The Secret Language of Comics: Visual Thinking and Writing

Traveling in a time machine of self-reflection, I have returned with a few artifacts of my past and created an About Me page (which is titled “my life stuff” because I’m apparently quite extra). Therein lay the books that impacted the impressionable young me, teaching me lessons that are at once profound and pointless; in short, they perfectly applied to life.

Picking out several parts from the cactus of childhood memories has reopened a few wounds, especially the heartache and despair that accompanied those final chapters of Old Yeller ⁠— it is an universal truth: all dog books are bad news. Yet those referenced tales have become a part of me in some way, so I guess there’s no use in protesting the pain of a few pages.

I, however, have learned a solemn and sad truth: I am not the reader I once was. My elementary-school self would annihilate me with his AR-test prowess in a second. Yet I shouldn’t be so swift to disparage my present state, for though I may not read as much on my “free time,” I am positively plowing through more pages than my little third-grade mind could ever handle. Thank goodness for this, too, for my lack of progress would have made quite the frightening example of the American school system.

A picture is worth a thousand words, so expect the word count of that page to climb quite quickly as I add in a few extra stick figures here and there. Like the family fridge, it will only display my best drawings, so don’t expect too much.

How do we gain confidence as readers and writers? For me, my confidence relied heavily on the approval of my teachers. It wasn’t until recently that I understood the value of my creative process and the work that it produces.

Finding the content for my literacy narrative was easy because I can pinpoint specific moments in my academic career that had strong affects on my reading and writing, but finding the words to encapsulate those moments was difficult. I felt uncomfortable writing about writing because it made me hypercritical of my work. It was a feeling that worked well with my narrative considering how I discovered a main part of the process in creating good writing is being comfortable feeling uncomfortable. Not everything I write will be my best work, but I have to start somewhere and trust my process.

Link to my page: https://marlieswords.wordpress.com/?page_id=48

In my narrative, “Visualization, Imagination, and Immersive Experience”, I come to the conclusion that my language learning experience and my personality have led me to read and write with visualization and imagination. They bring me immersive reading and writing experiences from which I derive a lot of enjoyment.

Reading and writing are so common in the daily life that I was not aware of the typical way I read and write until I reflected upon my past experiences. Therefore, the pre-writing before I read and thought about the prompt was a crucial step. It helped me identify patterns, develop my thesis, and support my arguments with my own experiences. The way I write also manifested itself during the process – “I would first think of a scene as detailed as possible and turned it into words.” In pre-writing, I elaborated on three scenes that went as specific as “Through the leaves and branches, the late summer sunlight came from the windows on my left, leaving light spots on my favorite book, Stories of the Romans.” Visualization and imagination are pivotal elements of my reading and writing habits. Even now when I am writing this reflection post, I have the pictures of me in my head sitting in a booth and drafting my essay.

With the materials in hand, I started to work on the literacy narrative. I identified my language learning experience in my childhood and my introversion to be the most influential factors. The structure, however, was a little bit complex. Not only did I have two factors to discuss, but I also had two subjects – the way I read and the way I write – to analyze. Furthermore, the two factors seemed to shape my reading and writing habits in different periods of my life, of which I was not aware at the beginning. I felt weird reading my first draft and resorted to a writing tutor. The tutor also found the structure complicated and suggested drawing it out on paper. As I pointed out in my essay, visuals helped me think and communicate. I drew a graph that divided my essays into six parts, and we discussed and moved around those blocks to make the logic flow smoothly. And it worked pretty well.

Using Dan Roam’s terminology, I am a visual thinker, yet just a “Yellow Pen”. I employ visuals and imagination to process the information, like reading or writing, but I am far far away from an artist. As a result, I depend heavily on words even when I am making a graph or illustration. I really enjoy the class readings so far and look forward to the following assignments that require more visuals and creativity.

I found the freewriting exercises different from the experience of writing the literacy narrative itself, although I did find it helpful. I ended up using one of the free writes almost verbatim in my literacy narrative. That one sparked some deeper level ideas about my own progression and a writer and reader.

In the process of writing my narrative, I discovered that my anxiety has more control over my work ethic and my perception of myself than I originally thought. In my narrative I explored how my relationship with writing has been both hindered and helped by my anxiety.

Overall, writing the literacy narrative was difficult for me – but writing always is a labor-intensive process for me. This assignment, however, bore much reward in the sense that it made me reexamine what powers my writing and what inspires me to read.

Link to my literacy narrative (pt 1): https://trinityinenglish.wordpress.com/literacy-narrative-part-1/

My writing process for my narrative came in waves. In order to write this narrative I had to put myself back in time when it was very difficult for me to understand to speak, read, or write in English. The free writing exercises were beneficial to me because it allowed me to focus on writing utilizing my senses. I learned that my writing abilities have improved so much in part to the people who have supported me such as my friends and teachers. The most interesting sentence i my essay would have to be ” As I sat in an isolated area of the classroom, I felt like I was trapped in a box with all my thoughts struggling to be released. ”

Literacy Narrative:

https://wordpress.com/block-editor/page/andresvelasquez905687008.wordpress.com/35

https://oreadenikinju.wordpress.com/literacy-narrative-part-one/

My narrative goes through the different stages of my life and how my experiences have really impacted my view and interest in reading and writing. From America, to Nigeria, then back to America, there were a myriad of different aspects and circumstances which influenced and ultimately determined how I read and write.

Being that this assignment was freewriting, I did not feel really pressed to write a certain way or fit a specific mold. After looking at a few posts to see how others were writing, I simply opened a new document and began to write as it came to me. Writing this narrative painted a clearer picture in my mind of where a lot of my reading and writing habits came from. There were not any surprising moments for me but rather, it felt like I could properly explain the different sources of my style of reading and writing.

“Even as a child, I was able to understand the power of how words can be intertwined with images to create something greater than both of them individually”. I believe this is the most interesting sentence from my narrative mainly because it relates a lot back to this class specifically. Prior to this class, I had honestly forgotten what a significant role that comics played in my life as a child. This narrative helped me delve deeper into my memory and remember my previous interest for comics.

https://jamyayancey.wordpress.com/the-frustrations-of-a-six-year-old/

At first writing this narrative was very strange for me because I hate talking about myself and living in the past. This really pulled me out of my comfort zone but I am glad it did because it showed me a lot about myself. I was surprised to get an answer about why I am the way I am when it comes to writing and reading. I thought it was just some random anxiety that came from wanting to succeed, which I am sure plays some factor in it, but it has more depth and more background to it. I guess you really do learn about yourself in college, this was an odd yet cool way to being that journey. A line in my narrative that will catch attention is definitely, “So, I went in my room, slammed my door, and threw a chair across the room.” Just by looking at that line you would think that has nothing to do with the process of learning to read or write. Even just the title, “The Frustration’s Of a Six-Year-Old,” no one would read that and say that it relates to english. But trust me it has so much to do with the foundations of my career in english.

https://isaacgaz.wordpress.com/a-playground-of-the-imagination/

The initial splurges of thoughts definitely helped my mind organize what I was attracted to in reading: immersion into another world. I came up with four different beginnings to my piece until I landed on one that I felt had the experience of immersion most accurately described without directly saying it.

The essay was a lot harder to write than I thought it would be. Once I got going on an idea though the words practically jumped their way out of my mind and onto the screen. I found it easiest to go chronologically through what I remember of reading. I was definitely surprised at how most of my memories of reading boiled down to five main books/series: Harry Potter, Percy Jackson, Bone, Redwall, and Warriors.

” I don’t remember the specific moment it happened, nor do I quite know why, but at some point in the latter half of my junior year at high school I felt a yearning for something familiar. Among my thoughts of schoolwork and becoming an adult, a desire to travel back to the moments of childlike freedom snuck into my daily consciousness. This craving led me back to my bookshelf, and, over the course of several months, I traveled back to the worlds of Harry Potter, Percy Jackson, Redwall, and –most fondly– Bone.” – Me (Isaac Gazmararian)

A quick note on the visual aid: the drawing is supposed to be my experience reading Harry Potter, as I’m transporting into the pages of the book to the grounds of Hogwarts.

While writing the essay I was forced to strike an overarching structure to my reading and my thoughts about reading. And now that I’m done with it, all I want to do now is read another book… and get lost in another world.

https://isaacgaz.wordpress.com/a-playground-of-the-imagination/