August 11—I don’t love that we’re already 2/3 of the way through 2023? Lord help me, time is a sieve and I’ve turned liquid.
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I’m finalizing the syllabus and all teaching materials for the first few weeks of the class I’m teaching at SAIC this fall, which starts August 31. It has been thrilling to put my thoughts in order, to realize that 13 years of making and reading and thinking comics and generally being an opinionated person has prepared me to take on this role I would have been intimidated by just a few years ago, and to realize that the comparatively creatively fallow period of the past 7 years of mostly-full-time parenting hasn’t dulled my instincts as much as I worried. However! I remain pretty nervous about the time! It’s a 6 hour class, 3:30 - 9pm once a week. I’m lightly panicking that 7pm will roll around, I’m out of planned material, and we still have two hours to fill. I’m over-preparing to be adaptable. It’ll be fine, right? Whew.
Would readers of this here substack be interested in receiving some of the teaching materials & prompts I’m assembling? I’m leaning heavy on the wisdom of others for a lot of the in-class exercises—Ivan Brunetti and Lynda Barry for comic warm ups, Marie Howe and Summer Brennan for writing prompts, I’m too sleepy and new to teaching to be original just yet—but I think some of it would be adaptable to sharing. What do you reckon?
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I’m beat up. My 2 1/2 year old has always had strong caregiver preference; for his first two years I barely caught his eye, he only wanted my husband. Take that beefy lad, I thought, I’m tired and have two other kids who need care. But now the blindingly bright spotlight focus of his love and attention has turned fully to me, and what a joy what a joy, and also what a heavy burden! He’s waking up 5-10 times a night with classic 2 year sleep regression stuff, and he’ll scream and wake everyone else up if Tom tries to take a turn helping him get back to sleep. I’m an iced coffee wraith, held together by spiderwebs.
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Parenting a medically complex kid is really lonely. New rows are being added to the spreadsheet of doctors on the care team. New intake appointments are on the books. We’re not dealing with terminal illness, but “progressive with low quality of life and no cure” keeps progressing. I only talk about these challenges obliquely, but it is heavy. The way I process my life is in comics, and for the sake of the kid’s privacy it needs to stay uninked. If anyone else is parenting through medical complexity and wants to talk, drop me a line.
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A few things on the horizon: I signed the contract for a small new book I’m working on in collaboration with some friends! Details to come when I can, but I’m excited! I also just signed on for another year as staff cartoonist at Ask Magazine, where I make the “Ask Ask” comic every issue, answering kid science questions. I’m also working with my friends at Artist Book House to put together a diary comics workshop here in Chicago some time next year. AND! I feel full to the brim with ideas for short and long form comics I want to make. Can’t wait for school to start a week from Monday, can’t wait for the toddler to start sleeping through the night so I can use that time meaningfully. A summertime of behind-the-scenes prep work will be done soon; inky fingers forthcoming. In lieu of diary comics, here is a picture of my garden + some pictures of my summer, both noisy and chaotic and full of life: just how I like it.
xoxox marn
I hope you’ll share your prompts etc from class. That would be lovely to see :)