It's All What You Know...

Last week in my mom's Journal, (Here,There, and Everywhere) and her pages, she was writing about, well...writing, and what's a writer. Well this is just my input on the subject:
When I was in my Creative writing class in College, my professor gave the best and easiest advice to the class. It's very simple: 1) Write what you know. 2) organize it 3) re-write it . That's pretty simple. And if it was something you didn't know about: research it! How simple can that be! Of course anyone can write and re-write, it's all about if anybody's interested in reading what you have to say, or what your story is about. So, I usually just keep to my artwork, and keep organizing until I'm ready for the re-write!
My Professor was also a good kidder, too. After 3 semesters with her, she came up with something that stumped me. "This semester, you're writing a children's story!" Oh wee hee, that should be easy. Well it's not that easy. I did my research. I read all of Roahl Dahl's books as a kid, and re-read them as an student. (James and the Giant Peach, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and my favorite The Witches, which was made a movie with Angelica Houston as the Head Witch) I never laughed so hard in my life. After the first initial draft, came the comments and the re-writes. (after all, I had all semester to do it) I had to be a little more simplifing and yet "over-the-heads of a child". she said. Simple being ,they can understand what is happening, and over-their-head , well, that's the fun part...adding things a 5 year old won't understand, but an adult will, neatly desguised in the story. It was a difficult task, and I'm not even sure what ever became of the story. But it was a lesson in what I didn't know! I'll stick to what I do know for now, and do the research at a later date. Maybe I'll just continue to do the illustrations instead.
As for the painting abouve, it really has nothing to do with the blog, just one of my " Daliesque" paintings I'd done in the past, but it's a good one for critiques and comments! I'm sure I can fill a blog on comments and theories behind my painting alone.
The Garden : painted by Thomas Neal around '96 or 97' ?