A writing retreat

... and the first few pages of my book!

Ten days ago, I took a train to Southern France and spent a week with complete strangers in a big house in the middle of nowhere. The house was very old and so beautiful that most of my fellow retreaters wept when they saw it.

My response was more along the lines of 

That’s because I’m Dutch. Most of the others were American, except for two Londoners and

I was also the only cartoonist. So, what was I doing here?

Roughly 2 years ago, I started working on my graphic novel. This was my plan:

I will tell the story of our move to LA, how I didn’t want to go but we went anyway.

I’ll draw a page each day and after a year, I’ll have a 300 page book (yay!)

As it turned out, there’s a lot more to it, writing a book. But also, this was a perfect plan and not just because it rhymes.

During this retreat, we spend quite some time talking about the importance of ‘the first draft’. This is the very first thing that you put on the page or, as our guru Janelle Hanchett put it:

It’s an essential part of the writing process because it helps you find out what you’re trying to say. I visualized this by thinking of a pile of clay. Once you have it in front of you, you can study it: take a few steps back and see the whole shape, or get really close and look at details. You can ask others for feedback or let it sit for a few days to come back to it with a fresh eye.
All of these things you can’t do when it’s just an idea in your head.

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I finished the first draft of my book about a year ago, but I knew it wasn’t done. I had assembled some of my experiences, but it wasn’t a story. It needed structure and therefore I needed to learn about writing.

I’ve been simultaneously working on my book and studying storytelling for the past year. In doing so, I’ve discovered I will never be done learning. 

However, I do want my book out in the world at some point, preferably before I die. I will do all I can to improve my writing as I work on this project to make this book worth your time. It will take at least another year for me to finish this project, but I did share some finished pages with my fellow writers in France. I think I’m ready to share these with you too.

So without further ado…

I hope this made you hungry for more, although I’m sorry to keep you waiting while this book is cooking. It takes me about a day to draw two pages and I’ve only finished the first 20 of a total of 300.

In the mean time, I’ll make sure to share some tit bits here in my emails. If you would like to get even more involved, consider becoming a paid subscriber.

Als always, feel free to hit the reply button. I love to know what you think.

With love,