It’s Tuesday, which usually means there is a new episode up over at Radio Grimbald, but I’m taking a week off on the grounds that the next story is not ready yet.
Doing anything on a weekly basis quickly becomes hectic. You think doing it once a week is not really all that often, but when “it” is an hour-long podcast, or a 20-page comic chapter, “it” soon becomes this monstrous, all-comsuming thing that demands attention every single day or else you don’t have a product ready when post day comes around.
I’m thinking about this because my webcomic Angeldevil is updating again. Unlike a lot of webcomics, which update in one-page driblets a couple times a week, Angeldevil updates 20 pages at a time every Friday. When it updates, that is. I take a hiatus between each volume to rest, recharge, and get started on the next one. I don’t write, sketch, ink and format 20 pages a week, of course. You’d need a team of artist and assistants to do that. Or be a robot. Instead what I have is a backlog of “raw” pages that are finished, and only need to be lettered and formatted for posting. It is this lettering and formatting that gets done on a weekly basis, and I actually find it to be comforting work. There is a feeling of stability and routine, and it helps give me a feeling of productivity.
A Radio Grimbald episode, on the other hand, is like pulling teeth. First, there is the recording, which has been taking two days or so, because the stories are getting longer and I cannot read them in one sitting. Then there is the editing, which takes all week. Do not thing I can read an entire story aloud with no mistakes, no flubs, and no interruptions from animals or clueless family members; it’s just that all those mistakes have been edited out before the podcast is released. It is this editing that is most painful, because it… is… so… boring. Tedious is a good word too. It puts me to sleep. So I find I have to edit over the course of several days, otherwise I get tired and mistakes slip in. Actually putting the show together is my favorite part, because it’s fast and easy and I have a patter down that I do not really need to think about. At the moment I have the raw recordings of two stories that need editing, and I can feeling them staring at me from the depths of my computing like malevolent, sleep-inducing demons.
So when I take a week off, it is not really a week off. What I am taking a week off of is just the posting of it, since in reality I am already hard at work on the next installment. With the podcast this has been doubly hard, because I am also ePubbing the book at the same time. Each Bouragner Felpz story has three illustrations that need to be completed, and it has to be checked and verified for flaws. At this point, to keep up with my weekly schedule, I need to be publishing a story every week as well. It is a rather daunting challenge.
I have also started the raw work on a new comic. This won’t see the light of publicity for at least another year, but for now it is looming large on my creative horizon. I’m excited about it because it will be the first new graphic novel I start as a half-way decent artist, but I’m also terrified because it will be in color. Coloring pages takes nearly twice as long as inking them in black and white, and more than twice as much mental energy. I expect I shall be terribly cranky for a while.
There is another project I’m working on—for someone else this time—that I am very excited about. However, because it is for someone else I don’t want to say much about it until the situation is a little more solid.
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The last three days have been brilliantly sunny and warm. Today it is misty and rainy and all the plants are breathing sighs of relief. Everything is very beautiful and growing and energetic out there, and it makes me feel growing and energetic. Looking back over my life, I notice that I’ve started a lot of novels, written a lot of stories, and done a lot of artwork in the months of March and April, and I do no think its coincidence. Something about Spring, about the lengthening days and all those plants growing seems to influence me. Time to work.
Always, you can email me at goldeenogawa@gmail.com and follow me on twitter @GrimbyTweets.
