Words, Art & Science by Anthony Francis
National Novel Writing Month, Camp Nano, and similar challenges.
Back from vacation, back at work, but got a chunk of writing done this lunchtime. Back on track:
If my calculations are correct, I am roughly one day ahead at this point (that is, I'm essentially starting today where I want to finish today). So my mountain of words is still over the top of the line:
No time for an excerpt; back to work. But tonight, here's shooting for one more day ahead!
-the Centaur
Back from vacation, back at work, but got a chunk of writing done this lunchtime. Back on track:
If my calculations are correct, I am roughly one day ahead at this point (that is, I'm essentially starting today where I want to finish today). So my mountain of words is still over the top of the line:
No time for an excerpt; back to work. But tonight, here's shooting for one more day ahead!
-the Centaur
Saturday: day off in the City, seeing the Golden Gate, Tiburon and Union Square with good friends. Totally worth it.
Today: back to it, +800 words and counting.
-the Centaur
Axually, it's Dakota's dumb mouth at issue here, and while I'd love to include an extract ... ssh, SPOLIERS! But the point being, the day after Thanksgiving, I'm back on track for National Novel Writing Month. And this includes an evening hanging out with my friends at the wonderful Nola restaurant I'm so fond of. No pictures of that (phone battery gave out) but I do have a followup picture from my solo excursion to Cocola Cafe in Santana Row, where I finished out today's Nano:
I've done Nano enough times that I probably could have skipped today and even tomorrow if I wanted, just to hang out with my friends who are in town (staying at another friend's house). But this "vacation" isn't really a vacation for me: it's a writecation. Writing really is like a second job now: if I want to be a writer, certain things have to get done. In this case, it's Nano, and sending off acceptances and rejections for DOORWAYS TO EXTRA TIME:
You'll note a little asymmetry there: my coeditor, who's done this before, is way ahead of me contacting people about their stories. And those are just the acceptances. Argh. And then I've got to respond to Trish's comments on my own story, which, while I was proud of it before, now looks like it will need a lot of work. Sigh. This is why I like working with editors, I tell myself, they make my stories better. Sob. At least Nano is on track:
Of course, the second half of the story is a complete salsa, and I don't know where it's going, but there's a building, and it's on fire, and it's a spectral fire, that only starts once a year, and there's William Blake's spirit guide riding a tiger, and oh yeah Cinnamon wears a Santa hat, then threatens to punch him in the gut if she meets him in a dark alley. So yeah, I'm having fun, even if I briefly hit a little plateau there while recuperating from all that turkey.
Now, more mountain to climb! Onward!
-the Centaur
Once again, I have successfully written NOTHING on Thanksgiving Day, spending it instead with friends!
Mission accomplished. What am I thankful for? My great friends that I've known for a quarter century.
The wonderful food we all prepared (mostly) by hand on a holiday that's not yet commercialized.
Preparing my first nearly perfect pound cake in a few years (more on that later). Not to mention living in a land where we can all not just eat, but have dessert! Most of all, being far enough ahead in Nano to just hang out and spend time with friends without worrying about keeping myself caught up.
As Fonzie would say, "Ayyy, little buddy."
I don't know how much more time I'll have this weekend to hang out with my friends; if it wasn't for Nano I'd be spending all my time sending out acceptances and rejections on DOORWAYS TO EXTRA TIME. But I do have to eat, so I'll be having at least one and possibly two more nice meals with my friends. And I hope several long phone calls with my wife (away on business).
More things to give thanks for. The gifts, they don't stop coming.
So, thanks, God, for everything.
-the Centaur
At last, back on track for National Novel Writer's Month. I like the graph: I like seeing how the week of a software release has taken a neat chunk out of my progress, and how a few days on vacation gets things back on track again. This reminds me to continue taking of the week of Thanksgiving every year if I want to get new novels done.
The title comes from a scene I've just written, in which Dakota Frost is baited into a battle with a wand-wielding priest. Soon Dakota realizes they were set up --- and figures out how to de-escalate:
The priest cried out, striking me with the back of his free hand.
I winced … then turned the other cheek.
The priest stared, drawing back his hand again. I reached up and put my thumbs through the straps of my backpack. Then I turned my head even further, exposing the cheek, eyes glaring at him sidelong in silent accusation. The priest frowned, then lowered his hand.
“Dakota Frost,” I said, extending mine. “Best magical tattooist in the Southeast.”
The priest stared at my hand dumbly, then realized he had a free one.
“Father Aidan Cosgrave, SJ.”
“A Jesuit,” I said. “Interesting to find a Jesuit wielding a wand.”
“God’s Marines,” Cosgrave said, “often find themselves wielding strange weapons.”
I'm over the halfway point of Nano now, with 6 or so free days on vacation to try to really get a head. Onward!
-the Centaur
Software launches. Anthology editing. I am now officially behind. Time to get back to Nano.
Fortunately I have the next nine days off, starting with tomorrow!
This is why I plan Nano carefully ahead ... this always happens, so you need to plan to have a buffer ... not just getting ahead early, but a place and time to catch up later for if and when you fall behind.
-the Centaur
Yesterday was nearly a wash - worn out after three long consecutive work days pushing software in preparation for a release, and then out late on date night with my wife - dinner at Aqui's (yum) and movie Tron 3 (AKA Wreck it Ralph, you're not fooling me, Disney). Totally. Worth. It., of course, but still ... less than 300 words done for the day.
But today? Up early to take my wife to the airport, had breakfast at Crepevine, and got almost triple that before even 9:30AM!
And now, I'm in for my second writing session, before even 10AM. This is what makes Nano work.
Excelsior!
-the Centaur
Pictured: Crepevine as seen from the upper window of Cafe Romanza, my wife at Aqui's, and progress.
UPDATE: Writing Session 2 done, I am now officially caught up for the day:
And, despite the last week's slippages, I'm still ahead overall for Nano:
Plus there are at least one and maybe two or three more writing sessions today.
Hyperion!
You have got to be kidding me.
I noticed a little extra space on my previous post at the top of a quote I pulled out of SPECTRAL IRON. I wanted to cut it out, so I went to Ecto, my blog client, and switched to its HTML mode. This is what I found embedded in my document as a result of the cut and paste - three hundred and thirty five lines of hidden goop, which looks like it came from Microsoft Word:
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<o:Company>Mythologix Press</o:Company>
.... hundreds of lines deleted ...
mso-style-parent:"";
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Charming! Feel like dieting much, Word? Axually, it looks like this may be part of a strategy to ensure formatted cut and paste works in Word and other programs, probably just interacting badly with Ecto.
S'ok, Word. We love you anyway, just the way you are.
-the Centaur
P.S. Pro tip: Option-Command-V pastes unformatted in Ecto.\
I don't see catfood on your todo list there, mister.
No, but I am back on track for National Novel Writing Month, even though today was consumed almost completely by a software release that just ... wouldn't ... die. I'm actually planning a postmortem on a tiny little patch that ended up becoming a complete new release of our software that exposed interactions everywhere from our unit test framework to software we're launching next year. That made me late for the monthly Writing Allies meeting - normally I chunk out a piece of time to write over dinner before I get there, even if we all are having too much fun talking about writing to actually write. But when I got home, even after a lot of cat wrangling, I did manage to sit down with the laptop (or, from time to time, follow cats around with the laptop):
Back on track for the day: 18179 words, or 16219 added. Still a day ahead. Woohoo! An excerpt:
Doug stared with interest at the footage from Ron and Sunny’s cameras, then at the pictures I’d taken of the graffiti with my cell phone. He asked if we had more, and I was embarrassed to admit that we’d hightailed it before fully finishing our location scouting.
“S’alright,” he said, reviewing the tape one more time. “Most interesting.”
“Well,” Sunny demanded. “What is it?”
“Definitely magic,” Doug said. “But I’m guessing you knew that.”
“Well—” Sunny began.
“C’mon,” Ron said. “There’s a demonstration of magic on the tape—”
“I was there,” Sunny reminded him. “And I do believe in magic. It’s just—”
“A projectia,” I said suddenly. “A caster’s will magically projected as a form.”
“Precisely,” Jinx said. “Like your tattoos, but free-floating. They can be as insubstantial and transparent as, well, ghosts, or as solid and opaque as physical objects. Your old boss, Christopher Valentine, used them to create his famous doppelganger illusion.”
Congratulations, Nano writer! Now back to work.
-the Centaur
Because we know we'll fall behind again.
What' s the cause? Launch crunch, exhaustion, and spending time with my wife before her upcoming trip.
And you know what, writing friends? All that's more important than Nano.
Totally. Worth. It.
I'm taking a whole week off at Thanksgiving just to write, so its Ohe. Kay. if I fall behind from time to time, as long as I don't let myself slip down the slope altogether.
According to my calculations, I'm fine. I could slip one whole day and still be fine.
Not that I plan to. Tonight is writing night!
-the Centaur
Alright! I set aside time for two long writing sessions today, so I finally got ahead, writing 3473 words today. If I can push it just a bit further, another 1600 words, I think I'll hit my target for tomorrow. If only I had a doorway to extra time ... oh wait: tonight, I do.
Set your clocks back, everyone. As for me, who knows if I'll get there, but it's back to climbing that hill:
-the Centaur
UPDATE: 1:40AM (after Daylight Savings Time) and 4292 words added today, totaling 9828 words. Night!
"Everyone's favorite skeptical witch is back for her fourth foray in SPECTRAL IRON!"
Sheesh. I do find it hard to write marketing copy. I just had to stop, right there.
SO ANYWAY, National Novel Writing Month, 2012. My one, two, three, four, five, six ... seventh, SEVENTH time writing 50,000 words of a new novel in the month of November. It's quite the challenge, but it's the second best thing I've ever done for my writing other than join the Write to the End group - more writing comes out of Nano than (almost) anything else.
How much writing, you ask? (Or maybe you don't, but hey, it's my blog post). Nano itself six times would be only three hundred thousand words, but it was the seed for seven hundred thousand words of text and four completed novels. The Nano's I've done so far were:
Now it's on to SPECTRAL IRON, book 4 in the Dakota Frost series. Pictured above are some of the books I'm reading to "feed my head" for the plot of the book, which involves magical tattoos, piercing, the fae, ghosts, three kinds of zombies, television, and the appropriate relationship of science to skepticism. From the site, here's my blurb:
Dakota Frost is the best magical tattooist in the Southeast - but she's not in the South anymore. Her new role on the Magical Security Council has taken her to the underbelly of San Francisco, and she's got a camera crew dogging her every step as she's trying to map the magical Edgeworld. But when she runs foul of the fae, and is forced to do them a favor, even one of the world's most skilled skindancer may be in trouble.
Because if you don't know how to kill a ghost, how can you track down his murderer?
You need to write 1666 words a day to succeed at Nano, and so far, so good. Halfway through my day, and more than halfway through today's progress. I should easily catch up to where I should be (missed ~300 words yesterday because me and my wife decided to take a long walk and then crash after that, rather than me getting my late night writing run in).
But most of the day is ahead of me. Alright, enough procrastinating. Back to work!
-the Centaur
So another 24 Hour Comics Day has come and gone ... my fourth. I'd love to say it gets easier, and in a sense it does, but churning out 24 pages of a comic in just 24 hours is daunting, even if you've done it before. To help ourselves improve, my buddy Nathan Vargas and I put a lot of thought into what goes in to making the challenge a success and collect that at the site Blitz Comics.
To give a flavor of the experience, here's a timeline of my 24 Hour Comics day this year. Like last year, there are highs, there are lows, there are moments of triumph and despair, of hard work overcoming challenges - and experiences which are simply bizarre. Last year actually was more bizarre than this year ... but there were still a few dark hours near the hour of the wolf.
Before the event
T-minus 1 Year: Finish 24HCD successfully. Attribute success to a combination of the Blitz Comics Survival Kit and more life drawing classes, as I went from 7 pages done in 2010 to 24 pages done handily in 2011. Hooray! Resolve to improve Blitz Comics and take more life drawing practice.
T-minus 6 months: Remember we waited to last minute to prepare for 24HCD. Send message "Blitz Comics Lives" and begin planning to update our kit. Get overly ambitious, then scale it back as Nathan's booked up with work and Anthony's booked up with writing.
T-minus 3 months: Finish point update of Blitz Comics Survival Kit. (As of today, full versions are not posted everywhere due to some miscommunications and site storage issues, but we're working on it). Plan on giving another Blitz Comics tutorial, this time at Mission Comics. Other venues considered, but, man, Mission Comics .
T-minus 2 months: Give Blitz Comics Tutorial. Due to a publicity gaffe on our part, no-one shows up except a couple of friends, who leave before it begins. Decide to hold the tutorial anyway for practice. No-one attends but a beautiful and bizarre looking chicken; chicken's owner says our talk is fascinating. Really, I can't make this stuff up.
I'm not kidding here about the chicken. Photos or it didn't happen?
Oh, it happened. After the tutorial, back to preparation...
T-minus 1 month: Hold weekly "just drawing" parties where we mostly chew the fat about life, plan the event, and get in a few minutes' worth of drawing all at the end. Surprisingly, this really works. Get ready fo the event proper, agreeing to bring donuts and art supplies to Mission Comics. Oh, and sign up for space at Mission Comics event!
T-minus 1 week: Buy art supplies, both for ourselves and a large amount of free stuff to give to people at the event. Gather extras of the Survival Kit; make sure I can find all of last year's materials. Coordinate with Leef of Mission Comics to make sure we're confirmed and on the same page with Blitz Comics sponsoring event. Scope out parking garages for the event (fortuitously, I right up the street for a different event) and enter in GPS.
T-minus 3 days: Last "just draw" meeting. Confirm schedule for Saturday morning, which will include breakfast, donuts and helping Leef set up before the actual event. Draw up TODO and shopping lists. Draw some more.
T-minus 2 days: Last trip to the store since Friday will be booked up. Last minute art practice.
T-minus 18 hours: Last minute art practice and reading. Bail early on normal Friday night dinner-coffee-bookstore run in favor of going home to get everything ready.
T-minus 12 hours: Dig through post-novel-writing mess to find art materials. Wonder what I've gotten myself into. Find most of the materials, but decide to crash super early to make sure I'm awake for event.
T-minus 4.5 hours: Up at 5:30 and packing stuff up. I am king of the pile people, and the tote bag is my emblem.
T-minus 3 hours: Depart for event. Pick up Nathan, go for breakfast. My meal is up before Nathan's finished ordering, which is weird. Chill out, discuss what we're doing and why we're doing it, conclude that we're both crazy, but we're doing it anyway.
T-minus 2 hours: Leave breakfast, go pick up donuts for participants. Krispy Kreme FTW! One box regular, one box mixed (with an extra chocolate glazed for me). By the time we're done the time's now 9:30ish. Head to San Francisco, by this point almost an hour drive. Traffic is smooth and we've got lots of buffer.
T-minus 45 minutes: Arrival in San Francisco. Park, gather stuff, head to event. Nathan reroutes us from the shortest path to a nearby street which "has better energy;" this street proves to have a row of beautiful homes rather than backdoors and garbage cans, so, yes, indeed, it had better energy for walking up to the event.
T-minus 30 minutes: Arrive at Mission Comics. Set up. Because we're so early, Nathan and I get primo spots near Leef's desk (and the bathroom) but still in the front room. Chitchat. Notice first page of notebook has some damage on it and draw a "Cover Page" on the presumption that I'm going to adapt the second part of "Stranded". Get ready.
Yes, it is STARTING!
That page doesn't count towards my 24. Alright ... ready ... GO!
24 Hour Comic Day Begins
11:00AM October 20th Leef says "Go!" and I start reviewing my story ideas. I'm planning on adapting part 2 of "Stranded," picking up where I left off last year, but in the spirit of the event I leave the actual decision to the start of the event - and give myself the opportunity to bail if I'm not feeling it. I read the story over in my mind.
11:05AM (by watch), 11:07AM (by phone): Committed to story, synchronize watches. I skim my story in the print book, figuring out a good chunk that's easy to adapt, and picking out comic-friendly lines of dialog.
11:12AM: Rough story outline done. Comparing lengths to make sure Parts 1, 2, and 3 are roughly the same; they are. Find a great ending point which uses Keith's Johnstone's idea of reincorporation to great and surprising effect. I mean, it was in the story before, but it makes a really great Part 2 ender.
11:15AM: Story review done. Review overall structure to get down the "beats," the ebb and flow of the story.
11:21AM: Donut / bathroom break. Ready to tackle thumbnails.
11:22AM: 23.5 hours remain, 24 pages to go. Start thumbnailing - sketching your comic as a whole, with each page as a tiny square. Many comic artists do this; Jim Lee's Icons book has some great examples done by a master of the genre. There's a the Blitz Comics thumbnail worksheet that I think I came up with but paradoxically that Nathan uses extensively; for me, my style is so sloppy that I need to use a whole page.
11:40AM: Roughs done. I take out some time to set up my laptop so I can blog (ha!) look up reference shots (more realistic) and time my progress.
11:44AM Laptop setup. Switch notebooks Setting up page for drawing.
11:47AM: Take a ~13 minute break.
Total Planning Time: 1 hour. This is comparable to last year's 52 minute planning session, but it can take up to 3 to 4 hours to plan if you don't have a story in mind. As it turns out, another 2 hours planning wouldn't have hurt me.
The outcome: this sheet of thumbnails. My map to my story.
Alright, back to it. All the preliminaries are out of the way: I've got a story, an outline, thumbnails on one art book and an empty art book next to it, a laptop with Internet, art books, art materials, a soda, and a donut. Now: starting the first page!
12:00 NOON START PAGE ONE: Riffing on the two page spread near the end of the previous book, without being too obvious about it if you read it straight through.
12:05PM: Panel borders penciled.
12:15PM: Panel borders inked. Need to improve this process.
12:26PM: Sketching done.
12:46PM: Panel 1 done. Too slow.
1:06PM: Panels 3-4 done. Getting sloppy, messed up space for dialogue. Whiteout marker broken, decide to come back later and fix. (I never did).
1:22PM: Panel 5 done.
1:24PM: Finish ~2 minute break
Total time for Page One: 1 hour, 24 minutes. Way too slow. Need to be around 45 minutes.
Now I know I'm going to be drawing people I've drawn less often, like Norylan below (note: this is a colored sketch from my notebook, NOT from any 24 Hour Comic Day :-). So it's time to break out the laptop.
1:24PM START PAGE TWO: The first new page, first appearance of Norylan. I use the laptop to find a "Mug Shots" directory I did for the Serendipity Facebook page, and put up faces of all the characters. My target for this page is 2:15PM.
1:30PM: Finish pencil panel lines.
1:35PM: Finish inked panel lines.
1:49PM: Rough pencils.
2:04PM: Panel 1.
2:17PM: Panel 2.
2:29PM: Panel 3.
2:34PM: ~5 minute break.
Total Time for Page Two: 1 hour, 10 minutes. Still need to streamline. Starting to get worried, even though I know I have two dual page spreads in my layout.2:34PM START PAGE THREE: Focusing on how to do this easier. Not sure how, but work at it. Target: 3:15pm.
2:38PM: Inked panel borders.
3:00PM: Finish panel 1, after some researching centaur shapes and Norylan poses.
3:15PM: Finish 15 minute interview by reporter for a blog.
3:27PM: Finish page.
Total Time for Page Three: 1 hour, 3 minutes. Things are improving, with the caveat that this is the point I start counting the breaks at the start of the page rather than at the end (because if you get done just before the end and then take a break, who cares?)3:28PM START PAGE FOUR: Really focusing on how to speed up. Ambition not helping so much.
3:30PM: Finish 2 minute bathroom break.
3:33PM: Finish pencil panel borders. Really wishing I'd made an 8x12 template.
3:38PM: Finish inked panel borders.
3:51PM: Done with Panel 1.
3:55PM: Done with Panel 2. HOW? How did it get done so fast?
4:13PM: Done with Panel 3. WHY? Why did it take so long?
4:25PM: Finished Panel 4.
Total Time for Page Four: 57 minutes. Starting to improve. We might finish if we power through it.4:25PM START PAGE FIVE: Switched to inside the ship. Maybe this will speed things up. And add context.
4:28PM: Finish ~3 minute break.
4:40PM: Finished ink boxes.
4:48PM: Finished setting up Excel spreadsheet to track progress and see how fast I need to go to finish. I used it up to about the second dual page spread.
5:26PM: Finished page.
Total Time for Page Five: One hour, 1 minute. Argh. Back to slowness. But people seem to like this page.
The following graph shows my progress over the day - spoilers, but you should already know I finished.
The graph is after the fact; I just used it at the time to figure out that I needed to be doing a page in 54 minutes or less. Back to it!
5:26PM: START PAGES SIX AND SEVEN: A dual page spread at last! Target: 6:15PM.
5:45PM: Finish break.
5:50PM: Finish sketch and borders.
6:26PM: Finish page.
Total Time for Pages Six and Seven: 1 hour. Still slow, but I've made up time by the dual page spread.6:26PM: START PAGE EIGHT: Back to a page, aware I need to pick up the pace. Can I simplify? Target: 7:15PM.
6:36PM: 10 minute break concludes.
6:46PM: Panels done, plus talking.
7:04PM: Panel 1 done.
7:22PM: Panel 6 done. By a happy coincidence, I had three small horses in my box of art props, in positions ranging from standing to trot to gallop, perfect for panels 5-7.
7:26PM: Panel 7 done.
Total Time for Page Eight: 1 hour. Still not speedy. Argh.7:26PM: START PAGE NINE: Nuts, poses with people looking up. Argh! Target: 8:15PM.
8:20PM: Done, with a 5 minute break in there.
Total Time for Page Nine: 54 minutes. Still not speedy. Argh. But it's a notch faster than my 56 minute desired time (time has ballooned a bit since I had been falling behind).
Somewhere around this point I really started to flag, to really feel despair and to decide I didn't want to do this, but I pulled out a Panera bread cinnamon roll I'd purchased for just such an occasion and was soon re-energized!
Beans and vinegar, sugar high, go!
8:20PM: START PAGE TEN: A complicated pose, but only two panels, easy, right? Target: 9:05PM.
9:05PM: Finish Panel 1. During this, I had to pose several models on top of each other, hold the models at different angles, tweak the stuff ... oh dear.
9:30PM: Finish Panel 2. Argh! But people seem to really love this shot.
Total Time for Page Ten: 1 hour, 10 minutes. But it's a great page.9:30PM: START PAGE ELEVEN: An even more complex pose: two characters holding another on a gurney looking down from the top of the ship. Argh! Target: 10:15
9:38PM: Finish break.
9:46PM: Finish panels. Where's that 8x12 template again?
10:20PM: Finish page.
Total Time for Page Eleven: 50 minutes. Getting better.10:20PM: START PAGE TWELVE: Things going better; I'm on page twelve, I should be on page twelve by my Excel spreadsheet. I decide to skim backgrounds and use silhouettes here to simplify.
10:30PM: Finish ~10min break.
10:51PM: Finish Panel 1. Silhouette of Norylan looks great. Made a slight gaffe overblacking an area, but you can't tell in the finished product.
11:05PM: Finish Panel 2. The blaster design is what I can draw. I'd have done this with 3 panels if I could have.
11:15PM: Finish Panel 3. Norylan!
Total Time for Page Twelve: 55 minutes. Right on time, according to Excel.11:15PM: START PAGE THIRTEEN: A single page spread, on purpose.
11:54PM: Finish Panel 1. Suprisingly hard to get the design of INDEPENDENCE right, but in the end, the ship looks great and is a great backdrop for the action.
Total time for Page Twelve: 39 minutes. Woo hoo! Getting ahead.11:54PM: START PAGE FOURTEEN: Even simplified, this will be a bear. 7 panels, one a crowd scene.
12:09AM: Finish ~15 minute break. Isn't it weird that AM and PM designators switch an hour before the clocks roll back from 12 to 1? I guess the easier way to think about it is that since the clock loops around, 12 on the clock really is a funny way of saying 0 (12 mod 12 = 0 :-).
12:15AM: Finish panel boxes.
12:29AM: Finish the surprisingly complex Panel 1 - four characters in a complex pose.
12:32AM: Finish Panel 2.
12:40AM: Finish Panels 3 and 4.
12:59AM: Finish Panel 5 - a night crowd scene around a fire. AAAAA!
1:10AM: Finish Panel 6. Tianyu came out very well as a shadow in the dark.
1:16AM: Finish Panel 7. Ah, done with blacks for now. Next few pages, I cheat.
Total Time for Page Fourteen: One hour, 26 minutes. Argh. Back to the grind.
It's around this time, not sure when precisely, that I had the second incidence of questioning my sanity.
I'd already had dinner from a nearby cafe, and a donut didn't help, so it wasn't food shortage. My memories are a bit jumbled, but I recall taking a brief nap, about 10 minutes, but panels danced before my eyes and I realized my resistance was that I didn't have a good plan for the next few pages. I scanned the panels in my mind, decided, and got up and went back to work.
1:16AM: START PAGE FIFTEEN: Simplify. Eliminate blacks; pretend the campfire illuminates like day.
1:33AM: Finish ~17 minute break. Needed that.
1:37AM: Finish inking panel borders.
1:40AM: Finish panel 1. Not even sure I penciled this one.
1:50AM: Finish panels 2-3. Almost no penciling again: close characters in foreground.
2:12AM: Finish panel 3. Complex characters in interesting pose, more work.
Total Time for Page Fifteen: 56 minutes. Not bad, counting the break.2:12AM: START PAGE SIXTEEN: A complex pose atop panel 1: a centaur falling on a person. Argh! I put a horse model atop a superhero model and used that. Sadly, you can sort of tell as the person's pose is too stiff.
2:58AM: Finish Panel 3.
Total Time for Page Sixteen: 46 minutes. Not bad. Getting bolder with the no pencils when I can get away with it.2:58AM: START PAGE SEVENTEEN: I like this page. Romance, kung fu, and death threats!
3:12AM: Finish ~14 minute break.
3:59AM: Finish Panel 3.
Total Time for Page Seventeen: 1 hour, 1 minute. Slower, but complex.
Again, somewhere around here, it isn't clear, I wanted to just give up - for the third time.
This time, it wasn't a sugar low, or a panel problem, or any of those other things. Despite the picture (actually taken earlier in the day; I was too busy to take pictures at this point) I wasn't that tired. I just wanted to quit. I realized there was no external thing I could do to help me. I had to just power through it, just reach in and find the place that said ... continue.
3:59AM: START PAGE EIGHTEEN: Simplify, just keep it going. Took a short break.
4:36AM: Finish Panel 4.
Total Time for Page Eighteen: 37 minutes. How? Amazing.4:36AM: START PAGE NINETEEN: Simplify, but this is more complex. Avoid pencils?
4:48AM: Break for 12 minutes.
4:55AM: Finish panel borders.
5:02AM: Finish sketch of Panel 1.
5:09AM: Finish Panel 1.
5:36AM: Finish Panel 4.
Total Time for Page Nineteen: 1 hour. Slower, but we're getting close to the end.5:36AM: START PAGES TWENTY AND TWENTY ONE: A dual page spread, woo woo!
5:37AM: Finish 3 minute break.
6:20AM: Mostly finished.
6:22AM: Finish Panel 1.
Total Time for Pages Twenty and Twenty One: 46 minutes. Not bad for a two page spread!
Now I am officially way ahead. The dual page spread, finished early, has put me 1 whole page ahead of schedule.
This picture, again taken earlier, represents my now renewed burst of enthusiasm - shoot, still 3 more pages.
6:22AM: START PAGE TWENTY TWO: When I "should" be at page 20. Woot! Goal: 7:10am. This page could be complex, but I'm going to simplify it. Most complex thing: two characters riding a centaur.
7:01AM: Finish Panel 4.
Total Time for Page Twenty-Two: 38 minutes. Woot! Go no pencils, except where hard.7:01AM: START PAGE TWENTY THREE: When I "should" be at page 21. Woo woo! Simplify even more; drawing a giant door. Yes, I'm ahead, I could get complex, but *F* that at this stage, it's better to be DONE! Hardest part: showing a character falling backwards into water.
7:05AM: Finish inking panel borders.
7:35AM: Finish Panel 3.
Total Time for Page Twenty-Three: 34 minutes. Almost there ... stay on target ...7:35AM: START PAGE TWENTY FOUR: When I "should" be at page 22. Almost there! One single panel spread!
8:20AM: Finish Panel 1.
Total Time for Page Twenty-Four: 45 minutes? Axually, I don't know. I strongly suspect the 8:20 figure is my "target time" and that I finished slightly early. Still ... it's better to be DONE!
Hey, wait a second ... I FINISHED! Go Team Centaur! Go Blitz Comics! Go Mission Comics! Go 24 Hour Comics Day!
So ... now what? Well, after chilling out a bit, stretching, I hung out with people at the event. People began to finish up around me; a few people had beat me, some by a little, some by a lot - two people finished way early and went back and watercolored all their pages. While I didn't track times, this is how the rest of the day went, more or less:
8:20AM: START CHILLDOWN. O.M.G. I'm done. Don't panic. Don't gloat. Chill out, stretch your wrists, take a walk.
Mostly, I just walked around, talked to people, started cleaning up. Sooner or later, people started cleaning up.9:00AM: SHOW ME YOURS, I'LL SHOW YOU MINE: People start noticing that others have finished, or people begin announcing it. Some people pass around their comics. At least three of them were watercolored. All were interesting, all were different, and a few had really genuine scares and laughs.
10:00AM: INTERVIEW: The reporter returns and begins interviewing everyone. Each one takes about 10 minutes. It's fun and great to unpack your thoughts.
10:30AM: TEARDOWN: I and Nathan begin packing up. I vow not to take so much next time; I have a good grip on how much I can use in one trip now. Basically, if it doesn't fit in one bag that you can sit next to the desk while you work, you are not going to pull it out.
11:00AM: FAREWELLS: Nathan and I are invited to have breakfast with Doc and Leef, but Nathan's too worn out for this and needs to crash. We decide to bail, say our farewells, and leave Mission Comics to wind our way back the street of trees and dreams.
T-plus 1 hour: THE VOYAGE HOME. Nathan and I are surprisingly alert enough to start a postmortem. We come up with a list of ideas about 24 Hour Comics Day which we're going to turn into a series of blogposts. I'm fading fast, and feel microbursts of sleep as I drive. Not safe. Drop Nathan off, then get breakfast.
T-plus 2 hours: BREAKFAST AND POSTMORTEM. I go to my favorite restaurant, Aqui's in Blossom Valley, and get a spectacular French toast breakfast while I unpack my ideas. I email them to Nathan, capturing our conversation on the drive, then hastily bang together a trip report. A friend is having a baby shower, but I'm simply too exhausted and go home to sleep.
Yes, French toast. That is my reward for a hard day's work. That, and blissful unconsciousness.
But that's not the end of 24 Hour Comics Day, oh no. We need ... the POSTMORTEM! This postmortem, axually.
T-plus 3 hours: NAP Yes, sleep. But not much. I'm too wound up, and wake up.
T-plus 5 hours: UNWIND. I unpack the car, kick around the house, chat with Sandi, and unwind.
T-plus 11 hours: CRASH: After doing as much damage as I can, I crash, hard.
T-plus 23 hours: AWAKEN: Yes, I do indeed wake up at almost 10 the next day. What can I say, I love my job, which cares more about how much work you do than when you get there. I got in to work around 11am, 24 hours after 24 Hour Comic Day ended.
T-plus 2 days: BACK TO SPEED: The first day was rough, but by Tuesday I was back at it and had started writing this postmortem. It took me two whole days.
T-plus 3 days: POSTMORTEM COMPLETE. Complete as of me writing this paragraph. I've got back to speed with my other writing projects (DOORWAYS TO EXTRA TIME and SPECTRAL IRON, *ahem*), scheduled a meeting with Nathan for next Wednesday to plan out the next year of Blitz Comics ... and finished this postmortem.
And that, my friends, is a 24 Hour Comics Day.
-the Centaur
24 Hour Comics Day is a challenge to create 24 pages of a new comic in 24 Hours. The challenge was originally conceived by comics whiz Scott McCloud in 1990, and the challenge was organized into a formal day by Nat Gertler in 2004. Now, eight years later, 24HCD is a global event in which thousands of people participate.
My first two tries at 24 Hour Comics Day were miserable failures in 2009 and 2010. My good friend Nathan Vargas also failed, and we started putting our heads together about how to succeed. For me, pulling a Jim Lee and taking a year off to massively cram at being a great artist might merit an angry note from my mortgage service provider, so we needed other options.
We analyzed how we failed, developed strategies and tutorial materials, and ultimately produced the Blitz Comics Survival Kit --- not called 24 Hour Comics Survival Kit because we didn't want to look like we were providing "official" materials; the Survival Kit was just our take on how to succeed, and we didn't even know whether it would work, because we hadn't done it yet.
As it turns out, the techniques in the Kit did work in 2011, not just for Nathan and me but also for a wide variety of other people as well. Nathan has worked hard to promote the ideas and concepts in the Kit while I've been a slack ass lazy bum writing novels, so since he works hard now Comics PRO distributes our materials as Participant Resources. But was our success a fluke?
Well, to test the theory, we tried it again. A few months before we reviewed our exercises and updated the Survival Kit, though website problems prevented us from updating the materials everywhere in time for the 24HCD event. We re-ran the tutorial we'd done before, and practiced a month or so in advance, cracking the knuckles so to speak, to get ready ...
Because yesterday was 24 Hour Comics Day.
We both succeeded, of course; me around 8:20am and Nathan an hour and a half so later. It was great to participate at the always wonderful Mission Comics, but unlike previous years where we were too zonked to think at all, this year we had an interesting and lively conversation about what we did, why we did it, why we're doing this, and how to make it better in the future.
And unlike last year, we're planning to meet next week, rather than a few months in advance. Hopefully there will be some great stuff to show you - such as our comics, which we finally may have a strategy to get online without fixing the server error that's been a pain in the patootie to fix. Next up: a 24 Hour Comics Day Timeline, like last year's. Stay tuned.
Now, home to bed, because at this point I've been up 32 and a half hours straight!
-the Centaur
Pictured: the last page of my 2012 24 Hour Comic, "Stranded Part 2", my adaptation of my own story "Stranded," published in the book STRANDED. Got that? Also pictured is a bunch of writers at Mission Comics and Art. Thanks Leef!
I'm so busy I can't see straight, so that must mean it's time to take on another project. I'm doing Script Frenzy this month, a challenge to write 100 pages of a script in 30 days, much like National Novel Writing Month, only for film.
I'm adapting my recently completed novel JEREMIAH WILLSTONE THE CLOCKWORK TIME MACHINE to film. I'm using Scrivener. It's great. Here's a sample of the screenplay:
EXT. NEWFOUNDLAND - CONSERVATORY. NIGHT
A mammoth complex looms in the night, an airship hangar made of glass attached to a hulking Victorian palace.
Lightning reflects off the glass of the hangar --- then flashes of light appear inside the windows of the palace.
INT. STAIRCASE. NIGHT
More flashes illuminate a long, narrow Victorian staircase with wainscoting and elaborate rails. A figure hurls herself backwards down the stairs, firing electric pistols from both hands as she bumps down the steps on her rear, sliding on her tailcoat.
JEREMIAH slams into the base of the stair, gritting her teeth, keeping both guns trained back the way she came. She wears a long tailcoat, an black corset vest filigreed with gold wire, and a pair of airman's goggles on her forehead.
At the top of the stairs, crackling green foxfire ripples over the metal bands of the stout wooden door. Holes are blasted in it, and light shifts behind them, but JEREMIAH has no clear shot.
She sees sparks coming from her left gun, and tosses it aside with a curse. She glances at her right gun, seeing the indicator bead hover between three and four notches. A creak upstairs refocuses her attention. Jeremiah murmurs to herself as she focuses on the holes in the door.
JEREMIAH
Very well, sir, show yourself. Three shots? I'll get you in one.
Here I mumble "J Michael Straczynski's the Complete Book of Scriptwriting," "The Empire Strikes Back Fascimile Script," "other writing resources I'm too tired to mention". What? I'm only 9 pages in when I should be around 33. Back to work!
That is all.
-the Centaur
"Stranded", the novelette which is the first third of the first book of my new young adult space pirates trilogy, is away to the editor! It came in somewhat over the desired length, so I hope she doesn't hurt me, but it is the first third of the first book of a planned trilogy, so some of that length is unavoidable. (My awesome beta and gamma readers liked it. :-)
"Stranded" tells the story of Serendipity, a young centauress explorer who must come to the aid of a shipload of children who've crashlanded on a world she wanted to claim as her own. It's got aliens and fungi, spaceships and rayguns, and plush robots and kung fu, but it's really about how people should be treated and learning to stand up for what's right.
Here's a teaser, illustrated thanks to my work on 24 Hour Comics Day:
Sirius flinched as sizzling grey bullets tumbled around him in zero-gee. The grey dented veligen pellets rattled through the cramped innards of Independence’s life support plant, stinging his nose with the scent of bitter almonds as his hands strained at the yellow-striped master fuse. The girls shouted, their guns fired, more bullets twanged around him, ricocheting off the ancient, battered equipment, striking closer with every shot—but Sirius just gripped the hot, humming tube harder, braced both booted feet, and pulled.
Andromeda and Artemyst screamed for him to stop. Dijo, the engineer, screamed for the shooting to stop. Even the air screamed, out a bullet hole in a vacuum duct near his feet. But with every second, Independence shot a half million clicks farther into the deep, flying away from the Beacon that was their only hope of survival, so Sirius didn’t stop: he just screamed too, pulling, pulling, jerking—until the master fuse popped out and he shot free, bursting the hatch open.
Sirius flew out of the life support service chamber into Independence’s cavernous cargo hold. His head clanged off a handrail, knocking him into a dizzy spin in zero-gee. He smacked into the tumbling brassfiber grille of the hatch he’d knocked free, halving his spin—and leaving him right in the crosshairs of Dijo, Artemyst and Andromeda, all clipped to orange handrails far out of his reach. All had their guns on him, red laser sights on, green safety lights off.
Then the ship’s lighting flickered, and the whine of the air cycler slowly spun down.
“Halfway Boy!” Andromeda said, staring at the yellow and black striped master fuse in Sirius’s hands, her eyes as wild as the spray of feathers sticking out of her snakeskin cowl. She motioned to Dijo, who kicked off towards the life support plant. “What have you done?”
“Saved all our lives,” Sirius said, still dizzy, still spinning. “You can thank me later.”
Assuming the editor doesn't put me in the hospital over the length issue, we hope the story will be out in an anthology later this year. "Stranded's" parent novel, MAROONED, will hopefully be out mid 2012. So I guess the above is really a teaser. Sorry about that. Well, not really. I hope you enjoy!
-the Centaur
Finally finished my "From Nano to Novel" pep talk for the National Novel Writing Month site ... should be coming out later this month to the donors list. (What? You're not a Nanowrimo donor? You can fix that here: https://store.lettersandlight.org/donations).
But I've posted that to Facebook and to Google+. Posting it again here is, I think, a good idea to make sure people know what I'm up to, but in another way it's just procrastination ... I've got the gamma comments on "Stranded" to work on and this is not that.
Back to work!
-the Centaur 
Alright, the last gamma reader comments for "Stranded" are in. (Gamma, because this is actually the second round of beta readers. :-)
"Stranded" is the first novelette of three in a planned YA space adventure novel with the working title MAROONED. This will be part of a trilogy including MAROONED, PURSUED, BESIEGED, SHANGIAIED, COMMANDEERED ... oh damnit I've done it again, haven't I?
"Stranded" is also the novelette I adapted for 24 Hour Comics Day. Don't know if I'll get back to that as I have already 3 books plotted out in this series and parts of the next two outlined.
Hope to get "Stranded" the novelette out to the editor in the next two weeks for inclusion in an anthology maybe later this year (with MAROONED coming out next year we hope). When "Stranded" is away, then it's back to LIQUID FIRE (finishing the draft) and THE CLOCKWORK TIME MACHINE (polishing the draft to send to beta readers).
-the Centaur
I am very interested in promoting creation. I think the world would be a better place if more people wrote, drew, painted, sculpted, danced, programmed, philosophized, or just came up with ideas. Not all ideas are great, and it's important to throw away the bad and keep the good - but the more ideas we can generate, the more we can test.
One of the biggest problems I see in unprofessional, unpublished or just unhappy creators is not finishing. It's very easy to start work on an idea - a painting, a novel, a sculpture, a program, a philosophy of life. But no matter how much you love what you do, there's always a point in creating a work where the act of creating transforms from play to work.
Whether you stall out because the work gets hard or because you get distracted by a new idea, it's important to realize the value of finishing. An unfinished idea can be scooped, or become stale, or disconnected from your inspiration. If you don't finish something, the work you did on it is wasted. More half finished ideas pile up. Your studio or notebook becomes a mess.
If you don't finish, you never learn to finish. You're learning to fail repeatedly. The act of finishing teaches you how to finish. You learn valuable skills you can apply to new works - or even to a new drafts. I know an author who was perpetually stalled out on a problematic story - until one day she made herself hit the end. Now it's on it's fourth draft and is really becoming something.
The tricky thing is you have got to put the cart before the horse: you've got to finish before you know whether it was worth finishing. This does not apply to experienced authors in a given genre, but if you're new to a genre, you have to finish something before you worry about whether you can sell it or even if it is any good.
You don't need for something to be perfect to finish it. I know too many amateurs who don't want to put out the effort to finish things because they don't know whether they can sell it. No. You've got a hundred bad programs in you, a thousand bad paintings, a million bad words, before you get to the good stuff. Suck it up, finish it, and move on.
Procrastination is a danger. This is the point in the article that I got distracted and wrote a quick email to a few other creators about ideas this (unfinished) article had inspired. Then I got back to it. Then I got distracted again doing the bullet list below and went back and injected this paragraph. The point is, it's OK to get distracted - just use that time wisely, then get back to it.
Finally, sometimes you just need help to finish the first time. The biggest thing is to find a tool which can help you over that hump when it stops being fun and starts being work - some challenge or group or idea that helps you get that much closer to done. To help people finish, I'm involved with or follow a variety of challenges and resources to help people finish:
Finally, I want to finish with what inspired this post: the Cult of Done. I won't go too deeply into the Done Manifesto, but from my perspective it can be summed up in two ideas: posting an idea on the Internet counts as a ghost of done, and done is the engine of more. Get your stuff done, finish it, and if it's still half baked, post it to force yourself to move on to newer and better things.
The plane is landing. Time to get it done.
-the Centaur
Credits: The BlitzComics guy is penciled, inked and colored by me and post-processed by Nathan Vargas. Joshua Rothass did the Cult of Done poster and distributed it under a Creative Commons license. This blog post was uploaded by Ecto, which is doing well (other than an upload problem) and is probably going to get my money.
