After 12 outrageous years together, it saddens me to report that my beautiful bike has finally gone and gotten herself stolen.
Entirely my fault, I realize, for keeping her unlocked and unattended for a handful of minutes JUST OUTSIDE MY FRONT DOOR!
I am sorry, oh beautiful resilient one. You will be missed terribly.
AND FINISHED! Almost.
Notice how it is blank next to where it says “C (digital)”. That is the cover for the digital edition, which I approach differently to print editions for good reason.
Where I added “BM” slots at the very bottom? That's “Backmatter” which I realized I hadn't made much space for on my chart. I have it indicated as 3 pages there, but they actually ran to 9! All finished though. So yeah, this chapter runs quite long. I don't imagine the next three will need to run as long. 🤞
Saw Gaiman speak last night, part of a book tour apparently. Not sure I know of any other author who can fill a sizable auditorium with a paying audience for what is ostensibly a book promotion event. To Gaiman's credit though, he didn't read exclusively from his book, but read other stuff as well; a couple never published poems. He also includes little anecdotes and life stories between each reading. The entire event was 2 hours, Gaiman standing, never sitting, and never even moving around the stage. To be stationary for two solid hours, and do nothing but talk at a dimly lit crowd of some, I dunno, 2500 people and manage to be captivating, insightful, charming, and also damn funny the entire time is an immensely admirable feat. Again, I can't think of a single other author capable of pulling it off.
He even read a Batman poem.
A Batman poem.
One of the first entries in my new notebook because I have a terrible book problem and very inadequate space to accommodate it, yet here I am eyeing a 700+ page type specimen book as I type this.
Why am I like this?
The Chris Ware quote is from IN THE STUDIO: VISITS WITH CONTEMPORARY CARTOONISTS which—initially—I was a bit disappointed with only because I was expecting to see cartoonists in their studios and get a good look at their setups, daily routine, and much talk about process and craft stuff. None of that is in there. But now that I know what is in the book and possess no false expectations to be crushed, I find that I enjoy returning to it now and again, picking up on something new every time. Like that quote for instance, which rings true to me as a perfect methodology for crafting stories.
Have entered into the nether realm of post-exhaustion where one is more or less sleepwalking through their waking hours but without the sleep. Just mindlessly operating on auto-pilot through days that blend into one another in a surreal collage of child playing/feeding/bathing and colorful benday dots across photoshop interfaces.
It's a weird existence, but child can say play now and he says it all the time because it's all he wants to do, and every time he says it my heart melts and I play. Despite the big haze of exhaustion that envelops me I play, and I do so with genuine joy.
Despite starting at 9:00am and not finishing before 2:00am, the result was only one page of colors yesterday. Woke up this morning at 6:30am as per child's routine, and am of course paying the consequences of last night's overtime, head a-pounding.
New sitter arrived at 9:00am. By the time I got done explaining child's schedule and needs and showed her around the house and took care of email, grocery order and a few other checks off the to-do list, it was already 11:00am. Have yet to get any actual work done and it is almost noon. Not very optimistic about today.
First day of one full week of solo parenting has commenced and I am already dead. And it just so happens to coincide with the week I'm determined to wrap up this chapter of TSG because it really has been an awful lot of time, hasn't it?
His mother though—gods bless her—did book a sitter for 2 days out of the week, and organized daycare transport for 3, so at least that's some of the load taken care of.🤞
Currently reading: BLOOD, SWEAT, & CHROME: THE WILD AND TRUE STORY OF MAD MAX: FURY ROAD, and the title does not lie. If half of what is recounted in this book is true, then the making of this film is truly mad and most certainly unlike that of any other film in history. The book reads fast and drops glorious little nuggets throughout along with much inspiration. And I'm willing to bet that the 384 pages dedicated to chronicling the movie's wild journey barely scratches the surface. I was only 50 pages in when I realized I had to go ahead and order THE ART OF MAD MAX: FURY ROAD immediately, which I'm actually surprised took me this long to get around to.
This may just be the most agonizing part of graphic-noveling, when you're so close yet still so far. When you have an allotment of pages that are: penciled, inked, and lettered, ostensibly completely finished pages, exceeeeeept not quite. For this particular chapter I'm working on, the pages require a final sweep of touchups, halftones in some cases, and colors in others (sometimes a single tone of color, or two tones, or “full-color”, which in my case I have limited to 4 tones). The fact that each set of pages requires a different process to be brought to the finish line, means the amount of time each page requires is quite different, which makes it significantly hard to accurately assess the amount of time each page needs to finally be done-done. Which is frustrating.
New computer has arrived though and I'm finding that it is already helping speed up the process.
Prison Chart system: back-slashes for pencils, forward-slashes for inks, strike-through for letters, and then finally a blackout for pages that are done-done (like I said, some require various degrees of color and some don't).
I am a poet.
Cranky this morning. Little sleep and little accomplished to show for it. Ordered new computer in futile attempt to save me from this machine's taunting ways. Doesn't arrive till next week and will have to put off a few tasks till then.
Never a good idea to spring straight from bed to work. Will now attempt to gave day its proper start: shower, shave, breakfast, coffee, proper clothes (underwear and t-shirt at the moment), and then back to dialoguing this thing.
Poetry, sheer poetry.
Pages scanned in and now is time for the digital component of producing my comix otherwise known as troubleshooting.
Seriously, machines hate me and never work exactly like they're supposed to at least not 100% of the time and particularly at those times when I need them to work most. Now is no exception.
