Writing on The Fly . . . (The Other Noye Story)

In the small span of time that ittook me to recap a recent history of how I developed the story of Noye (i.e., originstory time), I had a flashback experience of my High School days. At that pointin my life, I was already entrenched in creating a 1-2 panel comic strip Icalled “Antwan,” after my Nephew of the same name—only with a differentspelling. But my mind was churning away and as I was both drawing and inkingthe cartoon panels, I was feeling flooded with funny material (at least, it wasfunny to me).

Well, it turned out that I wasn’t alone: others who askedabout it or who I tried out the comic strip on, also liked it. The way my mind hadbeen working was that even though I was very focused on what I was creating inthat regard, at some point I became more and more drawn to tell (and draw) theantics of flies—common Houseflies!

Thus was born, “MisHaps!” This was the title of that comicwhich stuck for me. I drew cartoon flies and crafted stories about flies andtheir shenanigans, as far as I was concerned. I fell in love with what I hated:disgusting flies and their annoyances. I alternated between both comic strips,and eventually bought black, hard-covered sketch books and included bothcomics.

I got the original hankering for doing these one-to-twopanel styled comics from all of my reading “Beetle Bailey,” “Family Circus” andespecially “The Far Side” comic strips (I was a huge fan of Gary Larson’swork). So I set out to create more of these stories until one day, the interestand urge to draw these faded away. And it would stay faded until many yearslater, after I had started writing poetry online and sharing my work and was drawnto an advertised writing contest. Each entrant needed to produce a fifty-thousand-wordNovella; “Hmmmm…,” I wondered to myself. What if I entered? What would I enjoywriting about so much that the story would draw me in; make me sink into thestory-teller mindset and have to be pried away from the table with a crowbar? Ormaybe sleep would overtake me, cause me to fall deep into the writer’s abyss.

Wait—is there a writer’s abyss?

Trust me, I didn’t have the answers to any of those  . But, then I did: Flies. My old favoritehate-love subject (the flies being subjected to my antics this time around!).

And thus, “Noye” was born. Or written? I merely switched myneck side-to-side, flapped wings that I didn’t have and knew that I had somethingthat would both gross me out, and hopefully an average reader. It was obvious tome; no manner of fly swatter could swipe the ideas from in front of me. Each night,for 30 nights, I wrote away. The process was not grueling—it was intense. AndNoye’s story was taking shape right in front of my eyes. As a consequence ofthe way my mind was being flooded with storylines, I also took long breaks toread up on flies, on fly behaviors that I hadn’t known about and about otherinsects that I started to figure would make good fly-ships with Noye.

But, don’t take my word for it; Noye and some of friends canspeak (or buzz or bizz-ip) for themselves.

‍