Lydia Schofield

Duck Season: playing chicken with a duck

I have always wanted an enemy. Someone who I could plot against and compete with, knowing that they were doing the same against me. You always know where you stand with an enemy – at odds. An enemy respects your ambitions and loathes your successes. You fuel each other with your mutual spite.

Being enemies with someone is a kind of partnership, a light hostility to spice up your day. I’ve had a few competitive friendships before, and a few school rivalries, but never a true nemesis.

Until I met the Evil One.

It was a normal afternoon. I was playing some music and on my way home from a walk. Out of nowhere, this thing started charging at me on the footpath. Beak open, hissing, coming closer and closer. Unrelenting.

An angry male duck. A drake with a vendetta and a taste for human ankles. I did my best to shoo him away and held out my jacket to make myself look big and scary. This works against other drakes I’ve encountered, but not the Evil One. He kept coming, mouth open wide, hate in his eyes. I kicked towards him but that just seemed to anger him further.

My intimidation dance was failing miserably and, on the side of a busy main road in full view of school pick-up traffic, I ran away from a duck.

This continued in a series of interactions that ended up in this weird sort of dance, where I tried to show the duck who was boss and he tried to show me who was boss until I ran away in fear of my ankles being bitten.

Finally, the Evil One pulled a move that really stumped me. I didn’t see him at the start of my walk and hoped that on the return trip, he would still be laying low away from the footpath. But the sneaky little thing had a different plan.

He stood in the middle of the only section of the footpath that has no alternative route. A busy road on one side, dense spiky bushes on the other. No nature strip to run along. Nowhere else to go. I waited, about twenty metres away from him, weighing up my options. The Evil One stared at me. I stared back.

There were two options.

One: soldier on, charge straight through the duck, hoping my jeans protect me from duck-bite. And even if he did bite, I’d keep on. I’d march forward with a duck hanging from my leg like a true hero.

Two: wait for a rare break in traffic and run across the road. The coward’s choice.

The duck made a move towards me, an intense waddle that seemed to happen in slow motion. Even so far away, his beak was open and his eyes were wide. He was ready for the taste of my delicious ankles.

I froze for a second and then, I’m sad to say, took the road less travelled by.

I took the coward’s way out.

Lydia Schofield

August 5, 2022

Better Than Nothing, writing

duck, enemy, essay, showyourwork, writing
When it doesn’t work out

I’ve been listening to the audiobook of Elizabeth Gilbert’s Big Magic as I walk to work and potter around the house. She writes beautifully about ideas as sentient things that visit humans and deliver inspiration. In her view, it is up to us as the human vessels of ideas to make a pact with inspiration and commit to following through an idea to its finished product.

The idea, sensing your openness, will start to do its work on you. It will send the universal physical and emotional signals of inspiration (the chills up the arms, the hair standing up on the back of the neck, the nervous stomach, the buzzy thoughts, that feeling of falling into love or obsession). The idea will organise coincidences and portents to tumble across your path, to keep your interest keen. You will start to notice all sorts of signs pointing you towards the idea. Everything you see and touch and do will remind you of the idea. The idea will wake you up in the middle of the night and distract you from your everyday routine. The idea will not leave you alone until it has your fullest attention.
Elizabeth Gilbert, Big Magic (this excerpt can be read here)

So I followed an idea. I’ve had this premise of a story in my head for a while: a magic boarding school opens its doors to a non-human creature for a trial period, to see if it could accept more non-human students. A goblin applies, gets into the school, and has to hide the fact that he has no magical ability whatsoever and that he lied on his application.

I love this idea, and I thought it would work as a graphic novel or comic strip. I drew out my characters, brainstormed plot points, and decided to write and illustrate the first few pages as a test run.

Sketched layouts for my comic

It took a few days. First, I sketched out what I wanted, then drafted the script on a notepad, typed it up, and thumbnailed a more developed layout. Then I drew it up, outlined everything with ink, added in the text, scanned it into my computer to add colour and I just … wasn’t feeling it. There was no spark there.

Inked comic page

I love this character and looking at these pages now, a few days later, I do feel a little better about the project than I did when I was drawing it. But maybe it’s the wrong time. Maybe if I return to it in a few months or years, the spark will be there.

Maybe I’m not cut out for making a graphic novel. All the comics I’ve made in the past have been episodic, delightfully inconsistent, and not at all outlined. Maybe I’m better suited to a comic strip than a full narrative comic.

Whatever the case, I’m putting this on hold for now. I’ve learnt over the last few years that pushing through a project that isn’t quite working is like striking at a dud match. Every few months, I become convinced I’ve found the right plot to fit the soft, sweet sapphic vampire romance I want to write and every time I spend weeks or months plodding through a story that is simply not working. One day, when I finally find the right story for my vampire, it’ll be magic. I will feel all the things Gilbert says I will, all the things I’ve felt with other stories and projects.

For now, I’ve got other things to work on, things I’m excited to make. And some of the work that’s gone into this comic can be recycled into those stories. It’s all just an experiment, leading to the next project. Plus, now I know how to draw goblins.

Lydia Schofield

June 26, 2022

Better Than Nothing, Uncategorized
Ego fractures

Lydia Schofield

June 18, 2022

writing

blackoutpoetry, poetry, showyourwork, writing
Flamingos!

This one feels like Wombats lyrics, which I love because they’re my absolute favourite band.

Lydia Schofield

June 17, 2022

writing

blackoutpoetry, poetry, showyourwork
A pair

I can’t decide if these poems work better together or separately, so here they are to be read however you like

Lydia Schofield

June 16, 2022

writing

blackoutpoetry, poetry, writing
Harry Schofield: alter ego

In Year 12, I spent an entire year creating an alter ego – a long-armed monster called Harry Schofield – and using him to process the year as it unfolded. I crocheted a soft sculpture of him, drew him, painted him, and made collage comic pages with photos of my crocheted creature. It’s one of the most therapeutic processes I’ve ever gone through with a project and one of the creative endeavours I’m proudest of.

Here are my final comics, which were part of a larger work. They are made with sumi ink and fancy paper (I can’t remember what kind but I know I have it written in my sketchbook somewhere so I can buy more if I ever become uber-rich).

Sumi ink comics from my final project

Lydia Schofield

June 13, 2022

Art, comics and zines

comic, harry, ink
It’s Easy Advice to Take

My brain has felt a little like mush this week and I haven’t been able to sit down and work on my YA novel. I haven’t known what to draw either, but I’ve wanted to make things with my hands. Low stress, low-pressure art. The answer: blackout poems.

I love the absurdity and nonsense that comes through with so many of them and how even when I haven’t written something, the words I chose from a magazine or newspaper page still reflect my voice and sensibilities.

Lydia Schofield

June 13, 2022

writing

poetry, showyourwork, writing
Better Than Nothing

A bubble flow map inspired by Austin Kleon’s notebook maps, like this one

I’ve been meaning to start a blog or website for a while. As I write this, I’m a year and a half through my dream university course, studying writing and editing at RMIT.

But there is a niggling feeling as I sit in my classes. A fear that once I’m done here, once I have to leave (something I’m putting off by studying part-time), I will be in a sort of abyss. RMIT’s Professional Writing and Editing program has a built-in writing community, one that I completely cherish, and the thought of leaving it terrifies me. It’s mid-year break at the moment, so this fear is especially strong because I have too much time on my hands to worry about ending up a lonely little writer with notebooks and sketchbooks full of ideas and no one there to share them with.

To remedy this fear, I took myself on a city trip. I went to the art gallery and saw an installation piece at St Paul’s Cathedral. I walked through Readings and let myself hover in the art section, absorbing the wisdom of creative people who, from the outside, seem to have their shit together more than I do.

Although I’ve followed Austin Kleon for years and hugely admire him, I’d never read any of his books in full, so I picked up Show Your Work! when its bright yellow cover peaked out at me from across the shelves. I devoured it in a single morning, underlining madly. It was perfect timing.

I’m a person who makes a lot of things and I struggle a little with social media. I have an Instagram account for my writing and one for my visual art. I keep them separate because I’ve always felt I have to separate the two. Even though some of my heroes – David Shrigley, Shaun Tan, Lauren Child – combine text and image, I’ve always felt like an imposter if I try to describe myself in a similar vein to them. I’m not an author-illustrator, I’m not a Shrigley-style artist. I’m too small or not talented enough to be any of those things.

Except that’s bullshit. I write and I draw and I combine the two. I’m embracing the fact that I write novels and comics and zines and poems and that I can’t keep myself from writing on my sketches and drawing on my written drafts. I need a place to share both, and I need a place to be findable. A place to think out loud, as Kleon puts it.

In order to be found, you have to be findable
Austine Kleon, Show Your Work!

So this is what I’m hoping to do with this blog. I’m starting small. I’m doing something as often as I can and sharing it. That’s always been my approach to writing: small amounts of progress almost every day builds up quick.

Something is better than nothing. And lots of little somethings can build up into something big.

Lydia Schofield

June 9, 2022

Better Than Nothing

art, austinekleon, journalling, notebook, showyourwork, writing