Push

Writing and drawing are two completely different animals, it seems.

That's not to say that I carry some measure of discontent against one or the other. I decided to teach myself how to write and how to draw at around the same time, so I think I've been doing both for over half my life. The irony for me is that I write better than I draw.

I'm sure that there are a lot of people out there who are in the same situation. They may claim to both write and draw their own stuff, but in reality they're a lot better at either writing or drawing. It's the rare genius who can not only write or draw well, but who can do both with equal skill.

If you still don't believe me, do run through the pages of Heavy Metal sometime. More often than not, the art is outstanding. But the stories are almost always well-nigh impossible to follow. (The dialogue, in particular, tends to be horrible.) Not that many readers notice, of course, when they usually buy the magazine to ogle the bare breasts.

That's the issue between art and writing, really. Good art leaps out at you; it impresses you with its grandeur within the first five seconds, and then lets you take the next minute or so to bask in its glory. In contrast, good writing always looks boring at first glance - you'll only know it's good writing once you've managed to convince yourself to take a while to read it.

I'm at a loss to explain why people need equal doses of good art and good writing at the moment. In essence, they're pretty much the same thing - they look into our mind's eye; they get us to conceptualize worlds we never knew existed; they cause us to spontaneously laugh or cry with the emotions that they convey. But in the way we create them, in the way we tender them, and in the way we admire them, they are almost certainly two different things.