From Product Description:

On cover: Do you wish you could write? Dramatically illustrated with more than color pictures.

I love this book. I love the stories in it (pretending to be turned to stone by the Gorgon), though many are heartbreaking; I love the questions ("What happens when we put words together? What happens when we keep words apart?"); and I love the method ("Look! a Clue! Thinking up stories is hard. Getting them to come to you is easier"). The last half of the book presents in detail the method she uses to help the stories, the Images, come to her. It works for me, too. The book in its entirety is an urgent call to pay respects to that story-making part of ourselves that we've ignored since childhood, and to start making stories again. And to write them down. Write now! <br /> <br />If you have a chance to attend one of her "Writing the Unthinkable" workshops, do it! She is great.

This is a great resource for the English teacher. (I am one.) It would also make a lovely gift for a teen, pre-teen, or adult of any age who is interested in writing, or who SHOULD be interested in writing. My 11 year old wanted to do the exercises in this book. Just looking at her space for lists or doodles--the blank space floating in her interesting sea of artwork--makes you want to fill it in.

I bought this book shortly after getting into alternative graphic novels, and.. To be honest it is just not my cup of tea. I attempted to read it on several different occasions and got about half-way through, but couldn't make myself go any further. the whole book just seems so random and bizarre. With newspaper cut outs and writings from what I only assume are her childhood. I started off thinking it was really cool, and I do appreciate the amount of work it must have taken her to make all of those pages, it is very unique. However, aside from the presentation.. The content , I found very weak and all over the place. It had no track that it stuck to (that I could find). <br />This is the only book that I have ever returned <br />And I have to honestly give it 1 star because honest to god, I hated this book.

I bought this book as a gift for my sister. She had picked it out and said she wanted it for an art class she is teaching. I am not an artist, but I still love this book. I bought one for myself as soon as I had some extra money. I can't wait to get it.

This is not just an exciting time to be reading comics and graphic novels. It's also a time when many people want to write and draw them too. With so many options available to share their creations (and several success stories that have come about from self-publishing startups), people who want to do more than read have begun to explore their creative sides. While the results of those efforts have been wildly diverse (for every great breakthrough, there have been more than a few clunkers), the excitement in the industry has created a small but valuable niches: the how-to guide. <br /> <br />Two recent books have set the standard for guides to creating graphic-novels. One, Drawing Words and Writing Pictures, from the team of Jessica Abel and Matt Madden (click here for the Bookreporter interview of Jessica and Matt), gave a thorough, explicit, and delightfully well-rounded look at how to create a graphic story from start to finish. Do we really need another one after that? <br /> <br />The answer: If it's a book as wildly inventive as Lynda Barry's What It Is, then yes indeed. Barry is a respected creator often noted for creating rich subtext and resonating meaning that transcend her dense imagery; read between (and through) her lines and you find a powerful world of haunting memory. Here, though, she's come to show you how it's done. From the most basic--where do those crazy ideas to come from?--to the abstract--when an unexpected memory comes calling, who answers?--she delivers a jarring experience in the art of writing. She goes for the jugular of the whole creative process and lets it all come pouring out. <br /> <br />It's not a quick and easy experiment. But it's hardly long and arduous either. It's, of all things, actually fun. Barry's creative process is childlike, full of wonderment, hard to pin down, and gloriously all over the place. To that end, What It Is works not just as a jumpstart for creating graphic novels but for all writing. (A quick side note: Considering how well What It Is and Drawing Words and Writing Pictures complement each other, it's fitting that the books' three creators have recently teamed up as editors for the upcoming Houghton Mifflin release The Best American Comics 2008). <br /> <br />A cheeky tagline at the bottom of the book's cover promises it's "Dramatically illustrated with more than color pictures." And so it is. Barry throws pictures, images, and words at you at a breakneck pace, challenging you to write and think, relentlessly forcing you to get at the heart of what makes you tick, creatively. So what is it, exactly? Ah, that's the big question. Barry knows she can't answer the question decisively for everyone. But she can take you to the brink of your own wellspring of inspiration and show you how to drink from it in a new and unexpected way. <br /> <br />-- John Hogan