Hand-written and hand-drawn journals.

When I was 19 I went to visit my brother in Vietnam,  he was working so I found myself with  time to spare.  I went backpacking by myself for a couple of weeks along the Mekong Delta ,  that kind of thing. 

The whole time I kept a journal which I,  not very imaginatively (but that was the point) , called Cu Ho (Little Boy Ho) Vietnam Travel Diary. I interspersed it with some little simple comic strips about me and Vietnamese peoples reactions to me.  (tall, skinny (60kilo!) blonde, hairy, goatee).  No idea where it is now but i impressed a few chicks with it afterwards. At one stage I made a website out of the entries with some of the photos I took (back in the days of film cameras!) I always intended to “spruce”  up the comics,  but never got around to it (writers refrain).

The beauty of comics is that when you boil it down into what is known as “slice of life vignettes”,  it is not about story or about art.  The driving craft behind it is simply communication.

My brothers partner bought me an awesome handicrafted journal made by people from his home village (by this stage he was a jet-setting textiles importer/exporter and fashion designer)

You will never regret keeping a journal.  Especially a hand written one. If you feel you have “the worst handwriting”,  a good trick is to write in capitals. For capitalisation rules (like sentence beginnings and names) just use bigger capitals. I wrote in capitals all through high school. It slows your brain down just enough to let your hand keep up with your brain.  With repeated practice you will get faster at writing,  and stay neat. It was also great practise for when I started to doing my own  comics, haha. Not keeping a journal,  writing in capitals.

Keep a written journal,  but so yourself a favour like I did,  and explore some of the situations /feelings in diagram/sequential art.