Monday, September 23, 2013
Thursday, September 5, 2013
Cyclical Bordom.
I'll admit it. I get bored with the stories I write. I'll be going along fine for months, and then BAM I'm bored. Time for something fresh.
This is why I've constantly got six projects running at once. That way, when the boredom hits, I can always claim productivity. I never have to sit and stare at the wall for weeks. Whether because I've been working on (X) for six months straight and need a change, or because I've hit a brick wall in (X), or because the characters in (X) have all decided to go on vacation and will be back in a few months/weeks/years, I always have SOMETHING I can be working on, even if I can't (X). I can (Y). Or (T). Or (K).
Mind you, sometimes I end up staring at the wall for weeks anyway, but that is usually something entirely different. But this is not a post about my clinical depression. This is a post about BOREDOM.
And damn does it sometimes chose the exact wrong time to hit.
Like the day after I tape seven pages of inking to be done onto my drafting board, only to realize that I'm just not motivated to work on Spiader Webs AT ALL.... Right, Spiader Webs, which I had finished the first volume of? I had thought I was done, until I realized that there was one chapter left until a dramatic and somewhat lengthy perspective shift, and that one chapter was only sixteen pages long. So I got the pencils slammed out, and taped the pencils to my drafting table and got a couple of pages inked, and then BAM, BORED.
Which is awkward considering I'm inking the last sixteen pages before it can go to print, and need to be a responsible adult with regards to deadlines and dates and things.
ON THE OTHER HAND, I've scanned, lettered, and posted to a site I can share with editors the roughs and completed pages for five chapters of something else entirely, and gotten four new pages written, roughed, and spliced into the first chapter of that... The New Chameleon Story is making a little more sense than it did before, thanks to a few rounds of reading and editing, and I'm nearly done with the roughs for chapter six. The first page is posted to my DeviantArt, and I'm about as engrossed in that storyline as I have been in Spiader Webs and others in the past. My productivity, even if it is not on Spiader Webs, has not been halted. Had I not taken these couple of weeks to work on editing, what is shaping up to be a coherent storyline would be... frustratingly less so.
And now, with a little work on that one out of the way, I feel like the boredom with Spiader Webs is not so oppressive, that I can look at the art and not see awful. I got a page inked day before yesterday, and have lugged the pages back to the Out Of Home Office (Rent is like $5 for a few hours, and comes with gourmet coffee, interesting conversation/being left alone, internet, and whatever music the Barista happens to be playing...) to work on more today. I find myself being a little burnt out on Basic Training, much the way I was burn on Spiader Webs earlier this year.
These cycles of boredom are nothing new. Citrus! hasn't been updated since my Freshman year of college for many reasons (One of which including the need for extensive rewrites/finishing plot threads please), and one of the major ones is this cycle of boredom. However, this cycle is such that I can see the faces of Liv, Dee, Nate, Listra, Nil, Toshi, Gwen, Sean, and all the rest looming on the horizon. Because if I can rewrite that to make it funny to anyone other than those named above and not full of copyright infringement... well, it was funny. And weird enough to be interesting to others, I think. With my leaps and bounds so far as technical skill, I am hazarding a guess that when I can get over the boredom and disgust of "I wrote this drivel in highschool, and the people who thought it was funny have flown to the wind" and actually make THAT a coherent story, we will see the resurgence of Antiscorbutic Goodness. Expect more on this subject in a year or so. I'm already opening the script every once in a while, reading, reviewing, editing... and thinking, every time I do... "Huh. This isn't bad."
I had expected worse out of my First Ever Real Comic.
The art, on the other hand, is a little cringeworthy at this point. The spelling, as well, is awkward. Not awful, just... I can really, really tell that the last time I worked on this was Freshman year. If nothing else, I am going to have to streamline and find a style that I can work in consistently for it.
And that other one, the super copy-pasta one? Pomegranate Seeds? Yeah. That's getting a re-revamp as soon as I can afford/get my mitts on another drawing tablet/find the cord and stylus to my tablet. I have missed having access to my supplies, tools, and writing. (Chances are that the pages already done will remain as-is -- I might naturalize a couple of postures or expressions, but the art will probably remain internally consistent. I will cease using quite so much copy-pasta. Oh the joys of gaining grater technical skill...)
But one thing I've noticed about the boredom? No matter how done I think I am with a thing? It always comes back.
I may even resurrect the first epic that I wrote (Notes for...). I have felt it pushing at the outside edges of my imagination, whispering to me to bring it back and pull it out of the aether and write the story of the princess who decided that if it takes a prince to rescue her kidnapped sister, then she would be that prince. (I still have a hard time believing that my mother had no clue that I was a boy -- every single character that was "mine", perhaps based off of me, my closest character in the story, reflects this transformation in some way. From this first princess who cuts her hair and dons boys clothes and never goes back, to the character I blatantly called my doppleganger, self-insert, "Me," who was consistently mistaken for a man when seen from anything other than three feet in front of her face... and okay with this, to Azrael, who is sexless and fluid from town to town...)
But the boredom is easily overcome. All I have to do is flit on to the next, last, other, alternate thing I have to work on. Which, right now, is Spiader Webs and Basic Training, while writing on the Chameleon War, and... maybe Citrus?
This is why I've constantly got six projects running at once. That way, when the boredom hits, I can always claim productivity. I never have to sit and stare at the wall for weeks. Whether because I've been working on (X) for six months straight and need a change, or because I've hit a brick wall in (X), or because the characters in (X) have all decided to go on vacation and will be back in a few months/weeks/years, I always have SOMETHING I can be working on, even if I can't (X). I can (Y). Or (T). Or (K).
Mind you, sometimes I end up staring at the wall for weeks anyway, but that is usually something entirely different. But this is not a post about my clinical depression. This is a post about BOREDOM.
And damn does it sometimes chose the exact wrong time to hit.
Like the day after I tape seven pages of inking to be done onto my drafting board, only to realize that I'm just not motivated to work on Spiader Webs AT ALL.... Right, Spiader Webs, which I had finished the first volume of? I had thought I was done, until I realized that there was one chapter left until a dramatic and somewhat lengthy perspective shift, and that one chapter was only sixteen pages long. So I got the pencils slammed out, and taped the pencils to my drafting table and got a couple of pages inked, and then BAM, BORED.
Which is awkward considering I'm inking the last sixteen pages before it can go to print, and need to be a responsible adult with regards to deadlines and dates and things.
ON THE OTHER HAND, I've scanned, lettered, and posted to a site I can share with editors the roughs and completed pages for five chapters of something else entirely, and gotten four new pages written, roughed, and spliced into the first chapter of that... The New Chameleon Story is making a little more sense than it did before, thanks to a few rounds of reading and editing, and I'm nearly done with the roughs for chapter six. The first page is posted to my DeviantArt, and I'm about as engrossed in that storyline as I have been in Spiader Webs and others in the past. My productivity, even if it is not on Spiader Webs, has not been halted. Had I not taken these couple of weeks to work on editing, what is shaping up to be a coherent storyline would be... frustratingly less so.
And now, with a little work on that one out of the way, I feel like the boredom with Spiader Webs is not so oppressive, that I can look at the art and not see awful. I got a page inked day before yesterday, and have lugged the pages back to the Out Of Home Office (Rent is like $5 for a few hours, and comes with gourmet coffee, interesting conversation/being left alone, internet, and whatever music the Barista happens to be playing...) to work on more today. I find myself being a little burnt out on Basic Training, much the way I was burn on Spiader Webs earlier this year.
These cycles of boredom are nothing new. Citrus! hasn't been updated since my Freshman year of college for many reasons (One of which including the need for extensive rewrites/finishing plot threads please), and one of the major ones is this cycle of boredom. However, this cycle is such that I can see the faces of Liv, Dee, Nate, Listra, Nil, Toshi, Gwen, Sean, and all the rest looming on the horizon. Because if I can rewrite that to make it funny to anyone other than those named above and not full of copyright infringement... well, it was funny. And weird enough to be interesting to others, I think. With my leaps and bounds so far as technical skill, I am hazarding a guess that when I can get over the boredom and disgust of "I wrote this drivel in highschool, and the people who thought it was funny have flown to the wind" and actually make THAT a coherent story, we will see the resurgence of Antiscorbutic Goodness. Expect more on this subject in a year or so. I'm already opening the script every once in a while, reading, reviewing, editing... and thinking, every time I do... "Huh. This isn't bad."
I had expected worse out of my First Ever Real Comic.
The art, on the other hand, is a little cringeworthy at this point. The spelling, as well, is awkward. Not awful, just... I can really, really tell that the last time I worked on this was Freshman year. If nothing else, I am going to have to streamline and find a style that I can work in consistently for it.
And that other one, the super copy-pasta one? Pomegranate Seeds? Yeah. That's getting a re-revamp as soon as I can afford/get my mitts on another drawing tablet/find the cord and stylus to my tablet. I have missed having access to my supplies, tools, and writing. (Chances are that the pages already done will remain as-is -- I might naturalize a couple of postures or expressions, but the art will probably remain internally consistent. I will cease using quite so much copy-pasta. Oh the joys of gaining grater technical skill...)
But one thing I've noticed about the boredom? No matter how done I think I am with a thing? It always comes back.
I may even resurrect the first epic that I wrote (Notes for...). I have felt it pushing at the outside edges of my imagination, whispering to me to bring it back and pull it out of the aether and write the story of the princess who decided that if it takes a prince to rescue her kidnapped sister, then she would be that prince. (I still have a hard time believing that my mother had no clue that I was a boy -- every single character that was "mine", perhaps based off of me, my closest character in the story, reflects this transformation in some way. From this first princess who cuts her hair and dons boys clothes and never goes back, to the character I blatantly called my doppleganger, self-insert, "Me," who was consistently mistaken for a man when seen from anything other than three feet in front of her face... and okay with this, to Azrael, who is sexless and fluid from town to town...)
But the boredom is easily overcome. All I have to do is flit on to the next, last, other, alternate thing I have to work on. Which, right now, is Spiader Webs and Basic Training, while writing on the Chameleon War, and... maybe Citrus?
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