Are You Collage Educated?
By Gail Richards - Apr 28 , 2008
Last week I visited a friend’s office—the first time I had been to the inner sanctum. I was delighted by her decor of “Early Modern Sticky Note.”
Sprinkled between, in, and amongst the bookshelves, photos, mementos and off-beat nicknacks were little squares of paper everywhere. Whether or not she meant to, she has created a collage of inspiration to confront and challenge herself everywhere she looks. There is no escaping what she wants and needs to think about in these pithy, well-chosen “notes to self.”
I felt so at home there. My own office decor is similar in that I am in the continual act of covering two of the walls with cards, graphics, quotes, photos, ads. If it ranks high on the “off-the-charts-clever barometer”, the “wake-up-and-smell-the-coffee scale”, or the “that-really-hits-home meter” it becomes part of the collage. It grows as it grows, without rhyme or reason to anyone but me. It represents what makes me tick.
What makes you tick? If you haven’t crossed the boundaries of traditional interior design like my friend and me, I’m betting you still surround yourself with things that inspire you. Colors? Plants? Photos? The view from a specific window? What is in your collage and how does it inspire you? How does it represent who you are? How can you expand it and be even more inspired?
As a nonfiction author, collage is your friend. Creating a collage to represent what makes your audience tick is an invaluable tool to keep you connected with how they think and what they need. This technique will open doors of insight into your audience by helping you stay focused on what it is like to live in their world. You may know your topic inside out, but they know your topic from inside the trenches: from a position of need. To write a book that they can’t live without—and that will serve them well—get to know them intimately. Where does she shop? What was the last movie she saw? What does he do in his spare time? Who will they vote for?
Your collage doesn’t need to encompass your entire office—all you need is a piece of paper, some scissors, and glue. As you come across words and pictures in your work that represent your reader, add them to your growing collage. Post the stuff somewhere you can’t avoid seeing it.
Fiction authors have known about this trick for a long time—using collage and/or sticky notes to create representations of their characters, themes, and story line. Bestselling author Jennifer Crusie (perhaps you’ve heard of her?) does this for every book and has grown a following of authors who have adopted her technique.
Click here to see one of Crusie’s impressive collages and you will see this one goes above and beyond–it’s a three- dimensional piece that reflects just how deeply she dives into getting to know her characters.
You can read about the why and how of collage as a writing tool in Jennifer Crusie’s own words.
When I came across Jennifer’s collage work, I was so excited that I toyed with talking about it at the beginning of this essay. Then I remembered—oh yeah—I’ll need to ease into it. We nonfiction types have this tendency to think we’re different, that we live in a world of facts and figures and formats that separates us from fiction authors. Egads! Fiction authors are writing about the lives, needs and motives of the people who will buy our books (aliens, necromancers, and time-traveling immortals notwithstanding). We are all in this together—we just come at it from different directions.
What are you waiting for? Take a lesson from our fiction-feathered friends on this one. Get out the scissors, glue, and sticky notes and get to work!
