Sunday, October 23, 2016

A Week in Writing #113

I started writing this mid-week, Wednesday morning before I went to work. I wanted to capture how I was feeling at the moment; the word disheartened kept coming to mind. My fishing for feedback the past couple of weeks had been been very unsuccessful up until then. Of the people we had sent PowerSquared to for feedback and advise, only two had given us feedback up until then, despite it having been nearly two months since we sent them the book.

Rather than throw in the towel, I redoubled my efforts to contact them and for the most part it paid off, as two of the three have at least reacted to my queries. One had problems downloading the file we'd sent him, which we worked out during the week. He has apparently read it now and wants to talk, the timing of which I still don't know.

One of the people was the guy who wrote the book that got me doing this blog in the first place. Not sure what took him so long, but he did respond today just before I started to update this post. He was complimentary for the most part, though he did have issues with a couple of panels. One was a Japenese onomatopoeia we used and another was the flow of dialogue between panels on one page.

The third one has been the most elusive so far and probably the most sought after for us. High ranking at an internet comic book site (I don't name names; it isn't that kind of blog), we had sent him a copy during the Labor Day holidays, which seem like an eternity ago now. He seemed to like it and even set up an appointment to talk to us, but cancelled. Since then, he hasn't rescheduled or responded to our emails. That's the sort of thing that makes you feel disheartened; so close and so out of your control.

Writing is a very personal thing, even if it's a comic book. You put a lot of effort into getting everything right (and if you're like me, pay to get it right) and then you want someone to either encourage you or tell you it's not your line of work; something/anything. Now don't get me wrong; a couple of people, who's opinions I respect, have read Part 1 and really liked it, but I'd like to hear his since he's more immersed in the business.

We're quickly coming up to the point when we'll need to commit to a third issue (and two more after that to complete the storyline) so I'd like to hear from him before we have to decide.

I'm not going to give up, it's just that I didn't expect how hard it would be to get three grown men to read a 20-page comic book and provide feedback.

Not a good week in writing for me. Did finish the script for the next three stories and am waiting for my son, the editor, to have a chance to go through them. It's a lot of pages and he is busy with his own writing and school. I think we're about a month away from having to make the decision. But I've also had to work late a couple of nights and lost that time for creative ventures.

Did post a new review on Trophy Unlocked, ParaNorman, keeping with our October Halloween themed reviews. Haven't written a new one this weekend, but I think I'm going through a bit of a dry spell when it comes to writing in general. Right now I'm getting about 30 pageviews the first week that I publish a review, which isn't a lot, but we have a mass of reviews that seem to get looked at, so we average about 80 pageviews a day. Some older ones seem to get a lot of hits, like G.I. Joe: Retaliation seems to be popular now. For reasons I'm not sure of, it has gotten 55 pageviews this week.

Purchased Final Draft 10.0 on Friday. It's a pretty cool program, though I've only just begun to scratch the surface. The industry standard for scripts. There are also templates for graphic novels, but I'm not sure I want to rewrite the ones I just completed in Word, but I might try using it for future scripts. Hopefully, this new tool will spur me on to write more.

Always the goal.

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