But with such personal issues at the fore, completing the manuscript was a challenge. With three mandates in mind-to tell her story, include case studies of artists with mood disorders, and explore the link between mental illness and creativity-she began to fold the three narratives into a singular book. And the author included her actual drawings from her sketchbook, each one a deftly fragile snapshot of madness. Forney also interviewed her mother and various friends for their perspectives on her struggle for emotional stability. Forney consulted, among other texts, Touched with Fire by psychiatry professor Kay Redfield Jamison on the connection between mood disorders and creativity. She enlisted a research assistant, Jamie Vann, who gathered data on bipolar disorder and case studies. She embarked on the four-year journey to create Marbles, which comprised extensive research, interviews and personal journal excerpts. Of her condition, Forney says, āI remember it dawning on me, oh, Iām going to have to deal with this in a comic!ā Forney spoke with a psychiatrist who prescribed lithium at that point, Forney began a series of sometimes helpful and sometimes harmful meds to alleviate her illness. She was in the midst of a creative blitz-and then had a meltdown. At the time Forney was diagnosed, she was a rising star in the comics world, drawing strips for the alt weekly the Stranger, launching her memoir I Was Seven in ā75 with Fantagraphics, and taking on a project for its erotic imprint Eros Comix.
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