Like a sponge, a writer or any creative person needs to soak up experiences before we can write about it. Doesn’t have to be the same experiences, just life. I have soaked for almost a month; Now I am itching to get some work done. On my list of things to do: Write a second draft of a YA novel for a Danish publisher. Write a first draft of my screenplay at Film School. Draw 5-10 pages of two different comics pitches I am doing with US writers. Finish my own graphic novel Stiletto, set for release in Denmark next year. And answer a thousand emails and get a million other little things done.
So if blogpost here are thinning out a bit, there is a reason for it.
My month of workation in California, Portland, Oregon, San Diego and New York is over. Copenhagen seems smaller than usual. The last week in New York I didn’t have time to do any blogging, but here are a couple of random memories:
- Going from heat wave to hail in one day, when the sky suddenly cracked open and it looked like the World was ending. Running through the storm with my youngest daughter, shielding us with the stroller while ice was smacking against it. And my daughter just laughing at the whole thing.
- The girls screaming with joy in a Central Park amusement park, spinning by on rides I wouldn’t dare to get on.
- A girl in a mini-skirt doing a pole dance in the subway, her equally dolled-up girlfriends cheering her on.
- My two-year old daughter make her way through the crowded MoMA lobby, saying “Excuse me” in perfect English.
- Birthday drinks in Brooklyn with fellow cartoonists – short but sweet.
- Guitarist Pat’s tall tales of his adventures in Denmark. Or rather, his week in a surreal palace location in a remote part of the country, surrounded by characters even the best writer would have trouble making up.
- Seeing The Dark Knight Rises on IMAX, courtesy of writer Charles Soule, and discussing global warming while walking through a hot and humid nighttime Manhattan, lit up by neon lights.
- A rambling old man on the subway, obviously doped up on something, eating ice cream out of the bucket and yelling out his view of a world run by rich white people, obvously including my friend and I in this Rockefeller conspiracy. A young hip hop dude’s remark to us: “He does not represent black people”. Sad that he felt the need to point that out.
- Carrying my sleeping two-year old daughter through the metal detectors and on and off airplanes.
- Being met by a friend at the airport who took care of our apartment while we were gone and seeing my oldest daughter jump up in her arms, happy to see a familiar face after a month on the road. Feeling like the luckiest man in the world, to be able to travel with my wonderful girls and be met by our car at the airport and a filled refrigirator at home.
To all my friends, new and old: Thank you.