by Scott Ebisch

Created on: February 20, 2007   Last Updated: May 08, 2007

I have found that writing is therapeutic. I started out wanting to be a professional cartoonist and found that cartooning involved a lot more writing than I had ever imagined. Writing a single gag a day proved to be a problem for me.

I soon switched gears and decided to work on my writing ability. I studied the cartoonists in the newspapers, read about Charles Schulz and what other cartoonists had to say about the business, and then I read every other book on the subject of "creating comics" and learned about the writing techniques the professionals used to generate ideas, tricks like "violating the cliche", "switching", "free association" but everything eventually boiled down to notebooks full of ideas good or bad that have been recorded for future reference.

They all stressed that having something to say is very important and that writing everything down is immeasurable. "Write, write and write some more"

Anne Lamott wrote in her book "Bird by Bird" that she keeps paper everywhere, pads and pens near phones, on night stands, even on herself. She keeps a blank index card and pen on her when she goes for a walk in the event that she would find something worth jotting down to remember later.

In my experience, writing everything down has proved invaluable. Everything is material for writing. In the years since I decided to concentrate on my writing I got married, started a family, bought a house and lost the best paying job I had in my 12 year hotel career.

Life has taken it's unexpected turns along the way since then and everything we have been through is available for me to write about. I have learned to look at everything we go through, be it comedy or tragedy as material to write about, take apart and explore.

Writing lets me understand what haunts me. It allows me to step outside what is going on long enough to see the value of my experience. Even when disease set in, bills piled up and bankruptcy was our only way out.

I look at everything I live through as part of a bigger story I will some day write. I find writing is free therapy and keeping a journal, blog or diary for my kids to read might help them understand what was going on while they were too young to remember when Daddy had cancer and we had to sell the house.

I write because I'm in the middle of it. I write to share my experiences with any one who might learn something about what makes me tick. I write because it's there to be done and to get my version down.

That's what makes me a writer. That's what makes me write.

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