A Word and a Thing (no. 1)

Welcome to the official kickoff of Sundays with A Word and a Thing. Some of you have been doing this alongside me for a year now: the not-quite-an-artist-prompt, kinda-sorta-artist-prompt exercise of the same name. But after last week’s ramblings on notebooking, I’ve been rethinking the shape of things around here, and I’ve landed on this: Sundays are now officially A Word and a Thing… sometimes the exercise itself, sometimes just whatever’s rattling around my creative brain that week. So. Welcome. Let us begin.

LATELY
I did my very first Instagram challenge this week - something similar to what I hope A Word and a Thing becomes here: a nudge out of my own world of characters and into someone else’s. This one sent me into bugs, books, butterflies, and beyond (challenges by Estee Zales Beth Spencer ). The result: delightful, relaxing, and a genuinely good excuse to dig out colored pencils I hadn’t touched in ages - which happened to be lying around my parents’ house, where I’m currently camped out with the kids for part of the summer. Colorful little creatures filled the notebook. It was glorious.

I’m also finishing up my first children’s book as illustrator - one that came to me with the writer attached, from my agency, nearly two years ago. It’s been my biggest challenge yet, in the best possible way, and I’m finally in the final stretch of edits. I hadn’t illustrated a children’s book before this one, and it’s been all the things. Bonus effect: my vintage book collection has roughly doubled since it started, most recently with a very happy package from the new little bookshop Spiral Books in NYC.

Meanwhile - because apparently one project at a time was never going to be my style - I’m close, very close, to launching my first stationery collection: folded cards, correspondence cards, the thing so many of you have been asking me for over the years. Alongside it, a few new wallpaper patterns are on the way - here is my current collection if you’re intrigued- which will also show up as the liners inside the stationery. The stationery, the wallpaper, the character…I like to say they’re all in conversation with each other.

And most exciting of all: my book comes out in under two months (Sept 8th, 2026 to be exact! pre-order available!) and I’m locking in the final tour details. So be on the lookout for that…I know at least one or two NYC events will be happening this fall.

It’s a lot, but I like my plate to be full…actually, forget the plate, I’m a bowl person. I don’t keep things in their own neat little sections; everything touches everything else, and somehow I think it still works.

Last thing: editing/illustrating some wonderful interviews for From the Desk Of.., so stay tuned for those.

Okay, putting the bowl aside, let’s get back to the prompty-prompt-not-a-prompt.

A WORD AND A THING!
Quick reminder for anyone new to the actual exercise: pick a word, write it out with its definition, draw a thing alongside it - related or not. The page stops being blank the second there’s a word on it, and the rest tends to take on a life of its own.

This week, my word came from reading about poet and wordsmith Ogden Nash. In this one single article, I was presented with a slathering of delicious words: Pomposities! Peripatetic! Syllabification! Warblings! - and I was equally as impressed by Nash as I was by whoever wrote the piece (I tried to look it up but Poet Foundation did not give me such information.)

My words notebook isn’t just for words I am unfamiliar with - it’s for phrases that grab my attention as well. This one, from the same article, is a favorite: William Soskin, speaking at Nash’s funeral, called his verses “a compendium of bitter insanity, wry foolishness and considerably inspired lunacy.” What a line.

Nash was also known for his particular gift of simply making up words when the rhyme demanded it - never more delightfully than in “Arthur,” from Many Long Years Ago:

There was an old man of Calcutta,
Who coated his tonsils with butta,
Thus converting his snore
From a thunderous roar
To a soft, oleaginous mutta.

And so, inspired by Nash and his buttaaa- I set forth on choosing my word, and landed on pomposity.

Below, I share with you my notebook train of thought - that started with Mr. Nash and ended, somehow, with a rooster named Rooster trying to impress a hen named Hen. I hope you enjoy!

Let me know if you partake in this loony rabbit hole of an exercise and if so, please share! And as always, thank you for being here.

Curiously Yours,
Carly