If it was catharsis I was looking for, I would have filed it all away in a box when I’d finished, or burned it, or something to that effect. I certainly wouldn’t want to publish it, and I doubt anyone would want to read it either.

So what was I looking for? I’ve written a lot this week about all my lofty reasons for creating Lighter Than My Shadow: breaking the silence, challenging stigma, maybe, possibly helping people. What I haven’t said anything about is this: I wanted to tell a good story. I also just wanted to write a book.

*I had supreme editorial assistance.

WHY IV: SPEAKING THE UNSPEAKABLE

May 16, 2013 By Katie Green in THOUGHTS Tags: abuse, comics, drawing, graphic memoir, graphic novel, illustration, mental illness, rape, recovery, sexual abuse 2 Comments

I was sexually abused

There are some things it’s just never the right time to talk about.

There have been times I’ve tried, and I find myself unable to open my mouth and speak the words. I am afraid of what people might think. I am afraid of what people might say, or not say. Moreover, I’m afraid of putting people in a position where they don’t know what to say or not say. I have been afraid that naming it makes it real, and perhaps if I don’t talk about it I can pretend it didn’t happen. There have been times when just saying the words would trigger a flashback, and it would feel like it was happening all over again. By comparison, talking about anorexia is as easy as telling you what I did at the weekend.

The story of my recovery from eating disorders is impossible to tell without including the abuse (though I did briefly consider that as an option). They are inextricably tangled up together. It’s always felt important, if not vital, to communicate how my vulnerability in early recovery was preyed upon and taken advantage of. What else can I do to try and prevent the same happening to someone else?

Somehow drawing a figure on a page and putting the words in her mouth gives a degree of separation that makes naming it easier. Not comfortable: I don’t think it will ever be comfortable. But easier.

WHY III: GENERAL HAM-FISTEDNESS

May 15, 2013 By Katie Green in SNEAK PEEKS, THOUGHTS Tags: anorexia, binge eating, comics, drawing, eating disorder, eating disorders, graphic memoir, graphic novel, illustration, mental illness, recovery 1 Comment

It's Complicated

Despite my experience of mental illness colouring the majority of my life, I can be remarkably inarticulate when I try to talk about it. I’ve always felt frustrated at not having the words to explain what I went through, or to express the complexities of the recovery process. And I’m not speaking grandly about trying to educate the public here: I struggle even talking to my friends. This is such a huge part of who I am, I’ve always felt that I’m not fully myself around people who don’t know about my ‘stuff’.

When I first tried to explain anorexia to my family, I painted a picture (quite how it took me a further 6 years to realise I should make a graphic novel, I don’t know). My family and I used the painting to communicate, because usually I would clam up and find myself unable to speak at all in a hospital or doctor’s surgery. Sadly the original painting has been lost – perhaps ceremonially burned, I don’t remember. I would have loved to include it in the book. The moment, however, of finding pictures more adequate to express how I was feeling, remains a significant part of the story.

Sneak peek from page 161

Sneak peek from page 161.

From that first painting it took me 12 years and I don’t want to talk about how much drawing, but now there will be a less ham-fisted telling of the story that I am (mostly) satisfied with.

FALSE STARTS

May 11, 2013 By Katie Green in MAKING THE BOOK Tags: anorexia, comics, eating disorders, graphic novel, illustration, process, recovery, writing 1 Comment

This week I received the lastest dummy book for Lighter Than My Shadow, and learned that it will be the longest graphic novel Jonathan Cape have published. Even knowing how long it took to draw those 507 pages, I was quite astonished by its ‘bigness.’

dummy book

I always knew the book would be big. I wanted it to be, because I loved reading comics that lasted me more than a few hours. But I also knew it had to be, because I wanted to dig really deep into the process of recovery, talk about all the stuff I’d found lacking in other books I’d read and tell the truth about how long it takes. But the idea was so big that I didn’t know where to start.

In 2006 I attended the very first graphic novel writing course run by The Arvon Foundation, taught by Bryan Talbot and Steve Marchant. This proved a turning point of sorts, and if you have a similarly big project that you’re struggling to get your head around, I can’t recommend these courses highly enough. With the support and enthusiasm of the tutors and other students (and in particular Bryan Talbot’s invaluable teaching) I began to take my idea seriously, and get something of a foothold on where to start.

And I did start. Over the three years following that course, I started work on the book maybe seven or eight times. Sometimes it was just a page of scribbled ideas and planning; other attempts included several pages of ‘finished’ artwork. But every time I would end up feeling overwhelmed, or frustrated by my ineptitude with the medium, or simply not ready to face the emotions the project was stirring up. I’d put my progress away in a box and forget about it. Until next time I started.

I lost count of how many times this happened, how many beginnings were abandoned. But the idea wouldn’t go away.

The idea wouldn't go away

Next week I’ll be sharing a series of posts about why the idea wouldn’t go away, and even when it felt overwhelming and too big to manage, I decided it was important to keep going.

BEFORE IT WAS A COMIC…

May 9, 2013 By Katie Green in MAKING THE BOOK Tags: anorexia, book, comics, eating disorders, graphic novels, mental illness, process, recovery, writing 3 Comments

…Lighter Than My Shadow was going to be a prose book.

I’d always enjoyed illustration, and indeed always wanted to be an illustrator. But I was one of those people who thought that books with pictures were for children, or perhaps for those who weren’t able to read ‘proper’ books (you can imagine what I thought about comics).

Until I stumbled upon the book that changed everything.

The Red Tree

The Red Tree by Shaun Tan is a picture book, but in its few short pages of sparse text and deeply allegorical images, it resonated more with my experience of mental illness than any prose book ever had. I’d never seen pictures so eloquent, nor found so few words to be so profound. There was something about the combination, the two working together…

I felt like I’d struck the most unique and exciting idea anyone had ever had, and a whole world had opened up to me. Books with pictures tackling serious subjects: imagine that! I enthusiastically told my friends that this book idea I’d been harping on about for years was going to have pictures, and be unlike anything anyone had ever seen before.

Maus

…and so I read my first comic in 2005.

From there it was only a short step to discover a whole world of people telling serious stories with pictures. With every new book I read I was filled simultaneously with inspiration, and with crushing despair that I could never live up to the quality of storytelling these artists were achieving.

And yet, there were hundreds of books about eating disorders. If I was going to bother telling another story about anorexia, I wanted to do so in a way that might bring something different to the conversation. Though I lacked confidence in my skills as an illustrator, I was pretty sure I was a better artist than I was a writer.

The change was like flicking a switch. Once I discovered graphic novels existed, I knew that was how I needed to tell my story.

THE WEBSITE IS HERE!

April 23, 2013 By Katie Green in SNEAK PEEKS Tags: anorexia, comics, eating disorders, graphic memoir, graphic novel, illustration, preview, website 3 Comments

It feels like forever since I began working on this website. Initially I hoped to launch it and be posting regular updates as I was drawing Lighter Than My Shadow. Clearly that didn’t happen, and perhaps why will become apparent in the posts over the coming weeks and months.

Now the book is finished and there are still five months to wait until publication. Perhaps now is just the right time to talk about and share what it was like to create this, my most personal work.

What better way to start than by offering a preview of the book itself?

Lighter Than My Shadow

A graphic memoir of eating disorders, abuse and recovery

Tag Archives: comics