fredart : blogbits

I’m not really sure what it is about having Jack around, or the transition into fatherhood, but it seems to have sparked in me a far more serious and orderly approach to writing. This might not be evident from the long delays in getting comics done (much of this is due to JackCare, but not all of it), but for the first time in a years I’ve been able to step back from the nebulous quagmire that is the Megatokyo story and try to knock some order into it - with some actual success for once.

Oh, I’ve attempted this many times before. Sort of like my attempts to use personal organizers and planners I have had nothing but failed attempts to apply order to my brain’s murky and muddy effluent. (The whole issue of how to better organize for “creative” people is not something new. One program I have used in beta and felt like might work for me is Omni Focus, but the two months before Jack was born was not a good time to be testing organizational software :P) I spent some time researching how other people write and organize themselves, and took a far more serious look at how to actually use some of the basic tools Scrivener gives me to organize better. I also fine tuned the script features to better automate script writing so that it helped rather than hindered my thinking process.

I’ve had a lot of real conundrums to consider recently, in regards to the story. There are a things that have been worked out for some time that I am quite happy with, but then there are other things that I am not very happy with. It’s not because they are particularly bad per se, but because they don’t feel as inspired as they should be. Not everything you write will tilt the moon and move the earth, but it should at least advance the growth (or decline) of characters in ways that make it worth drawing (and reading). Some of my writing for this chapter, produced in the midst of a somewhat difficult and worrisome pregnancy, is certainly not up to par. Some of it falls really flat for me, and some of it is just not worked out sufficiently. Some of it is little more than problems getting from point A to point B, where B is pretty awesome - but it diffuse the impact of “B” if the readers mind is numb from the journey there. I can do better than this, I hate it when I’m not able to before the comic goes live.

It’s nice to be making some progress in getting better structure to my writing, over time is is sure to result in a more reliable flow of comics from me, but the killer is dealing with muddling through it while trying to produce comics you are not yet really happy with. What’s really weird is when I find myself just not able to really click with a comic I’m trying to draw. That’s usually a sign that the subconscious writer that lives somewhere in my brain is trying to tell me that I’m getting it all wrong, and that its not part of the “Story” that he has already worked out and so jealously guards. I wish he’d just tell me where he wants things to go sometimes trying to figure out what he wants results in much hair pulling and agony. I usually get it at some point, which makes it worth it in the end, but I’d like to try to start figuring that out before I am in the middle of drawing.

That said, back to work on Friday’s comic. I said I’ll do three comics this week, and I am. Once I get this one posted, I’ll roll onto Mondays. I should be able to post this sometime this afternoon. Stress and hair loss aside, it always feels worth it when things finally, inevitably, click into place.