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What It Is
How do objects summon memories? What do real images feel like? For decades, these types of questions have permeated the pages of Lynda Barry’s compositions, with words attracting pictures and conjuring places through a pen that first and foremost keeps on moving. What It Is demonstrates a tried-and-true creative method that is playful, powerful, and accessible to anyone with an inquisitive wish to write or to remember. Composed of completely new material, each page of Barry’s first Drawn & Quarterly book is a full-color collage that is not only a gentle guide to this process but an invigorating example of exactly what it is: “The ordinary is extraordinary.”
210 pages, Hardcover
First published May 13, 2008
334 people are currently reading
16309 people want to read
About the author
Lynda Barry
45 books1,164 followersLynda Barry is an American cartoonist and author, perhaps best known for her weekly comic strip Ernie Pook's Comeek.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 747 reviews
June 11, 2008
THE ORDINARY IS EXTRAORDINARY. i love this book like i have never loved a book. i want to make out with it, caress it, sleep with it near my pillow and wake up clutching it after a bad dream.
this book is related to the Lynda Barry writing class WRITING THE UNTHINKABLE! which i took in april. this class and book are for people who think they want to write, but don't know where to start. it's also for people who never thought about writing, people who already write, and people who like other people and people who don't like other people. this is a book for the crazy, and the sane. this book is my immune system.
this book is the transportation system for my mental health.
this is a way of thinking / writing / creating that is related to DEEP PLAY or CREATIVE CONCENTRATION and centered around THE IMAGE. this is how lynda barry makes those pictures and stories we love. this is how you can help your brain sort things out. this is how we can remember the things we need to remember, the little things, and forget the things we need to forget!
this book & ms. lynda's writing class changed my life!! it sounds superfluous but i am serious! i feel like i am becoming a different person every day when i work on my Bullion Cube journals with Sea-Ma the sea monster class monitor. i love all the little pictures, the scraps of ideas and memories. i love that there can never be writers block again in my life!!!!!
my girlfriend bought this book for me, special ordered in olympia washington where lynda barry went to college at evergreen and learned this IMAGE method from marilyn frasca. while we waited at the cash register to buy the book, i found a greeting card with a Rumi poem on it, and i knew right then that this was a Big Big Deal. please check it out, get out your three-ring binder, and don't read anything you write for at least a month. dang. this review is appx. 1/100000th as strongly as i feel about this book.
this book is related to the Lynda Barry writing class WRITING THE UNTHINKABLE! which i took in april. this class and book are for people who think they want to write, but don't know where to start. it's also for people who never thought about writing, people who already write, and people who like other people and people who don't like other people. this is a book for the crazy, and the sane. this book is my immune system.
this book is the transportation system for my mental health.
this is a way of thinking / writing / creating that is related to DEEP PLAY or CREATIVE CONCENTRATION and centered around THE IMAGE. this is how lynda barry makes those pictures and stories we love. this is how you can help your brain sort things out. this is how we can remember the things we need to remember, the little things, and forget the things we need to forget!
this book & ms. lynda's writing class changed my life!! it sounds superfluous but i am serious! i feel like i am becoming a different person every day when i work on my Bullion Cube journals with Sea-Ma the sea monster class monitor. i love all the little pictures, the scraps of ideas and memories. i love that there can never be writers block again in my life!!!!!
my girlfriend bought this book for me, special ordered in olympia washington where lynda barry went to college at evergreen and learned this IMAGE method from marilyn frasca. while we waited at the cash register to buy the book, i found a greeting card with a Rumi poem on it, and i knew right then that this was a Big Big Deal. please check it out, get out your three-ring binder, and don't read anything you write for at least a month. dang. this review is appx. 1/100000th as strongly as i feel about this book.
July 26, 2008
What It Is by Lynda Barry is a fascinating memoir/scrapbook/writing guide that almost defies definition. The first half of the book contains melancholic comic panels about Barry's alienated childhood and how drawing and writing saved her from loneliness interspersed with large one and two page spreads of collages that contain great writing prompts, like "Do thoughts move?" "What is a secret? What is it made of? Where is it kept?" "What is a monster? Do we need them?" The second half of the book contains actual writing exercises, also collaged, that made me want to crack open a notebook, lick my pencil, and give them a try. The more time I spend with this book, the more I want to spend with it. Every time I go over one of Barry's collages, I see more. I know I will be looking at this title again and again, and going to it for ideas for my own student writers.
I'm very excited about this book. It's the freshest piece of media I've come across in awhile, as it is non-linear, multi-format, and interactive.Because of these elements, it
will be a challenging read for some, but I think the benefit that comes from wandering around in Barry's brain for a pleasant while far outweighs the slight discomfort some will have in getting used to the unusual format.
I'll be carrying this one around with me for awhile, I think. I just don't want to be parted from it!
I'm very excited about this book. It's the freshest piece of media I've come across in awhile, as it is non-linear, multi-format, and interactive.Because of these elements, it
will be a challenging read for some, but I think the benefit that comes from wandering around in Barry's brain for a pleasant while far outweighs the slight discomfort some will have in getting used to the unusual format.
I'll be carrying this one around with me for awhile, I think. I just don't want to be parted from it!
July 5, 2016
Imagine every page is like this, like opening a box of treasures. And in it, a germ of an idea: how and why does one write?
Many moons ago, when I was a teenager, I found a book that was very similar to this one in message (but in execution very different). It was Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within by Natalie Goldberg.
Like this one, it advocated writing non-stop for a set amount of time or until you fill a page. It also said to not stop to read over what you wrote until later. And to turn off that editing part of your brain. The method is very similar with small differences.
But unlike this book, I found that one at the perfect impressionable age. Thus, it was the one that changed my life. I know that sounds dramatic, but it did. It introduced me to a craft that I still continue to pursue.
I would give that book 5+ stars. Yet, this one may be even better. If I had read it when I was a teenager (though I'd have to travel in time to do it) it may have been the one to change my life instead.
When it comes to a book like this, what we're looking for is the amount of inspiration per square inch. And this one does not fail in that department.
Instead of approaching writing as a craft, Lynda Barry approaches it as a byproduct. The main product of writing is the process of writing, is what you gain from the act of doing it. And I mean "act" as in the physical act, as Barry advocates using our very visceral bodies as much as possible rather than type-typing it on a laptop.
More than that even. Not only does she advocate writing by hand, she even advocates using a paintbrush. She luxuriates in the strokes of her brush. The melding of writing and painting, of the very particular shapes of the letters with the very particular meaning of the words all in the service of wiping any thought from our brains.
Since writing for Barry is a physical act, the brain is useless and only gets in the way. I loved this book, and I loved its companion Picture This: The Near-sighted Monkey Book which I read a few days afterwards. I highly recommend them, especially if you are a teenager. But even if you aren't, it will still inspire.
February 3, 2026
I think this book is really overhyped. Besides, it was almost impossible to read with such a load of mixed media put in the most chaotic ways and with the worst choice of colors (at least for me). I can understand why people like this, it shows drawings, collage, the creative process as it is (a mess), and divergent thinking. However, as I’m extremely sensitive to chaos, this was not for me at all.
February 25, 2017
This book explains my whole entire childhood. Why I did what I did and why I didn't do most things other kids did.
This book explains why it all changed at some point and I stopped.
I'm glad I've already gotten back to most of the things I used to do as a kid (write, draw, color, imagine, play) because it's me. It's who I am.
This book explains a lot of the kind of mind I have right now. All the stuff about imagining, remembering, forgetting, dreams and fears and nightmares. It's all me. Why I doodle and why one thought leads to another in a way that other people have the hardest time following my train of thought when I try to explain something.
In particular, I remember those moments of trying desperately to come up with an imaginary friend and feeling like a freak when I couldn't. Most of my closest friends at the time had imaginary friends. It was like a craze and I lied I had one just to fit in (and to be able to play with my friends because most play evolved around the imaginary friends.) I still remember one: My friend's imaginary friend was a real horse (with a mind of its own) but it was also a balloon filled with helium. So, sometimes the horse would "try to run away" and my friend would just reach her hand up as if she was reaching for a balloon string and "pull it back down".
I need this book.
"What is the reason for it (doodling)? I believe it's because it helps us maintain a certain patient state of mind and there is a part of us which has never forgotten this. In the beginning it's one of the reasons we draw though we may never notice this effect with the thinking part of our minds."
"I loved to copy comics at night in front of the TV. -- It was a form of transportation. I did it because it helped me to stay by giving me somewhere else to go. Maybe this is why we draw shapes in the margins during meetings or -- when we're waiting on the phone. Drawing can help us stand to be there. That, alone, is something. Give a kid a crayon and some paper when they are stuck waiting somewhere. Somehow it changes things. How?"
This book explains why it all changed at some point and I stopped.
I'm glad I've already gotten back to most of the things I used to do as a kid (write, draw, color, imagine, play) because it's me. It's who I am.
This book explains a lot of the kind of mind I have right now. All the stuff about imagining, remembering, forgetting, dreams and fears and nightmares. It's all me. Why I doodle and why one thought leads to another in a way that other people have the hardest time following my train of thought when I try to explain something.
In particular, I remember those moments of trying desperately to come up with an imaginary friend and feeling like a freak when I couldn't. Most of my closest friends at the time had imaginary friends. It was like a craze and I lied I had one just to fit in (and to be able to play with my friends because most play evolved around the imaginary friends.) I still remember one: My friend's imaginary friend was a real horse (with a mind of its own) but it was also a balloon filled with helium. So, sometimes the horse would "try to run away" and my friend would just reach her hand up as if she was reaching for a balloon string and "pull it back down".
I need this book.
"What is the reason for it (doodling)? I believe it's because it helps us maintain a certain patient state of mind and there is a part of us which has never forgotten this. In the beginning it's one of the reasons we draw though we may never notice this effect with the thinking part of our minds."
"I loved to copy comics at night in front of the TV. -- It was a form of transportation. I did it because it helped me to stay by giving me somewhere else to go. Maybe this is why we draw shapes in the margins during meetings or -- when we're waiting on the phone. Drawing can help us stand to be there. That, alone, is something. Give a kid a crayon and some paper when they are stuck waiting somewhere. Somehow it changes things. How?"
Read
November 9, 2008Don't file this book under currently-reading.
Label it currently-utilizing.
Part philosophy, part workbook, all Right On!
Label it currently-utilizing.
Part philosophy, part workbook, all Right On!
June 21, 2024
when i was a kid, i was scared to go to the basement of the house we were renting in broadmoor for a year when i was six because it had a dark carpet and a weird column in the center of the room and i thought i saw the white witch from narnia there.
when i was a kid, i was scared to go behind the house i live in now, because there were sword ferns growing and unfurling in the underbrush and i thought they looked like worms.
when i was a kid, there was a house under construction down the alley from my grandparents house and i could walk up to that house but no farther. i didn’t like the way the tarp hung over the open and sawdust-filled wreck of a garage. anything could be there.
when i was in high school i watched the haunting of hill house and i didn’t think it was that scary. but now, in the silent gap between turning off my light and getting into bed, i can picture the tall man lurking behind my closet door and i get that rush of fear in my stomach.
when it is good, drawing makes me feel like i am both there, and not there. and when i get hit with an image it is tied to a memory. (those memories are, sometimes, of monsters.) i’ve never heard anybody say this before, until reading lynda barry. what it is is art that makes you feel better about being a person. what are the monsters you knew, while growing up?
when i was a kid, i was scared to go behind the house i live in now, because there were sword ferns growing and unfurling in the underbrush and i thought they looked like worms.
when i was a kid, there was a house under construction down the alley from my grandparents house and i could walk up to that house but no farther. i didn’t like the way the tarp hung over the open and sawdust-filled wreck of a garage. anything could be there.
when i was in high school i watched the haunting of hill house and i didn’t think it was that scary. but now, in the silent gap between turning off my light and getting into bed, i can picture the tall man lurking behind my closet door and i get that rush of fear in my stomach.
when it is good, drawing makes me feel like i am both there, and not there. and when i get hit with an image it is tied to a memory. (those memories are, sometimes, of monsters.) i’ve never heard anybody say this before, until reading lynda barry. what it is is art that makes you feel better about being a person. what are the monsters you knew, while growing up?
non-fiction-to-read
September 24, 2014The subtitle is "How to channel your inner cephalopod". How do I not already own this?
My cephalopod demands to be channeled!
My cephalopod demands to be channeled!
December 4, 2012
(More pictures at parkablogs.com)
This book screamed "Buy me!" when I saw it at the Drawn & Quarterly booth at San Diego Comic Con 2009. It is that good!
With a brush in the right hand, and a pencil on the left, the multi-eyed monster on the back cover spoked, "Welcome to writing the unthinkable". That's the essence of this book created by Lynda Barry, putting vivid imagination onto paper.
What It Is is a scrapbook that's filled to the brim with sketches, coloured illustrations, collages, comics, autobiographical writing, random thoughts and even a bit on creative writing.
Every page is elaborately decorated, an exploration into the unknown realms of imagination. And every page is just fun to look at.
This book is creativity and self expression, great for flipping through when you're feeling random or looking for inspiration.
I'll give this book two thumbs (drawn with smiley faces) up.
By the way, What It Is won the 2009 Eisner award for Best Reality-Based Work, but I didn't know that when I bought it. It's also one of the top 100 books picked by Amazon editors for 2008.
August 26, 2023
Figures I'd read like 10 other Lynda Barry books before finally reading this one - her most popular based on Goodreads ratings. Also it does feel like a perfect synthesis of the topics she covers in all her other works. Half of the book is basically collage pieces that explore the meaning of art and creativity. The other half Barry explores her childhood and the impact it still has on her personality. It's quite moving actually.
June 16, 2009
Barry does it again! I love the free way she uses collage along with her more customary brush and ink work. Meet the Magic Cephalopod who guides us to our imagery,Sea-Ma, the nonjudgmental writing instructor, and the Near-Sighted Monkey who likes to clip magazines while watching TV and drinking beer.
6/16/09 I now own a copy of this book with my very own personal inscription from the author! She even drew a near-sighted monkey for me!
July 19, 2013
This collage /mixed media graphic novel is usually the type of book that thrills me, chills me and lights my fire.
I have no idea why there is no spark, if it were an ex-boyfriend I would whine "but we look so good together on paper..." By the end if this zine I screamed UUGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH inside my head.
It's not you, it's me.
I have no idea why there is no spark, if it were an ex-boyfriend I would whine "but we look so good together on paper..." By the end if this zine I screamed UUGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH inside my head.
It's not you, it's me.
December 16, 2008
Lynda Barry takes readers on a visual exploration of insecurities and uncertainties about the world in What It Is. Barry's obsession with storytelling and authenticity shines as she reflects on incidents in her life that led her to express herself through words and drawings. She reflects on whether childhood is a place or a time in one's life, and whether the past isn't an integral part of your present experience that you can draw on to help the creative process. The book contains many ideas, questions, and exercises to assist readers in exploring their own ideas and memories, and includes samples from Barry's own daily sketch-diary. Highly recommended for teens who were fans of Barry's One! Hundred! Demons! (an Alex award winner) and those artistic teens who would appreciate the voice of experience encouraging them to embrace and hone their talent.
January 5, 2014
This beautiful, inspiring book is essential reading for anyone from the life-long artist/writer feeling down on themselves to those suffering from writer's/artist's block, all the way to those who for whatever reason gave up their childhood joy of writing and drawing for more adulty pursuits. Lynda Barry always manages to speak to the heart without ever going down the cutsie path. Essential reading material.
P.S. I really adore her friend the Magic Cephalopod.
P.S. I really adore her friend the Magic Cephalopod.
August 23, 2010
I think about this book, about Lynda Barry, a lot. 5 stars a lot. I can't tell you why I like it, that'd be embarrassing, you might find out I care about stuff and then you might call me a pussy and then I might cry - or punch you - depending on the day. And let's face it, more than being honest about who I am I want you to like me....
November 11, 2012
Great book! A simple yet incredibly effective techniques for finding stories that are already there inside you. I love Lynda Barry! Great for both young Adults and the older kind of Adults too.
April 9, 2016
This book is Lynda Barry herself.
August 9, 2025
Çok katıldığım ve çok yorulduğum bi serüvendi. Yani üç yıldız ama elim gitmiyor.
Read
November 26, 2025What a special and surprising book. How does creative work relate to “thinking”? To memory? To experience? To images? Lynda’s thesis, largely implicit through impressionistic collage, is that experience and the subconscious are the true source of what eventually emerges during creative work. She illustrates that through story, provocations, and elliptical prose.
About 2/3 through, the book shifts to a more didactic and explicit register. There’s a long and valuable discussion of the two questions which robbed her art of its pleasures and creativity: “Is this good?” and “Does it suck?” And then some unusual practical advice.
I’m grateful for books and people like this.
About 2/3 through, the book shifts to a more didactic and explicit register. There’s a long and valuable discussion of the two questions which robbed her art of its pleasures and creativity: “Is this good?” and “Does it suck?” And then some unusual practical advice.
I’m grateful for books and people like this.
January 7, 2018
Very good book about how to get started writing, presented in Lynda Barry's inimitable style of illustration. This older book covers some of the same ground as Syllabus: Notes from an Accidental Professor, but with less drawing involved. If I had to pick just one, I would definitely go for Syllabus: Notes from an Accidental Professor. (Even though Syllabus: Notes from an Accidental Professor doesn't have the helpful Magic and Creative Cephalopod.)
December 24, 2021
Some books defy classification...this is one. Part memoir, part fantasy, part lessons in creativity. Barry has created a masterpiece here of...strangeness and beauty and hope. We CAN overcome crummy childhoods. We can overcome self-doubt. We can, with the right circumstances, grow into the artists we were meant to be. And we are ALL artists.
Every page is SEVERAL works of art...collage, original illustrations. Cut-outs of old letters and class assignments. They all serve her thesis...everything is art and everyone is an artist.
Reading about her own slow journey to her current self will inspire other young people who have lost that confidence in their creativity.
And the writing lessons at the back? They are fascinating...solid ideas on how to brainstorm and draft, to get all the ideas, all the IMAGES, all the emotions, onto the paper. I tried it with something I want to write. Now, I'm going to do the whole thing again...but start with the IMAGE...
Another book I'd love to teach...and share. It's visually stunning. Heavy paper, colorful images. I know it's the kind of book that would be well-loved in a classroom. By 'well loved' I mean it would be lovingly destroyed. Not out of malice, but out of use. Turning the pages, tracing the words and images...
What a book!!
Every page is SEVERAL works of art...collage, original illustrations. Cut-outs of old letters and class assignments. They all serve her thesis...everything is art and everyone is an artist.
Reading about her own slow journey to her current self will inspire other young people who have lost that confidence in their creativity.
And the writing lessons at the back? They are fascinating...solid ideas on how to brainstorm and draft, to get all the ideas, all the IMAGES, all the emotions, onto the paper. I tried it with something I want to write. Now, I'm going to do the whole thing again...but start with the IMAGE...
Another book I'd love to teach...and share. It's visually stunning. Heavy paper, colorful images. I know it's the kind of book that would be well-loved in a classroom. By 'well loved' I mean it would be lovingly destroyed. Not out of malice, but out of use. Turning the pages, tracing the words and images...
What a book!!
November 14, 2008
This is a fascinating book. I picked it up and could not put it down. It was shelved with YA in my library. I usually only read and comment on books up to MG, and that's really all I feel qualified to discuss, but I have to say, if you know a teen-ager who is highly creative OR OR OR a teen-ager who feels they are highly un-creative, put this book in their hands. Heck, put it in the hands of ANY teen-ager or older person (and even more mature middle-schoolers). It is a fascinating study of the creative process, it is inspirational (as in inspiring to create, not religious-inspirational) and it will help anyone become a better writer. It is filled with prompts for writing and ideas and concepts and new ways of thinking about anything and everything and is just overall the coolest book I've ever seen. I wish I had read a book like this when I was in school- I might have been a life-long writer instead of an after-35-years-old writer. Most highly recommended.
September 2, 2015
Is there something obnoxious about that feeling of exquisite particularity that pours over you like you are a delicious warm salty chicken and it a gravy silken and restorative when someone whose the whole stem to stern nature and beingness of their lovely odd imperfect striving gorgeous difficult self seems designed to cradle bolster reflect and calm your own? Of course there is and yet it happens to us all at some point, at some point if you're lucky, and here is mine, it is Lynda Barry, I have found a nest to be its egg, a nest of blue straw, a star for glimpsing by accident from the cold old lonely old ground where I am and will die alone, all alone, like you, like you are, and yet, and yet. And yet it is summer now and we are young. It's the best.
July 8, 2010
I teach with this book. Students' first response is usually quite wild: look at my textbook! I can't believe I get to have a textbook that looks like this! Sometimes their parents and others make similar comments, but to opposite effect--you call THAT serious work?! Yes. I call that serious work. Serious as anything can be. It's a subversive, brilliant, heart-rending, tricky kind of book, full of wisdom about creativity and writing and image making--and living and being. Much of the insight of a Winnicott or Bollas, but in a more thrilling package. But every bit as insightful and important. Best of all, you can GET to those serious texts FROM this one.
July 11, 2019
Lynda Barry has great suggestions for creativity, insight into what happens to creativity in childhood, and some memories from childhood that will sound familiar to a lot of people (weird things kids do! Sad/true/real/weird/relatable). I read this because Austin Kleon talks about Barry a lot, and I can see why. She seems to be the embodiment of "Keep Going." I would not confuse the two, but I was reminded of Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear in many ways.
March 28, 2016
Wow! This book is as fun to look at as a great example of art journalling as it is to soak in all the wisdom about writing and art making from the multi-talented Lynda Barry. I found it really inspiring and am going to try many of the exercises for writing which are so different than the ones that you usually encounter in "how to write" books. Terrific, unusual and inspiring, all in one book.
June 3, 2008
This is absolutely one of the most beautiful things I own. It also is very wise, and I feel like kissing Ms. Barry's feet for gifting the world with it.
December 29, 2021
Literati READ LIKE AN ARTIST Book Club pick for December.
This is a unique graphic novel that is crammed jammed and overflowing with collages and images and writings and exercises and prompts to think about.
The goal is to unleash your inner creative self. The same self who used to sing and dance and write without worrying “what people think” or “how good am I”. But besides that, it’s just full of stuff that makes you stop and wonder: “Keep in mind as you read these words that you are paying no attention at all to the alphabet.”
I had a lot of fun reading this and making sure I didn’t miss anything.
Here are a few (of the many) things I want to remember:
P81
What do
Drawing
Singing
Dancing
Music making
Handwriting
Playing
Story writing
Acting
Remembering
and even
Dreaming
all have in common?
They come about when a certain person in a certain place in a certain time arranges certain uncertainties into certain form.
❤️❤️❤️
When we remember something, do we use our imagination?
When we imagine something, do we use our memory?
P163-169
The Dog section. Wow. Just wow. This alone is worth the book. It defies explanation, but anyone who has had dogs in their life will relate.
And one last quote:
I read: the book is brought alive.
I stop reading and the book maintains its potential for aliveness.
This is a unique graphic novel that is crammed jammed and overflowing with collages and images and writings and exercises and prompts to think about.
The goal is to unleash your inner creative self. The same self who used to sing and dance and write without worrying “what people think” or “how good am I”. But besides that, it’s just full of stuff that makes you stop and wonder: “Keep in mind as you read these words that you are paying no attention at all to the alphabet.”
I had a lot of fun reading this and making sure I didn’t miss anything.
Here are a few (of the many) things I want to remember:
P81
What do
Drawing
Singing
Dancing
Music making
Handwriting
Playing
Story writing
Acting
Remembering
and even
Dreaming
all have in common?
They come about when a certain person in a certain place in a certain time arranges certain uncertainties into certain form.
❤️❤️❤️
When we remember something, do we use our imagination?
When we imagine something, do we use our memory?
P163-169
The Dog section. Wow. Just wow. This alone is worth the book. It defies explanation, but anyone who has had dogs in their life will relate.
And one last quote:
I read: the book is brought alive.
I stop reading and the book maintains its potential for aliveness.
August 18, 2020
On the front of the book, it says "How to Write." I write books and I look books about writing.
I'm not sure what I expected, and at first my reaction was this wasn't it. In the beginning there's a lot of interesting questions interspersed with doodles and collages. In between there are stories about Lynda's childhood, which was difficult to say the least.
The last section does have a lot of writing prompts.
But when I take a step back and look at it as a whole, the book was deep and moving. It was about the true nature of art, not paint by numbers, but something deep and almost indescribable.
So while it wasn't the book I expected, it was so much more.
I'm not sure what I expected, and at first my reaction was this wasn't it. In the beginning there's a lot of interesting questions interspersed with doodles and collages. In between there are stories about Lynda's childhood, which was difficult to say the least.
The last section does have a lot of writing prompts.
But when I take a step back and look at it as a whole, the book was deep and moving. It was about the true nature of art, not paint by numbers, but something deep and almost indescribable.
So while it wasn't the book I expected, it was so much more.
September 25, 2019
(3.75 stars) This is not my favorite Lynda Barry book, but I'm not a wannabe writer and that is the target audience. The writing exercises seem like they would be very helpful to beginners and Lynda's wacky illustrations are themselves idea generators.
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