![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
June project check-in
Jun. 4th, 2008 07:13 pmHow goes life on the creative front? Um, it goes, it goes. Actually, it goes pretty well. My big goal this year was to get some rough novel drafts done, so that I'll have something to work with -- something to polish up and sell. So far, in 2008, I've finished a 50,000 word YA novel and a 25,000 word novella (both science fiction), and I'm currently 10,000 words into a novel that probably kinda straddles the border between YA and regular fantasy -- that is, I originally conceived it as adult fantasy, but since there's no real adult content (in the sense of sex or excessive gore) and most of the viewpoint characters are in their teens, I expect it would be marketed as YA. Anyway, I've set a target of 100,000 words, so if I stick to my writing goals, I'll be done with the rough draft by the end of summer. I'm awfully enthusiastic about this one, because it's one that I've wanted to write since I was 16, and the original idea goes back even farther, to a game I used to play with my sister when we were little kids. Right now it's so much fun to write that I keep wondering if what I end up with is going to be publishable at all, because it just feels like I'm delving down into my childhood daydreams and flinging it out on the page. *shrugs* I guess if it doesn't turn out to be something an editor will buy, I can publish it on my website; I can't imagine anyone will object to that.
I've let the Kismet Scrapbook lapse, for the time being. I guess that if it's a question of hunting up new material for the Scrapbook or penciling new pages for the comic, I'd rather get the penciling done. I'm kinda dividing my time between "Midnight Sun" and the new Kismet book, "Sun-Cutter"; I want to do both of them, don't really have a preference between them, and I guess the first one to start updating as a webcomic will be whichever one gets the most pages done soonest. Original plan was to pencil all of "Sun-Cutter" before I start inking it, so that I wouldn't end up in the same boat that I was in with "Hunter's Moon", trying to make story edits to actual finished pages, but ... we'll see.
Switching back and forth between webcomics and novels is really interesting. Tim Broderick of Odd Jobs once compared doing a webcomic to performing street theatre. I've always found that comparison wonderfully apt, especially for me, since I don't script them. I've tried, and I really did try my best with "Sun-Cutter" -- and basically ended up sitting on the idea for a year because I just couldn't get the words out. When it comes to making comics, the pictures and words are so bound up with each other that I can't write the words without having the pictures. I just can't. So with webcomics, I don't get the "do-over" of a rough draft and a final draft like I do with a novel. The rough draft is the final draft. I can go back and clean up stuff later, but it's limited to minor edits like I did on "Hunter's Moon" -- fixing typos, cleaning up the more clumsy and poorly-worded dialogue, making minor adjustments to the art. I can't really just go through with a scythe and delete or rewrite whole scenes, and I try to resist the urge to redraw pages, though I did redraw a couple in "Hunter's Moon" that really needed it.
But that street theatre aspect to webcomics is part of what makes it a unique art form. I like the way that the creator's learning process is right out there on the page; you can watch as they improve their art, as their character concepts change and evolve. It feels a little dishonest to me to go back and redraw pages that I drew and published to the Internet four or five years ago; it feels like I'm trying to spackle over my mistakes.
I've let the Kismet Scrapbook lapse, for the time being. I guess that if it's a question of hunting up new material for the Scrapbook or penciling new pages for the comic, I'd rather get the penciling done. I'm kinda dividing my time between "Midnight Sun" and the new Kismet book, "Sun-Cutter"; I want to do both of them, don't really have a preference between them, and I guess the first one to start updating as a webcomic will be whichever one gets the most pages done soonest. Original plan was to pencil all of "Sun-Cutter" before I start inking it, so that I wouldn't end up in the same boat that I was in with "Hunter's Moon", trying to make story edits to actual finished pages, but ... we'll see.
Switching back and forth between webcomics and novels is really interesting. Tim Broderick of Odd Jobs once compared doing a webcomic to performing street theatre. I've always found that comparison wonderfully apt, especially for me, since I don't script them. I've tried, and I really did try my best with "Sun-Cutter" -- and basically ended up sitting on the idea for a year because I just couldn't get the words out. When it comes to making comics, the pictures and words are so bound up with each other that I can't write the words without having the pictures. I just can't. So with webcomics, I don't get the "do-over" of a rough draft and a final draft like I do with a novel. The rough draft is the final draft. I can go back and clean up stuff later, but it's limited to minor edits like I did on "Hunter's Moon" -- fixing typos, cleaning up the more clumsy and poorly-worded dialogue, making minor adjustments to the art. I can't really just go through with a scythe and delete or rewrite whole scenes, and I try to resist the urge to redraw pages, though I did redraw a couple in "Hunter's Moon" that really needed it.
But that street theatre aspect to webcomics is part of what makes it a unique art form. I like the way that the creator's learning process is right out there on the page; you can watch as they improve their art, as their character concepts change and evolve. It feels a little dishonest to me to go back and redraw pages that I drew and published to the Internet four or five years ago; it feels like I'm trying to spackle over my mistakes.
