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I should never have damned Morpheus.
I did, you know, this afternoon, because I had a character and a setting and imagery and no plot, as so often happens, and I was afraid that because of that the graphic-novel-short-story that the imagery cried for could never come to be.
Within an hour, I had mostly dismissed the idea of a graphic novel/prose short story collection (which has been brooding in my head for weeks), in favor of an epic (it's hard to sell short stories set in a fantasy world unless the world is established). It is, luckily, an epic that I've had in my head for a long time, which has a plot and everything, and I never intended to write it. It was always just back story, something that characters in more recent Calenthe discussed in oversimplified terms, as happens with myths. I was never going to put any work into it.
When I climbed on my bike for the ride home, I was thinking of the version that I've known for ages, an oversimplified semi-mythical hero tragedy of a group of warriors and their cheerful, soppy wolf companions ala elfquest, or as if all of them (several hundred) were Calenthen BeastSpeakers, which just doesn't work, statistcally (yes, my world-building includes rough population stats and the relative frequency of different magical abilities). By the time I got off my bike at home, the wolves were slaves and servents, tied by magic and blood to a warrior culture that viewed them as status symbols. When I got on my bike, I was thinking of three verses of terrible poetry. When I got off, whole pages of full color graphic novels were paced out in my head. The plot thickened, the deranged antagonist was shunted to the middle of the story, rather than the end, where he belonged (it's not about simple good and evil, dammit, it's about a culture destroying itself, and two new ones starting). It has episodes. And flashbacks. And bestiality. Come on!
When I climbed on my bike, I was worrying that I'd never have enough ideas. When I reached home, I knew that I didn't have enough time. I reasoned it out, in the shower. Imagine, for the moment, that my puritan work ethic took after me with a thorny stick; that I wasn't lying slothful on the couch with wine and a novel as I've been doing so often. If I had a schedule like at WWU, where I was in class perhaps 20 hours a week, and paying attention for 10-15, and had taught myself to remain relativley lucid in the wee hours of the morning...then I could write, pencil, and ink a Butch and Spike strip in a week (around 12-14 hours of work). Second thoughts, being larger and one-off, could be completed in two weeks. The project I'm envisioning is very clearly in color, about the size of 2nd thoughts, but with more to the writing and a lot more characters. So lets say a month per page.
That means in two years I could make one 'monthly' size comic-book issue.
Say I got faster. A lot faster. And this around my forty hour work week (and possibly Butch and Spike, and painting, etc...). Say two weeks per page. Hmm...still looking at a year per issue, here.
If![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
westrider found work, I could, in theory, quit one of my part time jobs. That'd give me a 25 hour position, two extra days a week to work on my own creative endeavors. Assuming I could focus, which I think we know I can't. Quitting a job for this stuff is a huge thing, not something I'm ready for. Even with those two extra days, I'm still looking at years worth of project (if I could maintain interest and energy), and if there's anything I've learned over the last year, it's that I don't have a plan, or want to make a decision, on what I'm doing over the next several years. Grad school is still a possibliity - probability, even. Travel is a dear desire. Nothing is firm, and everything became even less so when I started working for the library, because I enjoy it and I could see doing it for years. I don't want to be tied down to one project for a decade.
But I want to know if I can do it.
dammit.
I did, you know, this afternoon, because I had a character and a setting and imagery and no plot, as so often happens, and I was afraid that because of that the graphic-novel-short-story that the imagery cried for could never come to be.
Within an hour, I had mostly dismissed the idea of a graphic novel/prose short story collection (which has been brooding in my head for weeks), in favor of an epic (it's hard to sell short stories set in a fantasy world unless the world is established). It is, luckily, an epic that I've had in my head for a long time, which has a plot and everything, and I never intended to write it. It was always just back story, something that characters in more recent Calenthe discussed in oversimplified terms, as happens with myths. I was never going to put any work into it.
When I climbed on my bike for the ride home, I was thinking of the version that I've known for ages, an oversimplified semi-mythical hero tragedy of a group of warriors and their cheerful, soppy wolf companions ala elfquest, or as if all of them (several hundred) were Calenthen BeastSpeakers, which just doesn't work, statistcally (yes, my world-building includes rough population stats and the relative frequency of different magical abilities). By the time I got off my bike at home, the wolves were slaves and servents, tied by magic and blood to a warrior culture that viewed them as status symbols. When I got on my bike, I was thinking of three verses of terrible poetry. When I got off, whole pages of full color graphic novels were paced out in my head. The plot thickened, the deranged antagonist was shunted to the middle of the story, rather than the end, where he belonged (it's not about simple good and evil, dammit, it's about a culture destroying itself, and two new ones starting). It has episodes. And flashbacks. And bestiality. Come on!
When I climbed on my bike, I was worrying that I'd never have enough ideas. When I reached home, I knew that I didn't have enough time. I reasoned it out, in the shower. Imagine, for the moment, that my puritan work ethic took after me with a thorny stick; that I wasn't lying slothful on the couch with wine and a novel as I've been doing so often. If I had a schedule like at WWU, where I was in class perhaps 20 hours a week, and paying attention for 10-15, and had taught myself to remain relativley lucid in the wee hours of the morning...then I could write, pencil, and ink a Butch and Spike strip in a week (around 12-14 hours of work). Second thoughts, being larger and one-off, could be completed in two weeks. The project I'm envisioning is very clearly in color, about the size of 2nd thoughts, but with more to the writing and a lot more characters. So lets say a month per page.
That means in two years I could make one 'monthly' size comic-book issue.
Say I got faster. A lot faster. And this around my forty hour work week (and possibly Butch and Spike, and painting, etc...). Say two weeks per page. Hmm...still looking at a year per issue, here.
If
westrider found work, I could, in theory, quit one of my part time jobs. That'd give me a 25 hour position, two extra days a week to work on my own creative endeavors. Assuming I could focus, which I think we know I can't. Quitting a job for this stuff is a huge thing, not something I'm ready for. Even with those two extra days, I'm still looking at years worth of project (if I could maintain interest and energy), and if there's anything I've learned over the last year, it's that I don't have a plan, or want to make a decision, on what I'm doing over the next several years. Grad school is still a possibliity - probability, even. Travel is a dear desire. Nothing is firm, and everything became even less so when I started working for the library, because I enjoy it and I could see doing it for years. I don't want to be tied down to one project for a decade.But I want to know if I can do it.
dammit.
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no subject
Date: 2006-06-21 01:59 pm (UTC)From:I'm beginning to get the attitude of...
"Ah, well, I could always wait til' after the kid's grown and left home.."
no subject
Date: 2006-06-23 04:56 pm (UTC)From: (Anonymous)(this is Maegen, but the LJ user box won't work for some reason...)
no subject
Date: 2006-06-23 11:40 pm (UTC)From: