The thoughts I wrote about on youth and writing yesterday had been bouncing around for a few weeks, but came into focus when I read JP Trostle's "Nautilus," a graphic memoir of his mother's death and the extended mountain of stuff she left behind.
It was a moment of "Yes - this is what I mean!"
This was not a story a kid could tell. I'm not sure how old Jape is, but he's not a kid and there is a perspective to his story that shows he's been around the barn a few times.
It reminded me of the piece Brian Fies did when the wildfires destroyed his home. It's a realization that, while the thing that happened to you is a vehicle for something creative, it's not about you. It's not about the fact that it happened to you.
If it had happened to someone else, you might have gotten a piece out of it, but you'd have to interview them and put yourself in their places and be spot-on in feeling what they felt. When it happens to you, you already know that stuff.
Assuming you've been around long enough.
He did a nice job and you should go read it. And he asks that, if you share it, you use the Facebook or Twitter buttons so he'll get credit for the traffic.
Elsewhere in Good Stuff to Look At
A number of cartoonists have put together year-in-review packages. It was, indeed, one helluva year. Here are some places you can go remind yourself of that, and if you explore them all you won't notice that I'm not blathering on about them:
Patrick Corrigan/Michael De Adder
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