A Week in Writing #112

This week I went fishing for feedback on PowerSquared. It started out with trying to reschedule our talk that was postponed last week. While I was at it, I thought I'd ping two of the three others who haven't yet responded. So, three emails went out and day one, zero responses. Not encouraging, to say the least. But I know "we're really busy at the moment", so I try to wait patiently.

Is this normal? Sometimes it feels like I'm the only writer who can't get feedback; I'll throw my son Paul in to it as well, since we both wrote PowerSquared, so I guess I'm not alone. I'm sadly used to this sort of treatment from agents, I mean that's part of the drill, but I had hoped this would be a little different. These were after all people I had met and in some cases have known for at least five years, if not longer. I just hope there is some sort of payoff at the end.

Now I may hear from all three before I publish this post, but I'm trying to capture how I'm feeling during the week; part of my week in writing, rather than just a total summation of what transpired. I never want this to turn vindictive, like so-and-so did this to me, so I don't name names, but I do think it's important to be honest about what is going on. (Ed. note: I didn't hear back from any of the three.)

I'm not sure what they did to Hotmail Outlook, but I don't like the changes. It seems like I can't do as much as I used to, like inserting images into the emails or downloading attachments. Our artist will send us jpegs of pages for us to look out, but suddenly earlier this week, they stopped working. While I could download and view the image on my phone, the Outlook on my computer refused, if a machine can be said to do that, the image. I tried sending the image from my phone to myself, but it wouldn't have anything to do with it. I ended up forwarding the email to myself at work and downloading there. I don't like having to do that at work, as I like, as much as humanly possible, to keep the two separate, but that was the only way I could finally view it.

I tried googling the problem, but like all of the issues I seek help with on the internet, the solutions weren't relevant, as in the solutions were for previous versions. I had to end up asking the artist to send them a different way. It's a good thing there are so many transfer sites on the internet.

We did make some progress on PowerSquared. The artist sent us layouts of the next four pages, so we're up to page 16. Our colorist suddenly got busy and sent us everything up through page 8. With both, we had some issues, but nothing too major. It's good to see it coming along, though there is still a lot of work to do. I honestly never thought it would be as time-consuming as it has turned out to be.

At this point, I'm not sure if we're going to do a third installment, but I've been trying to get ready in case we do. The next story is a three-parter, so I've been trying to divide the script into three 20-page sections. So far, with a little work, I've got two of the three marked up. While that doesn't sound like an accomplishment, it sort of is.

This is where the feedback we've been after would be helpful. No reason to keep doing it if no one thinks there's a future in it. I'm not looking for a new way to spend money I don't need to. The whole point is to make something sustainable. While I like seeing it come to life, I'm not looking at this as a vanity project.

Again, other writing has been somewhat slow this week. No new review to write this week, as we had no movie on Friday night. Did publish on Saturday morning; The Angry Red Planet (1959). as part of our salute to horror for October. Received comments for the first time in quite a while that actually related to the post.

Also had a comment on this blog, another rarity. Really happy to know that someone is reading it and feels compelled to leave a comment, especially encouragement. While I sort of write this blog for myself, I hope that there are some universal truths that others might find helpful or can relate to.