angst

Artsy TessFor the last two weeks I've been on vacation. During that time I've been preoccupied with two things, recovering from work, and Novella.

The last six months have been particularly challenging as a Software Trainer/Consultant. In July I was asked to help update the course material for our flagship product. The course certainly did need it, and I was more than happy to take a break from the project I was currently working on. By November, not only had I updated the material, but I found myself "owning" all the course material for all of our products. This is still the minority of all of the classes taught by my department, but it certainly explains my exhaustion as of late.

Several months ago I assumed that work would eventually slow down. I would find myself working 8 hour shifts at the office, 5 days a week. This sounds absolutely peaceful compared to the whirlwind weeks of criss-crossing the country every Sunday morning and Friday evening. When it did slow down, I thought, I would have enough time to work on Novella. Sometimes I can work on the story while I'm traveling, but it can be difficult when your option during a flight is four hours of writing in close-quarters, or getting some much deserved rest on the way home. When I was finally home, I could start to work on the Novella Script.

I had decided to start the Script as I was no longer making any progress with the Outline. I figured that if I had a few months to write the script, I would be more than prepared to start drawing the comic in January. Unfortunately, work did not let up as I had hoped, but continued to get more and more busy until Christmas. I simply didn't have the energy to develop the script as I had intended.

Over my vacation, I hoped that I'd have the time to catch up. My plan was to write enough script to feel like I could start drawing the comic after New Year's. Little did I realize just how exhausted I was. It took nearly a week for me to feel like myself again. After that, I still didn't have the creative drive yet to seriously confront the comic. Finally last Friday I decided that I had enough sitting around my apartment.

I grabbed my Vaio laptop, and hit a cafe. I ordered a nice lunch and sat down to reread everything I had produced in the last year.

At the time, I didn't realize it, but the project has made significant progress in the last year. I started with only the characters and story I had in my mind, plus the few surviving notes. From there a 40 page Outline was developed as well as a short script. For the first time since I imagined the comic, there was a planned, continuous storyline. The website has also undertaken a dramatic change. I abandoned my own custom written PHP content system for one based on the Open Source Drupal CMS. I decided this because I didn't want to spend time developing the site when I was supposed to be working on the comic. While I was hesitant at first, this is beginning to show itself as the right thing to do.

After I had laid waste to my Chicken Wild Rice soup and my Roast Beef on Cibatta, I reread the Outline. I was disappointed to find that I still did not like the first chapter of the story. To me, it never felt, "grounded". I'm not sure how to describe it, but I can imagine a reader being very frustrated by it. I didn't think it was without any merit at all, but it certainly needed significant tweaking. If only I knew what. Setting that aside I read my short script. Currently, it doesn't enter into the actual story. Instead it's a sort of introductory chapter to explain the first Novella comic, what happened, and why I'm so nervous now.

That, as you may be wondering, is where the above character came from. This is Artsy Tess, a personification of my creative side, also a character in the introductory chapter. Normally, she wears a smock of some sort, but today she snuck into sleeping Anthropologist Tess' room and "borrowed" her kimono. Pessimist Tess, as you might guess, wasn't happy with any of this. She was even less happy when Artsy told her she wanted to start drawing the comic in spite of the untidy state of things.

And that's where I am today. Do I just throw caution to the wind and start drawing the comic? Or to I tuck my tail between my legs and develop the outline and the script for several more months? Neither are a pleasant prospect. If I start drawing now, I'm afraid that history will repeat itself. I'll produce several comics, and then the whole thing will blow up in my face. If I wait, there's nothing to say that work won't become hectic and draining again. If that happens, I'll find myself in the same place months from now.

The development process seems to have exhausted myself. It's forced me to preciface. If the story is to develop further, I need to have an actual story in front of me. Not a Outline, not even a script. I need to know what actually happens. I need to see what is beyond that cliff and what is in the valley below.

The real question is, when I leap off, do I believe I can fly?

Universe; I hope so.

It was some months ago that I had the fortune of watching Babylon 5 again. I hadn't watched the show in years, and it was exceedingly difficult to find it rebroadcast even on cable stations. I had absorbed the show, watching several episodes a day for weeks on end. It's unfortunate that the series is so easily overlooked in comparison to the behemoths of Star Trek and Star Wars.

The writing is far, far superior to any other space opera I have had the fortune to watch. It was also a difficult series to get into, as the episodes were so contiguous that you could nary watch a single one apart from the rest. It took on stereotypical plotlines in science fiction -- an ancient "evil" returning (the Shadows), telepaths, evolutionary manipulation by aliens, and blended it all into one fantastic plotline.

There was also one particular subplot that wasn't so stereotyped for the genre. In the story, an ancient race had manipulated the politics on earth for it's own end. It granted a reckless and ignorant fool the planetary presidency, while they were buttressing the true enactors of power -- Nightwatch and the Psi-core. Both were eerily similar to the Gestapo in tactics, motif, and dress. Nightwatch, however, was just a needless shell. The true power was held by the Psi-core. They believed they were superior to the "mundanes" due to their gift of telepathy. Not only did they believe they could control the planet, but the thoughts of it's citizens.

All of this seemed far away in the story compared to the Shadow War, to which Earth was oblivious. Indeed, the ever growing fascist government of the planet was not properly dealt with until the Shadows were driven from the Galaxy. Surprisingly, the conclusion of this subplot was an anticlimax. The war was not won with firearms or powerful spacecraft. It was won with words. This was also atypical for the genre. After this, the cast and characters of the show turned their attention to their home planet.

After a bitter fight in the outlying solar system, they approached Earth. The lead character then made the following broadcast.

This is Captain John Sheridan. We are here on the authority of a multi-planetary force, that can no longer stand by and watch one of their greatest allies falling into darkness and despair. We are here on behalf of the thousands of civilians murdered under orders from the current administration, who have no one else to speak for them, and on behalf of the EarthForce units that have joined us to oppose the tyranny that has darkened Earth, ever since President Santiago was assassinated three years ago. We are here to place President Clark under arrest, to disband Nightwatch, and return our government to the hands of her people.

We know that many in the government have wanted to act, but have been intimidated by threats of retaliation against your families, your friends. You are not alone anymore. We call upon you to rise up and do what's right. We have drawn their forces away from Earth and disabled them. The time to act is now! This is not the voice of treason. These are your sons, your daughters, whose loyalties have never wavered, whose beliefs in this alliance has forced us to take extraordinary means. For justice, for peace, for the future… we have come home.

It was with cold realization I had noticed the parallel to current day events. The thought sent shivers up my spine and beckoned tears at my eyes. The show concluded over 8 years ago, and it had made a startling -- if inadvertent -- prediction. Gibson had made similar predictions about the future in Neuromancer. What other authors and playwrights have made other bold and stunningly accurate predictions?

Today however, thinking about all of this, the room seems colder somehow. The lay of the land seems inperceptibly but undeniably more harsh than the days that came before. And I wish that someday soon, I can hear some sensible words, and warmth on my face.

Sometimes I honestly don't know what I'm doing withNovella anymore.

It seems since I posted the Revision 4 Outline sometime last month, I've been at a lost with the whole project. In the last revision, I had clearly defined goals I felt I could fulfill. I was to reformat the outline into a clearly defined sections, breaking up the 13 page list that predominated the previous revision. I added Character Bios so that I could finalize details like height and eye color. And finally, I spend a great deal of time expanding the first chapter with a detailed plot.

Revision 5, however, doesn't have such easily defined goals. When I began to list what I wanted to accomplish, many of the goals involved creating a web presence for the project. At first this was a wordpress site, but I was unhappy with the system. Someone on my LiveJournal Friends List then suggested Drupal. I spend some weeks thereafter testing the CMS and building a new theme. Instead of just creating a new Novella website, I recreated all of deninet itself. I still feel that this was a good decision. Now I have features that I wanted when I working on Gazelle, and I hope to finally integrate all of the smaller websites housed on deninet into one big system.

Nevertheless, what I created wasn't as Novella-centric as I hoped. Yes, deninet is much better than it was. I'm finally able to integrate all of the content without driving myself nuts in the process. I still haven't decided on how I'm going to handle Novella content. I could rely on Taxonomy to organize content, but I'm unimpressed with the results. Organic Groups have some better options, but their not quite the same as creating a dedicated site. Do I really want to go that far? I haven't decided yet, but I'm not too sanguine about the idea.

Web concerns aside, writing has been difficult. I'm having trouble connecting with the characters in a way I felt I had during the last revision. It's something I rely on heavily when I'm writing -- putting myself in their place. Without that ability, my writing feels flat and incomplete. It's entirely possible that I'm "being too hard on [my]self", as my friends are quick to remind me. I can be a terrible perfectionist.

So far, I've added a total of 7 pages to the Outline. New additions include an Epilogue and a Prologue, a bio for Father Krichevsky, and some additional subplots for Miki. I've also added a Timeline section for me to jot down quick ideas without having to write out the descriptive block. It also defines the time-span of the story: One year at college. This actually gave me some ideas for certain subplots as well as explanation for others that have been dangling until now.

The character I'm trying to focus on the most is Novella. After writing most of the first chapter, I was disappointed with how the character felt. She seemed somewhat two dimensional compared to the other two characters. I've added a few "expected" plot points as a result. I say expected because they are plot points that one would expect from any story involving a Transgender character. I refuse, however, to make Novella into a Transition story. One of my friends expected just that sort of thing, but I feel that there are enough stories out there involving that sort of content. The questioning, conflicted state of Novella isn't a comfortable one for any transperson. There's a tendency for authors of these stories to skip toward the end -- toward a Full Time state in which the character assumes the gender role to match their gender identity.

I'm probably feeling this revision has been unfocused and unproductive due to the fewer pages that have been produced thusfar. The Outline jumped from 13 pages to 17 just in the reformat. Then I added another 13 pages of new content. Currently, the outline stands at 37 pages, making 7 pages of new content. Now that I have little less than 4 weeks to release revision 5, I feel that I'm going to be disappointed. On the other hand, the last revision went through a lot of "easy" changes. This was content that was fresh in my mind, and easier to write down as a result. Following the initial chapter through was difficult, but it was really a function of me sitting down and hacking away at it. Perhaps I really am asking too much of myself for this Revision...