I know my blog has been lacking lately but believe me when I tell you that it has been for an outstanding reason! Now, I am not revealing a lot here because of certain confidentiality agreements but I have been hired by an overseas company to adapt a literary classic into a graphic novel. [Graphic novel is the fancy term for a bound comic book.]
I was given a mid-December deadline and I have finished the first draft of that assignment on the last day of November. That’s sixty-four comic pages in about 14 days. I think that is pretty darn impressive considering I am still working my full-time job as well. The money on the project is very good (from my point of view) and it has been a great opportunity for me to expand my base and my contacts. Hopefully, my Arcana Studio mates might even get some work out of this project through freelance coloring and lettering. It could very well be a win/win for everyone involved.
After chewing through the rough draft and completing my page structure and such, I have sat back and relaxed for a few days. I celebrated by hooking my XBOX 360 back up. I passed the script over to my editor to catch all of my spelling and grammar mistakes. I might go back and play with the finer points to really make this a Ryan Foley book. But I was so jazzed after I finished the assignment.
I think that writers—good writers—are always writing. It is in their bloodstream. Over these last few weeks, I have found myself getting up at 5:00 a.m. to write before going to work. I would write on my coffee and lunch breaks at work. I would write when I came home from work. I was writing all the time, telling myself, “Self, let’s just get this one more page done.”
Part of me was doing this because I was terrified of my deadline. (FIFTEEN DAYS AHEAD OF SCHEDULE!!!) This is why my blog has been suffering from a lack of updates!
Now I was writing during the Thanksgiving rush (a pretty busy time for a grocery store) and I went for a pretty long stretch without a day off. And when I finally got my day off, I made a startling discovery. I told myself that I was going to treat it like my normal job and write for eight hours straight and treat it like a 40-hour a week job.
That’s when I discovered that if you do that your brain into pudding in your skull. After that day, I felt like I had just come off the ACTs. And I would rather be physically tired than mentally tired, any day of the week and twice on Sunday.
I think you have to off-set your work with a relaxing break. So I found that unhooking the XBOX was a mistake and I function better if I write for a few hours, take a break by watching an episode of My Name Is Earl or playing a level on Tomb Raider Anniversary.
Of course, it is after that break that I find myself drifting back to the computer to work and when you put all that time together, it probably equals out to a forty-hour-a-week job but you do it over the course of eighty hours.
Still, this is the job I would love to do full time. I wish I could write for a few hours, take a break to clean house and do dishes, write a little more, fold clothes, and then write a little more… I just need to start having steady paychecks coming in.
I was given a mid-December deadline and I have finished the first draft of that assignment on the last day of November. That’s sixty-four comic pages in about 14 days. I think that is pretty darn impressive considering I am still working my full-time job as well. The money on the project is very good (from my point of view) and it has been a great opportunity for me to expand my base and my contacts. Hopefully, my Arcana Studio mates might even get some work out of this project through freelance coloring and lettering. It could very well be a win/win for everyone involved.
After chewing through the rough draft and completing my page structure and such, I have sat back and relaxed for a few days. I celebrated by hooking my XBOX 360 back up. I passed the script over to my editor to catch all of my spelling and grammar mistakes. I might go back and play with the finer points to really make this a Ryan Foley book. But I was so jazzed after I finished the assignment.
I think that writers—good writers—are always writing. It is in their bloodstream. Over these last few weeks, I have found myself getting up at 5:00 a.m. to write before going to work. I would write on my coffee and lunch breaks at work. I would write when I came home from work. I was writing all the time, telling myself, “Self, let’s just get this one more page done.”
Part of me was doing this because I was terrified of my deadline. (FIFTEEN DAYS AHEAD OF SCHEDULE!!!) This is why my blog has been suffering from a lack of updates!
Now I was writing during the Thanksgiving rush (a pretty busy time for a grocery store) and I went for a pretty long stretch without a day off. And when I finally got my day off, I made a startling discovery. I told myself that I was going to treat it like my normal job and write for eight hours straight and treat it like a 40-hour a week job.
That’s when I discovered that if you do that your brain into pudding in your skull. After that day, I felt like I had just come off the ACTs. And I would rather be physically tired than mentally tired, any day of the week and twice on Sunday.
I think you have to off-set your work with a relaxing break. So I found that unhooking the XBOX was a mistake and I function better if I write for a few hours, take a break by watching an episode of My Name Is Earl or playing a level on Tomb Raider Anniversary.
Of course, it is after that break that I find myself drifting back to the computer to work and when you put all that time together, it probably equals out to a forty-hour-a-week job but you do it over the course of eighty hours.
Still, this is the job I would love to do full time. I wish I could write for a few hours, take a break to clean house and do dishes, write a little more, fold clothes, and then write a little more… I just need to start having steady paychecks coming in.
We’ll see how it unfolds. More news soon.
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