Het innerlijke parkietje van Shaun Tan
Hi Gaea,
Thanks for getting in touch, I like the angle of your project, dealing with something all creatives suffer from time to time. I receive quite a few requests for ‘live’ interviews but avoid them as a policy, they are a little disruptive to my working routine and you’ll also find I give much more coherent answers via email.
My general answer to your question usually involves research, so stimulating or unblocking a process by looking for things outside my own thoughts. That’s a mix of reading and making notes, or looking and sketching, taking lots of photos. I also go on long walks in my local area, during which I often solve a lot of problems that I seem unable to unravel at home. I also just avoid work sometimes! Part of the problem can be simply spending too much time focusing on one thing, when it’s better to take a rest.
Cheers,
Shaun Tan
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Hi Shaun,
do you think you could pinpoint your writing/drawing process to one action or object, and starting from that point, write a very short story or essay on how it works for you? Say you choose long walks, could you describe what happens inside your mind during these walks and how they enable you to grasp what escapes you behind your desk? How the unfocussing takes place, or what things you see and photograph? How these things trigger your imagination or creative responses? And how, when you get back and sit down, these ideas or images find their way into the book?
It doesn’t have to be all that long… about 400 words is fine. But what I’m really after, is that it breathes the same atmosfere as your stories – so in a way, it doesn’t even have to be ‘real’ or fully true…
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Hi Gaea,
I’m just now sitting down to write my piece for you, and it occured to me that I have one that might be interesting, which deals with this subject. Attached is a low-res version of it… it kind of deals with the problems you mentioned in a way that is also a lot like one of my stories.
Anyway, if this is not quite right, content or format, just let me know and I can offer up a more conventional written piece.
Cheers,
Shaun
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Het verhaal zoals het verschenen is, kan je hier bekijken.