Editing John Lennon (section)

==Writing==
<!-- Put in-line references into this article from books (with page numbers) or from web pages. -->

Beatles biographer [[Bill Harry]] wrote that Lennon began drawing and writing creatively at an early age with the encouragement of his uncle. He collected his stories, poetry, cartoons and caricatures in a Quarry Bank High School exercise book that he called the ''Daily Howl''. The drawings were often of crippled people, and the writings satirical, and throughout the book was an abundance of wordplay. According to classmate Bill Turner, Lennon created the ''Daily Howl'' to amuse his best friend and later Quarrymen bandmate [[Pete Shotton]], to whom he would show his work before he let anyone else see it. Turner said that Lennon "had an obsession for [[Wigan Pier]]. It kept cropping up", and in Lennon's story ''A Carrot in a Potato Mine'', "the mine was at the end of Wigan Pier." Turner described how one of Lennon's cartoons depicted a bus stop sign annotated with the question, "Why?" Above was a flying pancake, and below, "a blind man wearing glasses leading along a blind dog – also wearing glasses".{{sfn|Harry|2000b|pp=179–181}}

Lennon's love of wordplay and nonsense with a twist found a wider audience when he was 24. Harry writes that ''[[In His Own Write]]'' (1964) was published after "Some journalist who was hanging around the Beatles came to me and I ended up showing him the stuff. They said, 'Write a book' and that's how the first one came about". Like the ''Daily Howl'' it contained a mix of formats including short stories, poetry, plays and drawings. One story, "Good Dog Nigel", tells the tale of "a happy dog, urinating on a lamp post, barking, wagging his tail – until he suddenly hears a message that he will be killed at three o'clock". ''[[The Times Literary Supplement]]'' considered the poems and stories "remarkable&nbsp;... also very funny&nbsp;... the nonsense runs on, words and images prompting one another in a chain of pure fantasy". ''Book Week'' reported, "This is nonsense writing, but one has only to review the [[Literary nonsense|literature of nonsense]] to see how well Lennon has brought it off. While some of his homonyms are gratuitous word play, many others have not only double meaning but a double edge." Lennon was not only surprised by the positive reception, but that the book was reviewed at all, and suggested that readers "took the book more seriously than I did myself. It just began as a laugh for me".{{sfn|Harry|2000b|pp=393–394}}

In combination with ''[[A Spaniard in the Works]]'' (1965), ''In His Own Write'' formed the basis of the stage play ''[[The Lennon Play: In His Own Write]]'',{{sfn|Lewisohn|2000|p=287}} co-adapted by [[Victor Spinetti]] and [[Adrienne Kennedy]].{{sfn|Harry|2000b|pp=396–397}} After negotiations between Lennon, Spinetti and the artistic director of the [[Royal National Theatre|National Theatre]], [[Laurence Olivier|Sir Laurence Olivier]], the play opened at [[The Old Vic]] in 1968. Lennon and Ono attended the opening night performance, their second public appearance together.{{sfn|Harry|2000b|pp=396–397}} In 1969, Lennon wrote "Four in Hand", a skit based on his teenage experiences of [[Circle jerk (sexual practice)|group masturbation]], for [[Kenneth Tynan]]'s play ''[[Oh! Calcutta!]]''<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.specialsections.absoluteelsewhere.net/LennonLoreLegacy/oh_calcutta.html |title=Oh! Calcutta! |publisher=specialsections.absoluteelsewhere.net|access-date=2 January 2015|url-status=live|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150401000506/http://specialsections.absoluteelsewhere.net/LennonLoreLegacy/oh_calcutta.html|archive-date=1 April 2015}}</ref> After Lennon's death, further works were published, including ''[[Skywriting by Word of Mouth]]'' (1986), ''Ai: Japan Through John Lennon's Eyes: A Personal Sketchbook'' (1992), with Lennon's illustrations of the definitions of Japanese words, and ''Real Love: The Drawings for Sean'' (1999). ''[[The Beatles Anthology]]'' (2000) also presented examples of his writings and drawings.