Two Questions, Lynda Barry

After reading “Two Questions” by Lynda Barry, I definitely agreed with her that as children, most of us LOVE to draw and create but as we get older it almost becomes “work”. As a cartoonist, novelist, and playwright all she did was write and draw. She realized that she was beginning to lose her passion for what she once lived for. She found herself asking two questions: Does this suck? Is this good? She was extrinsically motivated for a long time, meaning that she was just doing her work as her job and for others; which is why she asked herself those two questions. This writers block caused a lot of issues for a long time until she finally realized that she needed to write for herself and then she would finally be satisfied with her own work. Intrinsic motivation worked best for her because it allowed her to create and write to the best of her ability because it didn’t matter what anyone else thought. The fact that she went back to writing for herself, like kids do when they draw or write, is what made this story a circular narrative. I related to this story a lot because I’m very artsy and I became literate through art. As a child, the first kinds of books that I was interested in reading were autobiographies on artists. I also have been scrapbooking and drawing for almost all my life; so I really enjoyed this story.