Okay. Today I need to run off prints, and work on a Digger, and maybe do another small piece of Con art, something I have been woefully neglecting for days in my orgy of random gods. In my copious spare time, if I get inspired, I should write more on the story of Nurk.
The story’s actually going pretty well–at least insomuch as one can believe that any story they’ve never showed another living soul is going well. Parts of it–the parts I wrote many years ago–are a bit stiff, and I keep teasing out a bit here or there and rewriting it, and then I discovered to my mild horror that three sections ended in near identical phrases, forcing me to do some slicing and dicing. Once I got going, though–well, too much talk of animated films, I guess, since I started to see it in my head much more than usual.* Pictures in my head, let alone the kind of delicate Studio Ghibli-esque animation I’m getting, is exceedingly rare. Usually if I get a mental image of anything, it’s a blurry, flickering thumbnail that vanishes if I grab it. I have no idea if the writing will be any better or worse for it. Still, not knockin’ it.
The other thing I’ve realized is that I have no idea what age range I’m writing for. The vocabulary may be a little challenging. I have no idea what words kids know at what age. Maybe it doesn’t matter. My six year old brother insisted that vol 1 of Digger be read to him nightly for a week, and I was pretty sure that was written for adults. (He also thinks Digger’s a boy. Eh, you pick your battles.) Then again, maybe it’ll come across as not talking down. I dunno. I have a sense of floundering into unknown territories, since it’s really not a long story–probably no more than twenty-five pages when finished, maybe less. That’d be a really long picture book, but a really short story. My brain is gibbering about whether it should use smaller words, or write it longer, or what. But in the end, all I can do is just plow forward and tell the story the way I think it goes, and use the words that want to be used, and hope it all works out in the end.
Which I suppose is all you ever do with anything, come to that, so I can’t complain.
Yesterday was fairly productive. I didn’t get any art done, and I ran off maybe four or five prints, but it was an errand-heavy day–got mats cut and foamcore. My local frame shop will take barter, but they’ve let their barter account pile up unclaimed, so I insisted on actually paying them this time, so it didn’t feel like I was taking advantage. They retaliated by giving me a 50% discount across the board. (Darn.) So I got all my foamcore cut, for twenty bucks, and believe me, I’d gladly shell out twice that to keep from having to slice out an entire art show. I’m sure that I have, at some point, cut foamcore without giving myself a papercut that bled like a mortal wound, but not in living memory. Got my clearbags order, realized I hadn’t ordered backing board, went and ordered it. (Boys and girls, if you’re doing a con, www.clearbags.com is your friend. A bag of a hundred print bags is cheap and it makes life much, much easier.) Bought more paper and more ink. Hemoragghed money. Went out to lunch with friends, which doesn’t sound like productivity, but since I retreat all too easily into Art Hermitude, helped keep what I laughingly refer to as my sanity together for another few days.
And back to work we go…
*This is ironic, because I was just talking to Mizkit on her blog about how I visualize stuff–not very much, and not very well–maybe a week ago.
