Illustrator: Trina Schart Hyman

Welcome to my new Illustrious Illustrator series!

I’m enjoying the Alpha-Blog so much, I think I may stick to it. Henceforth, "I" entries will focus on my favorite illustrators, their artwork, and interesting facts about them.

I am most inspired visually: a single picture can hatch a novel. Photographs, artwork... they are scenes just waiting to happen.

Writing + Visual Aids = Good Fun

One of my favorite illustrators is Trina Schart Hyman (1939 - 2004). She illustrated over 150 books, won three Caldecott Honors and one Caldecott Medal. Her favorite story was Little Red Riding Hood, and she spent an entire year of her childhood wearing a red cape. (Wikipedia)

I find her art incredibly rich and fierce, and rather dark; her people are interesting, the scenes wild and brooding. Her illustrations also possess a rustic, old world quality. The style is altogether striking and distinct.

(self-portrait)

good vs. GREAT

It's the difference between "ice cream" and Haagen-Dazs.

Between someone else's cooking, and our mom's :)

It's the movie of a book, vs. the actual book. The movie was good, but the book is better. The book touched greatness.

Only, how to reach greatness? Could the answer lie in cookies? What determines a good cookie vs. a GREAT one?

- Quality of Ingredients
- The Recipe
- The Baker

GREAT cookies satiate the universal appetite - an inner hunger and need. GREAT cookies have Substance. They contain the richest, purest ingredients (think Butter, Vanilla, gourmet Chocolate).

After tasting a GREAT cookie, good cookies taste... insubstantial.

A GREAT cookie is the best, truest version of itself. It is a cookie, yet MORE than a cookie; it's ordinary AND Extraordinary. GREAT transcends, GREAT goes beyond. GREAT tastes good because it is the essence of good.

Can we reach greatness on our own? Is greatness in the tasting? Or is something else at work in that hot oven, doing more than baking dough into cookies?

Does any of this apply to our writing?
What do you think is an example of greatness?

Is anyone else hungry?

Enterlightenment

Fantastic word, ‘enterlightenment!’

I made it up just now to explain my writing intents--which are to hopefully enlighten and entertain.

I think we’re here to enlighten each other. Life is a great multi-faceted gemstone and we are all a face. We live together on this world, earth. But we also live in our own worlds, the world within our head, experiencing life in times, emotions, and angles unique to everyone else. It’s why siblings remember childhoods differently from one another.

“And that is what happened. She never really loved me.”

“What? What planet are you on? She loved you the best!” >.<

We’re here to enlighten each other, because you know things I don’t, and I know things you don’t, and my 7-year-old cousin knows things we both don’t. That’s why only YOU can write the story inside you. That's why we share stories.

So I invite you to see the world through my character’s eyes. I want to make you feel. I want to give you new, real experiences, and ones you’ve had before, but through the context of my character. Because that’s when we (reader + writer) connect. Even though you and I never met, we’ll have met through my book (or your book). It happens in those swooping moments when you pause reading a passage and think: “I know that feeling. I've felt the same way. Hang on. You just made me feel. That’s you, in me. Or me, in you. Or something. Cool...”

I hope to entertain, too, which makes all our lives easier. And I want to transport you. Transport you to a world, outside yours but inside mine. Then transfigure you into a mood-ring, all for our enterlightenment.

It's 'transfigurenterlightenment.'

What’s your intent when writing?
What do you want to give your reader?