Lynda Barry - What It Is

Lynda Barry's 'What it is' is a very nice book. Its all full colour and full of collage and cartoons. It is the essence of her creative writing course she has been teaching, and all her ways of keeping writing when worrying about what she is doing. I've been after this for ages, I think it would be a great book to read if you were suffering from the dreaded writer's block, like I was in the summer. There are some great games to play to get yourself writing that Lynda has found very useful. The best one seems to have one page in front of you to write the story on and another page to draw spirals, doodles, eyes and stuff to keep yourself going. She wants to always keep the pen moving so you don't come to a stop and don't try to work out if your writing is good or bad, it's just writing. I think all the rules of writing will also apply to cartooning, no problems. Also there are loads of questions, what is an image, what is a memory. There aren't really any answers, just questions to make you think and get you going. A lot of it is like beautiful poetry, with all the random words and collage on each page. Highly recommended.