12 Months of Paperthin: April

I have begun to write a new graphic novel. The more I think about it, the more it reveals itself to have been rattling around my head in various form for many, many years. More than is reasonable. More than is fair.

There are elements I found in some Lime Kilns that sit by a small and crumbling cemetery outside of Montrose. I think some of it came to mind climbing the lower iron struts of the Lethbridge Viaduct, the undulating hills silver with sage, the river low and summer lazy.

As I write, the narrative has split itself into three blocks. A past. A present. And a series of creepy stop motion animated films from the ‘80s.

This last month has been the first pass at the present. I have begun to explore a few of the themes through little zines. Masks, collectives, glowing screens in dark rooms and early mornings in a film archive emerged.

The past visits my protagonist (presently and affectionately known as Bird) as little masked dolls. It reaches out to her through lost films. It talks to her (and Bird talks back) through a velvet-soft-with-age school exercise book. Bird’s voice isn’t whole yet and her face is a question mark. But she has begun to to take shape and make her presence known.

Then others came to join her.

Two childhood best friends. An unlikely film collective. Aunt Joan. Juppy the 1st who is a ghost and Juppy the 4th who is a cat. Mimi is there in theory. Mimi is there in heart and mind. Bird begins her letters ‘Dear Mimi…’ Who else can she tell about what has begun to happen but someone who was there to witness the beginning? Or perhaps it was the middle. Or a small part of a many splintered whole.

I take my notes to the Lavender Menace Queer Book Archive and begin to thumbnail chapters. Plan pages. Pace the story out and think about what it might look like. Images of buried women and the smell of VHS (sweet-plastic-dust) wrap my head up in stories.

I write streams of consciousness and make notes in margins and around sketches that I’ll probably never see again.

I have begun to write a new graphic novel. I’m not sure if a feather and a dog’s tooth will be sewn into the bellies of little puppets. Or if budgerigars will walk on long legs. Or if two ten year old girls will follow a hand drawn map through an old canal tunnel, the brick ceiling covered in spiders.

I don’t have these answers. Do you?