Be Our Guest: Dean from Dean’z Doodlez

A: It is our great pleasure to welcome Dean, from Dean’z Doodlez and Wee Bit Wordy to the blog today. D, why don’t you make Dean feel a bit more comfortable?

D: What do you mean, a bit more? He’s very welcome here!

A: I mean, you should put the sword down.

D: But – but, he said he thought it was cool.

A: It is cool It’s also threatening. Put it away, now.

D: Oh, all right.

A: That’s better – and without further ado, here is Dean!

Hello everyone! I’ve been kindly invited by Katie (and hopefully D, too) to share with you guys my intersection of creative writing, and visual creativity: does one help the other, and how?

So, as most people know, I am indeed a creative writer as well as an artist. For a while, when I first began blogging seriously, I ran Dean’z Doodlez solely for my art and my journey with art through college. Then, a few months in, I started a 10-week creative writing course, as I knew I was good at short story writing, but wanted to improve more on what I already knew from school. For this, I set up a second blog to coincide with Dean’z Doodlez, called “Dean’z Wordz”, and there I shared all my non-art related works; my short stories, poetry, and ramblings etc..

Unfortunately, a few months into running Dean’z Wordz, I lost interest in running two separate blogs, and decided to delete it and amalgamate it into Dean’z Doodlez, where I would share my creative writing as well as my art.

This unfortunately didn’t really work out too well, and the blog got a little too messy for my liking–I had art and words all over the place and decided to separate the two once again, and Dean’z Worldz was born! Did that last long? NOPE!

Fast forward to April 2014. A close friend of mine, who wishes to remain anonymous, decided they wanted to try their hand at the blogging world, and asked me would I help set up their very own blog, considering I had quite some experience on my hands in the blogging world. I gladly accepted and together we created Wee Bit Wordy! My friend also asked me to become a co-author of the blog, allowing me to ramble and write on the blog whenever I wanted, which I gladly did so, as it had indeed been a while since I done that!

Fast forward again to the end of May, Mid-June, I received word from my friend that they no longer wished to participate in blogging, and that due to some personal problems, they didn’t feel like sharing their work with the world, let alone be very creative, and informed me that they wished to delete Wee Bit Wordy. That was where I put my foot down! I understood why and where they were coming from and why they no longer wished to blog, and duly accepted that, but I did not in any way accept that Wee Bit Wordy should be deleted. I explained to them how thrilled I was that I had somewhere to go, even if it was only once a week to share my thoughts with the world. I asked for ownership of the blog, which they gladly gave, and after some technical issues, I did eventually manage to transfer Wee Bit Wordy 100% to my WordPress account, and claim it for my own. Now, I try and post 2-3 times a week on Wee Bit Wordy, as well as share my art with you guys 2-3 times a week on Dean’z Doodlez, and I love it, and sometimes the two coincide with each other, but I have been rambling for the past couple hundred words, and now to address the main point.

Does my creative writing coincide with my visual creativity? Yes, it does indeed! I can NOT write a single short story without illustrating either a scene from the story, or maybe just one or two of the characters–I even go so far as to illustrate mock covers for the stories, as if they were actual full novels, and that was its intended cover. I have written a series of short stories last summer and have published one of them on Amazon using KDP. The first story was “Quentin Hide and the Evil Lord Twigton” (which is still available I believe, if you don’t have it yet). I illustrated the cover to that short story myself, and even have the two cover done for the sequel, which is finished, but I decided against publishing, for my own reasons. I have also written a third short story, which ties the first two together nicely and finishes the tale with an answer for everyone.

Visually, whenever I have written a story of any description, regardless of how big or small it is, I have to illustrate an aspect of it, like I mentioned above, but so much so, I have gone to the effort of actually plotting and drafting up an illustrated/comic book version of Quentin Hide and the Evil Lord Twigton. Now, its far from ready–there’s still a whole lot more developing to be done, and my comic book drawing skills aren’t nearly quite as up to snuff as I would like them to be!

I love art and drawing, but I love writing just as much, but because I love the two nearly as equally, the two almost always conflict with each other! I write a story, and I think to myself, would this be better as an illustrated tale? Or if I start drawing an illustrated tale, it will suddenly dawn on me, “hmm… this might be better written in prose…” That’s just how my brain works, and because of that, I sometimes feel that I will never finish any project I set for myself. If I was commissioned to write a story, or commissioned to illustrate a tale, I would 100% be able to finish it in whatever format asked of me, but as soon as my brain realises that it’s a personal project, and I could do this in any way that I want, I become Mr. Indecisive!

… And there you have it! That is my experience with creative writing and visual creativity, and how they intersect into my life, being both a writer and an artist!

Thank-you again to Katie (and D) for having me!

–DEAN is the author of two blogs; Dean’z Doodlez where he shares his life through art and doodles, and Wee Bit Wordy, where he shares his life through words, books, and Building Rome!