The Shape of Ideas
On creative compost and cleaning my studio
My book THE SHAPE OF IDEAS was selected as the 2026 Common Read for Wichita State University. Here’s the title comic from the book:
This week I cleaned my studio for the first time in a long time. It was interesting to see the beginnings of projects now complete—and the detours I took along the way.
I also found scraps of projects that never took off: rejected or abandoned book ideas, comics that never made it past the sketch stage, weird artistic detours that I dropped after a week.
Were these incomplete projects a waste of time? Or were they the creative compost that made it possible for other work to grow?
Now I have a clean desk and a clear mind—for the moment. I look forward, years from now, to repeating the process and seeing how the next batch of ideas took shape.
"Do not destroy old ideas/build on them to make new ones."
Damn right!
So happy. I've worked on a few committees that choose Common Read selections and I think this would be a great book for students. I've loaned one copy to my creative daughter. It is one I refer to over and over. Thank you.