In my last post I shared some of my journal pages where I scribbled and sketched and scheduled and experimented. Doing those things in my journal helped me manage what seemed like an overwhelming process of creating a graphic memoir on a deadline. This week I want to talk about the mysterious side of the creative process.

I knew that, in addition to creating lists and thumbnails and calendars, I needed to tap into a creative force, and, in the case of this book, into deep feminine power.

A few months ago, I attended a lecture at Notre Dame by Lauren Groff. It was about her latest book, MATRIX: how she came to write it (she heard a Notre Dame prof give a lecture on the book’s historical protagonist, Marie de France), the obstacles she faced along the way (like not actually knowing much about medieval life), and how she wrote toward and tapped into creative feminine power. In the lecture, Groff quoted Ali Smith and Judith Butler. She said that throughout she writing process, she kept a print of Hilma af Klint’s Altarpiece No. 1 Group X near her desk. (I also heard a podcast interview where Groff said that she writes first drafts, illegibly, by hand, which seems its own sort of conjuring.)

I jotted down lecture notes in my journal. I don’t know if Groff used the word “pantheon” when talking about Matrix, or if I happened to come across that idea at the same time, but:

And before I began working each day, I lit a candle.

I set an intention.

(I don’t know how to explain how unlike me this is.)

I shared some of the intentions in my last post, and they were kind of funny some days. But others were more serious—about the responsibility I felt, even in my own memoir, to tell the stories of women nearly lost to history.

I felt them—those women and stories—in the nearby flame, I felt them in my drawing hand.

This week’s inspiration: Lauren Groff

The Habit of Art

The Mysterious Side of the Creative Process