Our SCBWI-IL Illustrator’s group recently met in person. We mostly meet on Zoom because Illinois (even Chicago area Illinois) is a big place. This was our last meeting for the 2023-2024 season of meetings. We take the summer off. It was an incredibly uplifting meeting. Those who were able to gather, were so in need to contact and conversation. If you mostly meet in online settings, I highly recommend you find a group of people who are doing something that you enjoy and meet up with them in person. I will be good for your soul.
I mentioned to the group that I have aphantasia. It’s interesting how people who do see visions in their mind’s eye react to it. It’s really the same way that I feel when people say they can see things in their mind’s eye. It just seems impossible to grasp on either side.
Their confusion helped me to understand something about myself. When I write, I write ALL the words. I write the descriptions, I create a verbal world so that I know the whole story. It’s built upon my memories, my tracking my life in my journals writing and drawings, and photographs. I take everything in as if it will disappear if I don’t. It will disappear for me visually. The more I absorb and write and draw, the more the memory is created in my body.
So, when I write my first drafts, they are super long and often generally in strange order. My only thought at first is to get it all down as it comes to me. I have this voice in my head that sounds like me, but feels like it’s coming from someplace outside of me. I have heard this called a download. I feel like the scribe and I’m trying to keep up with the flow of ideas coming in. The more I learn to just “take dictation” the easier it is for me to get everything coming at me. I don’t edit or sensor during this time. I have learned that there is time for that later.
I often get quite frustrated when I can’t write or draw or just have some quiet downtime to integrate my experiences. I have so many word descriptions and when I’m with people and there’s a lot of talking the ideas can easily be lost. It seems that it is easier to hold a mental image and listen to people talking then to hold word imagery and listen to people talking. I don’t know for sure about holding the image for someone who can see them in their mind’s eye, but I do know that people talking and changing topics becomes word salad in my head and my snippet of details gets lost or I have no idea what the other person is saying.
Sometimes an idea comes in bits and dribbles. A line that won’t leave me alone, an idea that comes to me again and again. For this I keep a variety of sketchbooks or journals handy.
This comic has been in my mind for a while. Our dog Chili gives me regular reminders.
I finally, sat down and made the comic.
Recently, while digging in the garden, I started to empathized with the worms that were being displaced, dropped from my shovel and landing back in the garden. I yanked off my garden gloves, grabbed my sketchbook and wrote and drew a comic. Then I went back to work in the garden. These are my art notes. Some projects get finished and I make final art. Some are just silly memories for my sketchbook. Each takes me back to a place a time. They are my mind’s eye.
If you are a writer with aphantasia and you are writing picture books or any illustrated type of book, and you’ve been told not to include art notes, don’t listen to this messaging. Write it all down.
After you have it all down and you know your world, then you can use discernment and figure out what needs to stay and what needs to go for the story to make room for the illustrator. And if you have ideas of what your world looks like, keep those notes. They may help an illustrator who has aphantasia create the world you have been imagining. They are like reference photos for someone who only sees blackness in their mind’s eye.
I’m currently working on developing a human character for a graphic novel. I’m not comfortable drawing people. My critique partners pushed me and sent me into Pinterest to get some ideas.
That’s a bit more on my process as an artist with aphantasia. Art notes, reference photos, sketching on a regular basis, and allowing the process to evolve over time.