This year, for the Slice of Life Story Challenge, I set a goal to write a comic per day.

So far so good.

Today, to mark the 15th day of the challenge (halfway there!) I’m looking back at what I’ve learned so far.

• I’ve learned that generating ideas for comics is similar to generating ideas for written stories, but also different. When I’m thinking up ideas for stories to write in words, all I have to do is have a memory, and write it down. When I’m thinking up ideas for comics, I first get the memory, but then I have to ask myself, “Can I draw this?” I’m not much of an artist, so that narrows down the possibilities of what I can create.

• Not being able to draw something doesn’t necessarily stop me, though! Instead, it’s more of a puzzle to solve. I tend to think, “Well I can’t draw it that way, but what if I….”

• It has helped me a lot to think about problems as a starting point, and then use exaggeration to create humor. I take something small, and make it big. Or something boring, and find the surprising part of it.

• It’s been helpful to me, as a writer, to actually SEE the topics that I go to most often. Family, the outdoors, and housework are big themes for me. I think they always have been, but as you can see below, it really stands out when it’s in graphic form. This simultaneously gives me more ideas to write related to these same topics, and also helps me to see the topics I could be writing about that I haven’t tapped into.

• Lastly, I’ve learned that comics may look incredibly simple, but they take as much, if not more drafting, revision and work to create than my typical writing. They definitely take more time! I have even more appreciation now for the talent of real graphic artists, and the masterpieces that create.

I’m excited to continue the challenge and keep my learning curve just as steep as it’s been!

Here are all the comics I’ve created so far, in order of oldest at the top, to newest at the bottom. I can see a difference between my first ones, and my most recent. Can you?