Anthology

I didn’t realize it until recently but I’ve been writing on and off since high school. I’ve squirreled my writing away in sketchbooks, journals, random notebooks, etc so it has been harder to notice until I started collecting it all. In retrospect, I shouldn’t have been surprised. I was in an active participant in my writing club in high school and in Sigma Tau Delta during college. The signs were there but I was so focused on doing art that I missed them completely.

I began gathering my written works due to an incessant, grating push to put my writing together. It was mostly out of curiosity and an attempt to silence the constant feeling that this was important and needed to be done (one day Ill recognize a project when it calls to me and just do it, maybe). I figured it would be a good exercise in learning to format a book for print. I picked an open-source font, figured out the order of pages for a traditional book, worded the copyright page, and then started putting my work into the document at random. When I was finished I had approximately 120 pages to work with. After my first read-through, I realized it was too potent an outpour of raw emotions to let go of.

That was three years ago. I’ve edited and edited, deleted, rewritten, sorted, resorted, written new pieces as life has happened, resorted again, and edited some more. I am excited to finally begin sending this out to alpha and beta readers for editing and review. As I wait to hear back, I’ve been working on illustrations that feel as honest and raw as the words they are supposed to sit beside.

Below is a selection of rough sketches for illustrations that will be included in the final book: