It's OK to Be Sad

Interview with Maliha Ali

1. What inspired you to write It’s OK to Be Sad? How long did it take you?

I didn’t set out to write or draw this book. 

Over the summer of 2021, with both a COVID lockdown and a self-imposed hermit phase, I would stay home and draw for hours.

 My younger brother was going through a period of sadness, and I was on a mission to “help” and “solve” it. I was trying to rush him out of it, I think. He gently told me to stop, that it wasn’t helping, however well-intentioned, and that perhaps there was nothing to be done right now. I was falling into a gloop myself and things felt heavy and hollow for a lot of people. I think I started drawing the sadness I saw around me, first, out of helpnessness, and second, for research, for understanding. There wasn’t much else to do in 2021 but stop and notice things and people anyway, and this was my way of making sense of everything that felt senseless.

So a series of sad drawings started taking shape and I thought it could be an offering for my brother, something to accompany him during a weird time. The drawings came first and the text came later. 

2. What challenge(s) did you encounter in the process of writing?

Oddly, none. Once all the drawings were done, the words came out of me, all in one go, as if they had been waiting patiently at the tip of my tongue. I wasn’t trying to write anything, I was just looking at the drawings and said the words aloud and they sounded like they fit what I had already tried to say with the illustrations. 

3. How would you describe your creative practice? Do you have rituals or routines?

Unless I’m working on a commission or have a submission coming up, I have no drawing routines or schedules. I draw when I feel compelled. Sometimes, that’s a sketch every day for days, and sometimes weeks will go by with nothing. I have come to appreciate that that fallow period is important. 

I prefer to draw by myself, at home. I find it distracting to draw in group settings or in public spaces. because, there, I like to be in the moment itself… the drawing is a kind of analysis and that comes after. Occasionally, I will give myself a quite specific drawing assignment, like draw people in motion at a park or design PSA posters or make a series about college graduation or just work with blue. Some interesting projects have come out of that. 

4. What aspects of your life or upbringing influence your work?

Growing up, if you didn’t like what the rest of the family were watching on TV, you had to invent your own entertainment. When I was bored—which was often—I liked to make things. Handmade cards, letters, zines, songbooks. Pure silliness and hours and hours of project energy. That’s what drawing feels like today, too.

My favorite show on TV was Art Attack, and it helped me see art as a thing that could be silly and not be obsessed with “fine art” or achieving beauty or likeness.  

As a kid, I destroyed many family telephone diaries (back when people wrote down landline numbers, by hand, in diaries), drawing what my parents called “weird faces”, something I’m still told ☺. I drew in school notebooks, filling margins with drawings obsessively. I just liked to draw things.

I also read a lot, and I loved the drawings in books. Quentin Blake’s drawings were my favorite. Loose, funny, sweet sketches – and it looked like he must have had fun making them. I thought he had the best job in the world but it didn’t feel it was available to me. I feel lucky that I get to do that. 

5. What are your future creative goals? Are you working on any new projects?

I have a few book projects in mind. One in particular is quite ambitious and I don’t really know how to do it. It scares me but I’m figuring it out and just trying to make the thing, little by little, until it adds up.

I’m also selling my work in stores and learning about the retail experience. 

6. Do you have any advice for aspiring writers/artists?

Three things that worked for me:

1. Just make the thing. If you like to draw and write, you should draw and write. You don’t have to show anyone anything. 

2. Give yourself the assignment you wish you had or the thing you wish existed in the world. Don’t wait for some kind of permission to make the thing. You might be surprised by how good or bad you are…whatever, try to finish it and see what happens.

3.  Give your practice breathing room. If you’re stuck in talentless despair and uninspired nothingness, go see other people’s work. Read a book, watch a film, watch someone make food or something.