Comments on: Collaging at Cherry Con

By: mollita

mollita — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 20:58:36 +0000

I got a surfer I met on the beach to let me take a picture of his tattoo– it was a gorgeous grim reaper on his calf. Embarrassing, but worth it.

Goodwill stores are a great idea. Really, I’m realizing that my story is everywhere I look, which I guess is the point. I love this “follow-the-urge” approach for channeling the girls in the basement.

By: Jenny

Jenny — Sat, 17 Nov 2007 00:46:50 +0000

As soon as I get a solid idea for a book, even if I’m not going to write it for years, I get a box for that book and start tossing in anything that I find that reminds me of it. Once I’m ready to start, I hit Google Images and Yotophoto and do key word searches–ghost, amusement park, whatever–and stockpile those images. And then I hit craft stores and Goodwill stores, too. Getting the stuff is part of the brainstorming process, the “that, not that” part that helps you firm up the idea of the book in your brain.

By: Jenny A, Cherry Harpy

Jenny A, Cherry Harpy — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 23:51:15 +0000

Question about collage.

I did one at Desert Dreams, my first one, and it was as great and helpful as everyone says. I’d love to do more, but how do you accumulate the raw material? Without spending next month’s grocery money, I mean.

By: wendy roberts

wendy roberts — Wed, 14 Nov 2007 16:46:43 +0000

These are amazing!

By: Lori J.

Lori J. — Tue, 13 Nov 2007 22:16:34 +0000

My memory is shot. Sorry. I think you answered that question on more than one occasion. Just ignore the doddering old lady.

By: Lori J.

Lori J. — Tue, 13 Nov 2007 21:24:43 +0000

Jenny, since you mentioned working with Bob on outlining Wild Ride, I wondered if you two were also going to do another dueling blog?

Don’t forget thrift stores are also a great place to find magazines for collaging. I’d rather spend a quarter on a magazine that’s going to get butchered anyway.

By: lady T

lady T — Tue, 13 Nov 2007 02:28:48 +0000

Picked up a Psychology Today and on the front cover is a woman looking very twisted, grim but powrful,in control, pretty darn satisfied… and she’s holding a good sized saw, with which she’d just sliced the bench she’s sitting on in two, and dumped the guy beside her. Perfect! Gotta love collaging.

By: Jenny

Jenny — Mon, 12 Nov 2007 21:31:13 +0000

Go to Yotophoto and search for “Ghost.” There are dozens of images.

By: Jenifer

Jenifer — Mon, 12 Nov 2007 17:47:36 +0000

Here’s a picture you could use in your ghost story collage. I’ve got a ghost in my current story, but this image doesn’t fit it. It’s from an interview with Jodi Picoult about her book “Second Glance”. If you go to her website http://www.jodipicoult.com and click books, then Second Glance, then go to read her interview, you’ll see it there.

http://www.jodipicoult.com/images/image002.jpg

And maybe if you do a google image search you can find others that suit. Or go bug your neighbors and see if you can steal all their old magazines.

By: Office Wench Cherry

Office Wench Cherry — Mon, 12 Nov 2007 16:41:10 +0000

:Sigh: It’s hard to collage a ghost story when all you have in the house are gardening and outdoor/hunting/fishing magazines and the library only has old Newsweeks in the give-away box.

By: Helen

Helen — Mon, 12 Nov 2007 02:08:07 +0000

I’ve discovered that sometimes things you think are pasted into the wrong place are actually serendipitous little nudges from the brain, telling me that images I thought belonged to one character actually worked better in the context of another.

And I love how scenes and conversations erupted in my head when I butted together pictures that I previously thought had nothing to do with one another.

Finally, it can’t be an accident, can it, that between finishing my collage last night and waking at 5 a.m. with some more ideas for it, I had an extremely realistic dream in which I won one-third of $11 million dollars? Hoo-ha!

By: lady T

lady T — Sun, 11 Nov 2007 21:58:27 +0000

Betsy,
Thanks! I’ll search out a Psychology Today asap! Heh.

By: roben

roben — Sun, 11 Nov 2007 16:00:00 +0000

OMG I hadn’t realized, that is too funny. Well, maybe it’s just a girl thing and a way we visualize our stories, but I’m sticking with it. I’m sure guys do the same but through visions of movie scenes playing in their heads. I mean think of Bob and his references to Westerns. Same thing, different art form.

By: Jenny

Jenny — Sun, 11 Nov 2007 14:28:02 +0000

HWSW is on collage this week, BTW:
http://www.crusiemayer.com/workshop/she-wrote-collage/jenny

I can’t wait to hear Bob’s take on it on Thursday.

By: roben

roben — Sun, 11 Nov 2007 04:59:00 +0000

These are gorgeous, thank you for sharing. I’m fairly new to collaging, but thanks to Jenny I now can’t write effectively without doing one. Wish I could have been at Crusie Con but I had a houseful of guests, it sure sounded like a lot of fun. I’m going up to Bob’s retreat next week … somehow I don’t think collaging will be in his syllabus.

By: JulieB

JulieB — Sun, 11 Nov 2007 02:59:46 +0000

My Nano group is collaging tomorrow. They were pretty interested in the one I brought back from the Con. I think I really needed to just sit down and do it. I’d been collecting pictures for a while, but never put them down because I didn’t want to commit to anything “too early.” But I see now that if I’d done it earlier it would have helped.

I think the most important thing I got from that part of the Con was to remember that I wasn’t illustrating the book. Once I let that go it just started flowing, _and_ I ended up with more images than I had space for. And that was after I left all the other imaged I’d had at home.

I love the idea of repositionable tape. But I also remembered Jenny said that if I want to move something later, I _can_ just cut it out and move it. It’s for me.

By: asrai

asrai — Sun, 11 Nov 2007 02:14:45 +0000

I think I shall do a collage for my Nano as well, as I’m stuckstuckstuck. My darn characters can’t seem to stay out of bed.

By: Jenifer

Jenifer — Sun, 11 Nov 2007 01:44:42 +0000

Thanks so much for posting these. They’re really wonderful. I remember one other collage from Cherry Con in particular that so strongly evoked a feeling of space (not outer space) that it was really powerful. My Cherry Con collage images are waiting in a bag for me to get back to that story, since I’ve set it aside to do NaNoWriMo, but I firmly believe in the power of collage, and have started working on it for my NaNo story. The right brain can be sooooo powerful. And repositionable tape/glue is a miracle.

By: Office Wench Cherry

Office Wench Cherry — Sat, 10 Nov 2007 22:47:26 +0000

I’ve always wanted to collage a story but I’ve never had either the right story or the nerve (I’m one of those hypercritical people) but I’m floundering around in my NaNoWriMo story so I’m off to the store right now to get the stuff I need.

By: Betsy Hanes Perry

Betsy Hanes Perry — Sat, 10 Nov 2007 20:50:15 +0000

Lady T,

I got a lot of my best (not at all happy) images from Psychology Today. Heh.