Me, my mom and other internal editors
I’m sorry to write that my mother, Susan Jean Devonshire, 81, died peacefully last month. I’m not sure what the first blog after her death is supposed to be. I don’t feel a rumination on death coming on, and I don’t think this next 1500 words will wrap up my feelings about my mother, childhood, adulthood, mortality, or anything else. Maybe those blogs will come, and when they do it’ll be okay. But there’s a lot going on in my head, and I have to write something, and it ought to be somehow related to the primary theme of this blog, which as far as I can tell is the struggle to stay creative despite the demands of midlife. So, let’s think about editors.
Editors? I wasn’t expecting that until I typed it. But follow me. There are many kinds of editors, in comics, in writing in general, and perhaps in life. Once you’ve worked with good ones, and I have (looking at you, Claire Napier and Matt Idelson), it changes your writing process. When I’m writing a first draft I’m sneaking around, writing just for me, seeing what I can get away with. But all the while I’m wondering what the editor will think—will they dig it or rap my knuckles for clunky lines, undeveloped characters, faulty logic. When I’m early on in a scene I try not to let that internalized editor in the sky see my page and rattle me. But as I get deeper into the writing the editor is there, eyes over my shoulder, offering reality checks. All the while I’m fearing their judgement, longing for their approval. Seems familiar…
Sounds a lot like my relationship with…you guessed it: my mother.
Is there a better definition of a mother than your internal editor? Life editor, maybe? The whole goal of a mother is to implant wisdom, logic, reasoning and judgement into your malleable little infant cortex and hope that it works well enough to keep you alive when you’re out of her arms’ reach. My whole life, I’ve had her present in my mind as a reference. Most of the time I’ve made decisions I think she would have approved, while sometimes I’ve tried the Crazy Ivan, turning 180 degrees from her advice. Sometimes those moves have worked, sometimes not. But the Mother Editor has always been there, a usually benign, sometimes malignant presence influencing my thoughts large and small.
And she’s gone.
So now what?
It was a few days after she passed when I realized that, wait a second, there’s one less person in my head. Not sure what I was thinking about, but it hit me that a decision was mine in a way that it never was before. I didn’t feel scared, in fact I felt…lighter. The truth is that in my particular life, I’ve been making big decisions in the family for a long time, mom hasn’t really been in charge of things for decades. But still, the space above my head feels less crowded. I don’t know if I agree with the sentiment that you aren’t truly an adult until a parent dies, but I do understand it. It reminds me of my first day as an attending emergency physician, no longer a resident with a supervisor over me. I could just make decisions without explaining them to anyone (except the patients, of course). Sure it felt a little scary, but it mostly felt…great! It’s what I trained for. It’s what SHE trained me for. Of course I do miss her humor, her laugh, her extremely quirky way of looking at the world. And do I miss her opinions, some of them. But if I ever need to check in with her, her voice is there, and I’m pretty sure I know what she’d say. Mostly.
Wait a second, there’s one less person in my head.
It so happens that I also recently lost another internal editor: Facebook. The same week my mother died, my Facebook account was suspended for a crime I didn’t commit. Nothing juicy to report, just modern life when 15 years of memories are held ransom by an inhuman corporation that doesn’t care about you because you are their product not their customer.* Now, of all the times I’ve needed Facebook, the week my mother died really really was it. There were the distant cousins and family friends I couldn’t reach. And emotional support from friends and family on FB would have been nice. And for better or worse I’ve used FB heavily for 15 years to catalog important and not so important moments for me and my family and friends, and worrying about losing all that while losing my mother has been really shitty. And of course, I’ve built up a community of comic book support, with dozens of creators, hundreds of crowdfunding supporters, not to mention my comic book page, the band page, Facebook Messenger…Shit, it’s a lot. Goddammit.**
But wait…listen.
You know what I’m not hearing?
The Facebook Editor in my head.
You might know that editor, the one whispering “that would be a good post.” If the Mother Editor is the voice telling you who you should be, the Facebook Editor is the one asking who you would be, as seen by the rolled up average of most of the people you know in your life, if you could represent to them the ideal you. Sure, keeping a concept of our idealized selves was a thing before social media, but that was an intensely private idea, one we maybe weren’t even aware of day to day. But when social media took off we could easily create and tend to an idealized public persona—we could feed it, teach it tricks, send it to fun places until we became our own virtual pets, defined by likes and shares, demanding attention lest they starve. You may not realize the Facebook Editor is in your head until you step away, which I have done a few times over the years, only to be drawn back every time. Or maybe it’s just me.
Suspended for a crime I didn’t commit.
So, no Mother Editor. No Facebook Editor. Who’s watching over me now?
Well, you guys, obviously. And thank you for being there.
Suffice it to say it has been quite a month. I haven’t even told you about making my own will…Ethel and I happened to be updating our own estate planning when my mother died, so we’re in the market for a burial plots if you know a good one. And also some good death rituals, we’re openminded. But I promised this would not be a rumination on death. Anyway, I have done jack shit on my comic book since my last blog. I’ve started to worry that the comic book has been replaced by an endless to do list (no, mom did not make a will or any arrangements at all. Sigh…), and being sad, and staring blankly at the wall. But I just got an email that’s got me thinking…
If the Mother Editor is the voice telling you who you should be, the Facebook Editor is the one asking who you would be
The Independent Comic Creators Convention, a very cool little con I tabled at in New Haven last spring, just announced a One-Page Comic Contest, due January 1, 2025, on the theme of “space”. Obviously, I don’t need more shit to do, especially since I’m having trouble getting back into the four comic books I’m in the middle of writing (By the Time I Get to Dallas 5-6 and The Trinity Project 5-6). But, it just so happens that for the last few years I’ve been world building for a future comic series, something massive, something epic, something fun and funny and gross and sad and heavy and silly and all the things By the Time I Get to Dallas is, but more. If Dallas is my love letter to becoming a doctor, this future series is my resignation letter. And it happens in…space. I have a load of little vignettes written on my Freeform project board. I ought to be able to make one of them into a one friggin’ page comic in three months, right? What is a one page comic, anyway? We’re allowed a single 8.5 x 11 piece of paper. I could just lay it out as a flat sheet, or I could go old school ‘zine style by folding and cutting the paper to make an 8-sided mini book, like so:
Then I get to have a cover, page turns and the feel of a real comic. It just needs to be easy to read at small size. So I’ll make each page a single panel, keep the text to a minimum. I can print em out, fold ‘em up and hand ‘em out as teasers at future conventions. But first I need a script and I need an artist. Of course, I saved a huge list of cool artists on my FB account and it’s gone. But I can start again and find somebody willing to work on a dumb project at short notice. If you’re an artist and are interested please let me know! This how the best projects happen. And also the worst.
Don’t worry, By the Time I Get to Dallas is still my baby, and I’ll be back at it before you know it, maybe even today. But doing this one pager thing might be what I need to get back in the groove and feel alive again. Or it might be a horrible idea. Maybe I’ll take you through the whole making of…that could be really fun, or very tedious for you.
How about I just start with the title and the tag line?
Space Casualty: In the waiting room, no one can hear you scream.
I reserve the right not to do this project, but if I do I’ll keep you up to date with it.
Thank you as always for reading.
Colin
Colin Devonshire
Colin is an emergency physician in Boston, Massachusetts. The seeds of his comics project were sown when he took a sabbatical from the ER for creative writing. His creative non-fiction has been published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.