The Sum of David

Taking the month of May off of writing was the best thing I could have done. This time two years ago, when I’d finished first installment of The Sum of David on May 1st, I was chomping at the bit to get back into it two weeks later. I enjoyed the full four weeks off this round, taking care of some general life things while my brain recuperated from my writing binge in April.

I feel recovered, and my mind’s inner storyteller is ready to rock again. I’m getting random little jolts of inspiration throughout the day — when I sleep, on the bus, during work, when I’m reading. My brain is sucking up every day observations like a sponge takes water, playing out little daydreams on how I could use them on my characters and then tucking the scenarios away. That means it’s time.

I went to the coffee shop last night feeling nervous. I’ve been excited about getting back down to business since last week, but there are times when you just can’t get it right, despite the best intentions. I was afraid I’d sit down and dig my heels in only to find myself feeling lost and overwhelmed. Fortunately, after the caffeine was flowing and the music got loud, things happened.

There’s certainly no dressing it up, though. This one’s going to be tough. There’s so many little parts and pieces that have to fit together by the end. The first draft was hard, but I’ve got several parts that are missing that need to be filled in, and revelations I made a week ago that have to be put into place. This is by far the most complicated story I’ve tried to wrangle so far.

It also has the potential to be the best piece of fiction I’ve ever created.

I think I’ve got it in me. Time will only tell.

My 27th birthday came and went last week. To be honest, I sometimes forget exactly how old I am. If asked, I will undoubtedly pause and think about it. And then Josh will correct me when I guess wrong. (In my defense, I’m usually only a year off. They all started to blend together after 23.)

Anyway. I’ve been struggling for a couple months now with my various activities — Design, Illustration, and Writing — and how they affect my life and balance with one another. And there’s a battle going on.

Design will always be Priority #1. It’s not only my bread and butter, but I lurve it. I love creating visual solutions, and drooling over other people’s work. Package design, a good logo, a beautifully integrated illustration or an amazing commercial… it all makes me warm and fuzzy inside. There are so many wonderful ways to conquer the same problem — that is, communicate a message in a unique and memorable way — and I haven’t found them all yet. There’s nothing else I’d rather spend 40 - 60 hours a week doing. Illustration is that back-burner love that has fallen back into my lap, which is lovely. And writing is something I’ve been doing for years, and I’m only recently feeling ready to explore the professional end of it.

This is where my conflict lies. I have three things that I love to do, and so I divide my time amongst those three occupations. I understand the idea of wearing many different hats, and I’ve been juggling all three competently enough. But does splitting my time between those three somehow rob one of them of the potential to be the best it can be?

For example: if I’m never published, will it be because I didn’t give writing the due concentration it needed?

I never want to stop pushing myself, and I love them all. But I have to wonder if I’m sacrificing the quality of one to pursue the others. So what matters most here? Quality? Or quantity? I would usually say quality… but when the quantity is improving the quality of life as a whole… where does that leave things?

This is heavy thought for a beautiful Friday. Let’s have a donut.

I wrapped up the last part of David’s sequel at around 3 am this morning. It’s been a tough few weeks, but I’m feeling good about the finished product. I’m also exhausted, since I’ve been putting in 8 - 10 hours of my day job and then heading straight to the coffee shop to write for another 5 - 6 hours. But I hit the May 1st mark, so yay me. I’m excited, but also POOPED.

At one point I typed “understanded” and was filled with a millisecond of rage when Word’s spellchecker put a little red squiggly line under it. I thought, “What the hell? What’s wrong now? That’s how you spell it!”*

Here’s some yummy facts to chew on while I recover.**

The current manuscript is 150 pages long.

That’s approximately 72,000 words, nearly 40,000 of which were written in the last four weeks. It will undoubtedly expand and contract when I begin editing.

In my brain it is simply “David’s sequel”. In my laptop, it is called “SoD BK2 v01″. I’ll come up with a better title eventually. Hopefully.

It’s my fifth novel and the second of a planned trilogy.

The above illustration is a rendition of me late last night/early this morning. I was feeling loopy and absolutely inundated with LETTERS. So that’s me… feeling loopy… made out of letters. Merry Christmas. Zzzz…

*That is so not how you spell it. Or conjugate it. Or whatever.

**This recovery will absolutely involve alcohol. And probably a nap.

I’ve been a busy bee: I’ve written 20 pages in the last 6 days, which is approximately 9,000 words. I am still 30 pages out from my goal. But, then again, I’ve been a solid 30 pages away from the end for the last week. I added another layer to the plot, which certainly doesn’t help timeliness. It may endanger my deadline of May 1st, but will improve the story. But still: regarding deadline, I remain undeterred. I’m still full steam ahead and going to do my darnedest to get done by Doomsday.

Until I return to regularly scheduled programming, watch this and giggle.

“I can’t go back. It’s so cold!”

It’s funny how the things we put off and save for later can end up being the things that inspire the stuff we have to do now.

When I write a rough draft, I leave blank places. Josh can attest to this, since an early draft he read a few years ago simply had “___________” where the names of some secondary characters would go. He had lots of fun filling them in with names like “Mr. Poopy-Pants” and “Stupidhead”.

95% of the story is present and accounted for when I do this, it’s just where there might be some tiny holes in the plot or where I’d like to insert some foreshadowing but I’m not sure exactly what I’d like to foreshadow quite yet. Or, honestly, I just don’t feel like writing that bit right then: if I’m happy, it’s hard to write sad, and vice versa. And sometimes if I do, I’ll end up rewriting it later because it was forced anyway. So I follow my gut, and skip when I’m not truly not feeling it.

I’ve been plodding ahead as usual this month, leaving my usual notes: [DREAM GOES HERE] and the like. I’d just sat down for a fresh session when I saw a similar notation — [BAD GUY UPDATE] — above the six lines of the newest scene. I’d really intended on saving him for later, since I’ve been trying to sharpen my characters recently. I’ve been feeling a little lost, and they’ve been feeling a little hollow — like I can’t pin down their motivation.

In an act that was purely procrastinational, I dived into that note. In a page and a half, I remembered what an bad guy this man truly was and what my protagonists were up against. Why they couldn’t win, but had to anyway.

And I don’t feel lost anymore.

I was never able to remember which months have 30 days and which ones have 31. A girlfriend tried to teach me some sort of trick where you sound the months off while counting your knuckles, but I ended up just playing with the tendons that pop out and turn white when I make a fist… But according to my fancy-schmancy computer, April has 31 days.

Thank GOD.

The deadline for completing the rough draft of my current novel is May 1st. I thought I was doing pretty well. I thought I was on track. I thought I had time.

After some investigation, however, I’ve discovered I’m actually less than halfway through the story, less than halfway to my word count and I’m feeling less and less confident about meeting my deadline.

But I do have a spectacular stubborn streak when I can conjure it, and I think we’ve almost struck that gritty, balls-to-the-wall gold.

Will I meet this stupidly impossible self-imposed deadline?

Oh my, yes.
It might be paved with caffeine, sleep deprivation and nervous breakdowns, but I’ll see you in May with a manuscript in hand.

…it’s kind of like that. There’s a lot going on up there.

On a happy and delightfully stress-free note, as of Wednesday night I am the only one with a perfect area in my NCAA Bracket Sportsocracy’s blogger’s league. Josh has been yelling blasphemes since that blog post was made, mostly because he knows my mode of selection. Hint: it involves the alphabet. Xavier for the win!

I do recognize the irony in having a plate piled high with To-Do’s and then spending that precious time drawing an unnecessary illustration for my blog, but it gave me half an hour of peaceful distraction. So there.

If you have any interest in the medium of graphic storytelling, this is one piece that should be at the top of your To Read/Own list.

Originally self-published by Jeff Smith from 1991 to 2004, Bone is hailed as the longest running independently-published comic by a single author. Originally, there were 55 issues, released sporadically. These days you can purchase it as a complete volume that clocks in at a spectacular 1,332 pages. And every page is a work of art.

When the three Bones - Phoney Bone, Smily Bone and Fone Bone - are run out of their hometown, they find themselves far from home and separated from one another in The Valley. We primarily follow everyman Fone Bone as he’s taken in by tough Gran’ma Ben and her (cute) grand-daughter Thorn for the winter. But as Spring blossoms, so does trouble: Thorn is having strange dreams, frightening Rat Creatures have begun to invade the valley, and a dragon has been spotted in the woods. They discover the mythic Lord of the Locusts seeks someone to release him from his ancient prison so he can destroy the world, a role he thinks can be filled by either Thorn or Bone’s cousin, Phoney. The barriers between the real world and the dream world begin to break down, and the discovery of Thorn’s mysterious lineage puts them in even more danger than before.

Smith weaves a tale that effectively combines fantasy elements like dragons, monsters, other worlds, and fate with lighter, comedic fare. The art reflects this juxtaposition as well - most of the characters are human, while the three Bones are more simply rendered, with big cartoon-y features and little clothes. Many of the human characters are still exaggerated, however, and I think that’s where Smith is at his strongest. Gran’ma Ben in particular is wonderfully expressive, despite having only lines for eyes and speaking primarily through her chin. His creature designs are straight-forward but fantastic, whether it’s a dragon, Rat Creature, or the cute baby animals. Emotion is poignant and subtle when it needs to be; action is always clear, expressive and exciting.

Rarely does one truly find an author that is just as gifted at art as he/she is at storytelling. In every work of fiction it’s the story that is key, and sometimes graphic novels can get caught up in the “how” rather than the “what” when the author/illustrator are the same person. In Bone, they work well hand in hand.

I really can’t recommend it highly enough. I’ve read it twice, and I had just as much fun this time as the first time. I’m sure I’ll pick it up again in the future.

Bone is also being re-released in color, with the talents of Steve Hamaker adding some umph to Jeff Smith’s expert inking.

…aaaaand there’s the sting I expected from the first one.

I read my second rejection letter today. The agent actually sent it a month ago, which is made a little more embarrassing due to some technical ignorance that left it buried in another email address. And since I totally sent a follow-up email yesterday to check on its progress…? Whoops. I’m suppressing the urge to send her  yet another email to apologize for the mix-up, but seeing as I would have thanked her for time and then wasted it on two unnecessary emails… Yeah, the self esteem is sitting a little lower than usual.

Andrea Somberg (aim for the stars, right?) sent a very polite and personalized email passing on The Sum of David. I got from her words that she read not only the query but also the sample pages. Agent eyes that read the query and advance to the sample chapters mean the query letter is fine, which is great news; but she said she regretted it didn’t draw her in the way she had hoped it would. Ouch.

Do you have twenty minutes to spare? Check out the Sample Chapters and let me know what you think. Celebrate the anonymity of the internet by giving me a vicious critique on the first four chapters of my masterpiece. While I’m not ready to jump head-first into another editing overhaul, it’d be great to know how I can spice it up.

Oh well. Back on the horse.

There are a few things that I will go straight up fangirl over. Hellboy is one of them.

Josh spent much of the weekend hibernating against our awesome 20-degree weather, so I popped in the Hellboy movie while he sawed logs on the couch. First off, let me say this: I know it’s not the perfect movie. The graphic version of Seed of Destruction is superior in several ways (the greatest of which is the fact that Sammael doesn’t resurrect fifteen times and we have to watch them battle him over and over. And over.) But it is so much fun. The casting is perfect. No one but Ron Perlman could play Hellboy — playing a giant red demon-man toting a giant stone hand and covered in runic symbols would be impossible for anyone else to pull off. Doug Jones and (the uncredited) David Hyde Pierce are an impeccable Abe Sapian. And even my reading brain didn’t translate Professor Trevor Bruttenholm as well as John Hurt did.

The thing that makes this movie enjoyable for me is the execution of taking the world and story from paper to live action. Hellboy’s creator, Mike Mignola, worked very closely with del Toro to make the creatures and environments rich and believable. I think they do a beautiful job of it — the set of Bruttenholm’s study and the Russian graveyard are especially beautiful in my opinion, and Kroenen and Sapien really are very fantastic. With three discs, the Hellboy special edition is also  one of the most extensive bonus features DVD I’ve ever encountered and offers HOURS of yummy documentation of what went into making the world come alive. (Rivaled in size and detail only by LOTR box sets — 7 discs. Yowza.)

Mignola’s Hellboy is a fascinating character. While I am not usually a huge fan of horror in other fiction, I love it in Mignola’s dark, boxy style and the humor he injects into the stories is a nice balance between the gore. I generally love the ‘refusal of destiny’ arc in stories anyway, and throwing in the impending apocalypse via the hero is right up my alley. Combine it with lots of dark folklore, disturbing occult conspiracies, heaven vs. hell, and the whole what makes a man thing — I am one happy camper.

Visually, Mignola’s art is more than drool-worthy. He has an unmistakable style: heavy shadows that can cover an entire page but still insinuate there is so much going on; angular, sometimes abbreviated shapes that lose nothing from their incomplete execution; character designs that challenge your base knowledge of mythological figures (like the stone, iron-maiden goddess Hecate, anyone?); action and framing that is clear and dramatic. And his paintings make me cry tears of jealous, reverential JOY.

JOY!

“Look, Sammy, I’m not a very good shot… but the Samaritan here uses really big bullets.”