Sunday, December 1, 2019

A Week in Writing #275 - Writing, the Holidays and Kickstarter


The truth about writing, holidays, and travel is that something has to give. You really can't do all three at the same time. This Thanksgiving not only did we have to travel, like we do every year but we also left a day early because of snow in the Grapevine, the main way north out of Los Angeles.
So the week essentially gets cut back to only a couple of days.

It's hard to write with a group of people around as well. With nothing to do for the moment, I sat down to work on this and was quickly interrupted twice in about five minutes. Make that three times. There's no solitude in a crowd.

We did some work on Powers Squared this week, besides hyping the Kickstarter whenever we could. New pages from Nina came in on Sunday, which was a bad day for Paul and I to look at them. He had been gone the previous day to DesignerCon with Trevor, they had a friend over in the afternoon and there was a football game on that I wanted to watch. (I only follow one team in one sport, so give this to me.) We still had a newsletter to get out and I had this blog to write, so time was tight.

The pages looked good when we had a chance to look at them on Monday. We're also actively looking for a replacement colorist. So far, only two people have approached us and both are very good. We're still sort of distracted to really concentrate on that right now.

Paul and I spent some time over the holiday to talk with my wife's siblings and their adult children into supporting our Kickstarter. They were very receptive and we raised a lot of funding. Some even offered to talk with others they work with to support it as well. We're getting closer to our goal but we still have a ways to go.

On Friday, even though we were traveling Paul and I figured out how to do a mail merge and sent out emails to 70 people from the mailing list who have not, so far, supported the Kickstarter. Paul sent out blast emails to classmates in two of his recent classes. And I even sent personal emails to two of my oldest friends and two of my siblings who have not backed us.

So far, the only response I've received was from one of the friends. I've known this guy since high school and he declined to help, stating amongst other excuses that he wasn't the target audience and pleading poverty since he's retired. I'm sorry but I didn't take that well. I'm not the target audience for the comic book, and neither are most of the backers, so that doesn't hold water and he's a retired city employee so I don't think he's really hurting. Hey, I've had total strangers pledge a dollar. Someone I've known my entire adult life can't do that much?

I thought about writing him back but there is no nice way to say what I'm thinking, so I dropped him from our mailing list instead. You have to separate the wheat from the chaff. I guess I'm looking at this Kickstarter as a testing ground of sorts. If you won't support us then maybe it's time for us both to move on.

Managed to squeeze in some work on The Runaway on Monday night and some more rewrites on Thanksgiving day as well. Hard to write too much on the road but I feel like I have to at least try. I think it's in my DNA.

No new reviews from me this week but Trevor published one for Trophy Unlocked's Saturday Morning Review, Transformers: Prime - The Game. Trevor is our resident expert on all things Transformers so he brings a lot of knowledge to his review. Next week, we start the Christmas season on the blog and will feature Christmas-themed films every Saturday until Christmas.

Speaking of next week, I'll leave it here for now and we'll pick it up then. Keep writing.

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