In Which I Draw A Horse

On creativity, critics, having fun, and being good at things.

Last month, I spent a week at Milkwood, the excruciatingly beautiful residency center for children’s book authors and illustrators that was created by two-time Caldecott winner Sophie Blackall, who is simply better at everything than normal people. In addition to writing and illustrating dozens of truly stunning books for children and adults, she also raised four children and then decided to take a dilapidated old ruin of a dairy farm, lovingly restore it into the most gorgeous place you’ve ever been, decorate it with quirky old furniture and objects, rope in a few famous artist friends to add their own touches, fill its library with an exquisite collection of books, and then, in her copious spare time, make a transcendent picture book about the life of the family who lived in the farmhouse before it fell into ruin.

It pains me to add that she’s also extremely kind and generous and is an excellent cook.

She also apparently has the ability to conjure rainbows on demand, as our residency kicked off with not one, but two.

Thus you can imagine the pressure I felt upon being asked by this embodiment of loveliness to draw a horse.

At Milkwood, it turns out, every resident is asked to draw a horse in a book. A big, beautiful hardbound book with creamy white pages that is filled with the most beautiful horse drawings you’ve ever seen, drawn by some of the most accomplished illustrators alive today.

No pressure.

Just, you know, open the book, get out a pen, and draw. A horse.

A horse that will live in perpetuity next to horses that look like this.

And this.

And this.

It’s like being asked to try your hand at making an illuminated letter on the pages of the Book of Kells.

The funny thing is that I’m not usually intimidated by drawing. I’m not particularly good at it, but I have fun drawing, and I don’t really care how it turns out or what anyone else thinks of my pictures. Don’t get me wrong—I’d love to be able to draw well and I have fantasies of the graphic novels I’d make if I could. But I long ago accepted that excellence in that sphere isn’t going to happen in this lifetime and instead have enjoyed the complete absence of pressure I feel when drawing. I have no expectations that my drawings will be good and so I’m never disappointed when they’re not.

I’m also a big fan of Lynda Barry’s book Syllabus in which she dismisses this whole obsession with liking or not liking the drawing we’re making.

“Liking and not liking can make us blind to what’s there,” she argues. “In spite of how we feel about it, it is making its way from the unseen to the visible world, one line after the next, bringing with it a kind of aliveness I live for: right here, right now.”

Barry’s book helped me reclaim the love of drawing for myself, as a child does, for the fun of it. For me, drawing is play.

Except when it needs to go into a beautiful book inside a beautiful house on a beautiful farm created by an artist who seems to only create beautiful things.

I panicked.

Luckily, I know how to respond to creative panic. As I like to tell my students, 90 percent of writing is anxiety-management. I’m good at deescalating, at lowering the stakes, at telling myself, We’re just playing around here, it doesn’t matter if it’s good. So I told myself to find the play. I’d draw some horses and none of them would have to be THE horse.

That was fun. In fact, I had a blast. I sat in my room at night, using the beautiful markers Sophie had provided, and cracked myself up making bad horse puns and duck references (there’s a captivating flock of ducks at Milkwood. Of course.)

Then, in the morning, I imagined pasting one of my horse pun cartoons into THE BOOK.

Suddenly, my horse looked very weird. Why was its body shaped like that? It was going to be the worst horse drawing in THE BOOK. People would turn the page, see my oddly-shaped horse and recoil in horror. “Oh my god, that’s DASHKA SLATER’S terrible horse drawing!” they’d say. “How embarrassing for her.”

I decided to run with this feeling. I added a bunch of critics saying mean things about my horse drawing. Was this funny? I thought it was funny. A kind of meta-commentary on what I suspected many of us were feeling about drawing a horse in THE BOOK.

Or maybe those critics looked like a pathetic bid for attention and reassurance. Maybe nobody else was worried about how their drawings appeared to other people.

I watched my fellow residents add their horses to the book one by one. A collage horse. A horse decorated with dried flowers. A short and beautiful piece of writing about a horse. Fuck.

On the last morning, I found another scrap of paper, borrowed some watercolors, and spent 15 minutes painting a mer-horse. It wasn’t particularly clever or beautiful, but the lines felt freer, less labored. It felt more like me. It would have to do.

If you go to Milkwood, you' can find it in the book. Hopefully, its humbleness will make it a little bit easier for you to add your own. Or at least serve as a reminder that the best way to make art of any kind is to stop caring what people think.

In Other News…

• Using a random number generator, I’ve chosen a winner for the Escargot plush toy sweepstakes and her name is Emily Wayne. Emily, send me a message with your address and I’ll mail it to you, along with a copy of Love, Escargot. Congratulations!

• My prize-winning short story for adults, The Ruddy Fruits That Still Remain, is in the latest issue of Nimrod. You can order a print copy here or a digital copy here. The issue you want is called Awards 45.

• New subscribers to this newsletter might not know that I also have another newsletter, called A Sigh of Relief, that’s connected to my YA and nonfiction titles like Accountable and The 57 Bus. You can check it out here.

• The KidLit Craft blog used Escargot as the basis for a lesson on breaking the fourth wall.

• They also interviewed me about the Escargot books.

• It’s not too early to order the 4th book in the series, Escargot and the Search for Spring.

• I was recently interviewed by the Article Club podcast about Accountable.

Upcoming Appearances

Petaluma, CA

Tuesday, October 17, 4-4:30 PM 

Meet and Greet at Copperfield’s Bookstore

140 Kentucky St, Petaluma, CA 94952

Framingham, MA

Thursday, November 2, 2023, 7 pm

Swiacki Children's Literature Festival at Framingham State University

45 Adams Road, Framingham, MA 01701

Registration Required

Austin, TX

November 11-12, 2023

Columbus, OH

November 16-19, 2023

National Council of Teachers of English Annual Convention

I hope to see you somewhere along the way! Make sure to say hello and tell me you’re a newsletter subscriber.

I bow to you,

Dashka