Braw Wirds
An October Drawing Challenge and a Scots Dictionary
When Nora and I posted about “Inktober,” the annual October drawing challenge that involves uncapping your pen and putting it to paper every day of the month, I thought I might play along for bit. Drawing challenges are tough, especially when they involve doing something every day, because life is unpredictable, work is chaotic this time of year (i.e. work is chaotic from August to May), and sometimes daily drawing activities can stagnate. When I have taught graphic memoir, I make the students keep a regular drawing diary, but I switch the prompts every two weeks so they stay fresh. For my “comics-tober” challenge, I decided to open a “wee” Scots dictionary to a random word and make a little cartoon showing that word used in a sentence.
Why Scots?, you’re probably asking. This past summer I had the opportunity to teach a short creative writing course in Scotland. Even though my family is from there, I had never been, and because I live in New Mexico, it’s fairly easy to remain ignorant of all things Scottish, aside from the occasional gift of Walker’s shortbread at Christmas. In Glasgow, I walked past the hospital where my grandfather served in WWII as a medic and evening DJ. I took the train down to Kilmarnock and looked for the last known addresses of my grandmother’s people (most of the flats were gone). Having a pint in the pub, I sometimes wondered if my Spanish was better than my English. I rambled along steep hillsides in the rain, careful not to step on thistles or hairy coo poo. I came home rehydrated, rejuvenated, and obsessed. (Sorry-not-sorry to everyone who has had a conversation with me since July.)
According to UNESCO, about half of all of the languages spoken worldwide are in danger of becoming extinct. A language disappears about every fourteen days. In 2011, nearly two million people said they could speak, read, write, or understand Scots, a Germanic language that shares a root with English. (And according to my wee dictionary, has also incorporated a fair number of French and Nordic words.) I’m hoping that adding some Scots to my personal lexicon will help me navigate Scotland better when I return there to teach next summer. But it’s also fun.
(This is an interesting article about adding a Scots language translator to Firefox, since technology is one way that languages can be advantaged or disadvantaged.)
This drawing practice has been easy to maintain all month. Having fun with it has been a big part of that. While a lot of people seem to be able to ink elaborate responses to Inktober prompts, I haven’t been trying to impress anyone with my clumsy lettering and doodles. I don’t usually draw (or write) fiction, so it has been fun to play with different characters and put them into various scenarios.
I have been working on some two-to-four-page comics about my travels in Scotland, but after knocking out the easy ones, about summer strawberries, wild swimming, and the rain, I’ve found myself struggling with the more personal comics. Thinking about distance, belonging, and heritage—and trying to “get it right”—has been its own challenge. So, these have been a welcomed break, while still engaging with my topophilia. And maybe they will be their own little duotone zine someday soon.
You can see more of these on Instagram at @ketcham. Let me know if you have a favorite Scots word. :)
Did you commit to a Comics-tober or Inktober drawing challenge? Tell us how it went in the comments.
Also appreciated: supportive comments about working on the hard stuff in memoir… :)
