I have cool shirts. Do you?

So I woke up this morning and I had two thoughts. First, holy crap I'm still really tired. Second, today is going to be productive, by hook or by crook! Now, being one of my two days off you may be wondering why I would get up if I was still very tired; which is a perfectly fair question. The fact is that though Fridays are "technically" my day off, that's only from my office job. Fridays are my day to get a lot done in whatever writing project is on my plate right now. And since I actually have Four, Active, Incomplete projects it often comes down to whichever one I'm most interested in working on. Today it's my most recent project...fancy that.

I had intended on doing MORE blogs over the last couple weeks, but it has turned out to be even less than the usual one per week because I didn't get to it last week. Partially because I was working on a script and partially because last Friday wasn't nearly as productive as I wanted it to be.

Today, may perhaps be less productive unfortunately because we have wee little Ethan under our feet. If he settles in and plays we're good...if he's clingy and unable to let Matt get away, we probably won't be. So I will hope for the best and try and be productive regardless.

I'm on page 6 of my script (which will end up at or around 24 pages). The outline is done and has been guiding me really well so I am confident that I'll keep on the right track.

So I'm going to go off on a little tangent now about Baseball. Yeup, that's right, I said Baseball. For those of you that know me you already know what a huge sports fan I am and something that's been bugging me lately is the length of the baseball season. If the World Series goes more than 4 games this year they will be playing in November. NOVEMBER! It's a Summer Sport...seriously, November? What The Hell? The baseball season is stupidly long and I will outline how, if I was commissioner, I would change it, the owners and revenue be damned.

First, the plan is to shorten the season on both ends. To do so I would reduce the number of games from 162 to 120. This would allow games to start later (to avoid the situation where like in Cleveland a couple years back where they had SNOW on the field in Cleveland and had to play their first series or two in Milwaukee, which was just stupid.) and it would allow the playoffs to begin earlier and thus end in a reasonable amount of time. To accomplish this shortening of the season I propose this: Eliminate Inter-League Play. That's 15 games. That brings us down to 147. Then, Eliminate the unbalanced schedule model that divisions currently play under. Right now the CUBS play 78 intra-division games. THAT'S INSANE! That's nearly half their schedule all within their division. If you eliminate one 3-game series from each team that's another 15 games bringing us down to 132. And if you make one of the remaining 3-game series into a 4-game series and eliminate the remaining other two games from another series that's another 10 games bringing us down to 122. Now, with those simple eliminations I think we'd be better off and the season would be reasonable.

Ok, rant done. I am going to go be productive now. See you all later!

Thanks for stopping by,

Tim

Catching up...

Hey everyone...sorry it's been like a week since my last post. It's part settling into the new job, part trying to be really productive and part trying to be restful in my downtime since it's such a different environment than I've been in for a long while. However, I will hopefully be more in-tune with my blogging in the near future, so for you faithful readers (of my spurtiness) I thank you, and for those of you who long for more of a constant stream of my blatherings, I am working to achieve that for you.

So for now here's what I can tell you...there's four pages of my script up on the Ape Entertainment web publishing page. If you click HERE it'll link you to the first page and you can click Next at the bottom of the page you can continue on through what's posted thus far. Rate it below the "About the Creators" portion of the page if you like it! I really appreciate feedback too, so any comments you have lay'em on me.

Ok, on to new business. I wrote my first pitch for an established comic this past week. I really like the concept I came up with and I think it could be really good for the property. Now, of course you're curious what property it is and all that jazz, but I'm not really able to share that here just yet. We'll see how it goes and then of course if it gets approved I'll have more to share! But I'd like to explore the concept. A lot of independent comic creators strive to reach the pinnacle of working for DC or Marvel. (note that DC gets a hyperlink where Marvel does not...don't really like Marvel these days, so they can suck it) I think indie people aspire to have works published with Image or Dark Horse or Oni Press because of the Independent Comics companies out there, those are three of the biggest. But they're different in the sense that they're more attainable. Each of them will, from time to time if not on a regular basis, accept submissions from outside creative teams to publish creator owned projects. Now, of course, they're only going to take the best of the best and those who fall short will feel slighted (since most creative people feel that their work is superior to all others and the opinions of those that disagree with them are flawed in some way) and that's entirely the wrong way to go about things.

I can't even tell you how many times I've sat in a room with Matt or Eric or any number of other creative people and discussed ideas for stories where we didn't all see it from the same perspective and we would sometimes even get to the point of arguing over how our take on it was better. Having an open discourse is key, that's number one. Number two is just as important and that's this: learn from those who have achieved more than you. Their advice may not be perfect and in the end it may not even help you, but if you refuse to even allow for the possibility that someone that's attained something you hope to could give you help by offering their perspective then you've already failed. Ask Questions. If someone doesn't like your idea, find out what they don't like and ask for their thoughts on how it could be better. Their specific suggestion may not work for you, but it's likely that having someone else provide input will get your creative juices flowing and you can build off it.

Man...I tend to get on a soapbox kinda often in these blogs don't I? Not really sorry about that, since blogs are supposed to be about expression of personal thoughts and ideas and this is the one I am having right now. But back to where I got kinda sidetracked: taking an established property and trying to make it your own, for at least an issue. It's important to have a good grasp on the characters, it helps if you're not trying to write Batman or Superman who have about a BAJILLION issues to their name with almost as many takes on their personality traits and skills and etc and etc. But when it's characters that are less defined it allows you to pick up on one or two key character traits and either work with them or work against them. In my concept I take the fact that the three friends are incredibly close and I explore what could drive them apart, if even slightly, and how that could happen and what the one that was on his own would do. The concept itself has a lot of potential and after bringing it to the creator of the property he and I had a great conversation about it. He had some ideas for tweaks to the story but overall he really liked it! So now...I move on to first draft scripting. Woohoo!

Hmmm...what else...uhmm...well, I got some new characters sketches for the project I'm working on with Shawn Atkins and the direction is good. We've got some work to do but overall I'm loving his stuff. More to come on that.

For now...hope you enjoyed today's post; hope you read my UFO story and hope you continue to be one of my readers. Share the love if you like it!!! I'm proud to say I've had readers from Russia now, I'm officially Global! Scary thought.

Peace,

Tim

Sharing some old-school stuff

I know you've all been enjoying the first couple pages of Journeys on the Ape Entertainment site and I thought I'd share a short comic I did with one of my friends, Kristen Cella. She's an incredibly talented artist who has her own web comic called Antagonist which I highly recommend you all check out. I'm hoping to continue a project with her, which sadly ended up getting shelved, some time in the future. I look forward to it!

For now, enjoy what we have been able to create thus far! "The Party"

Finishing Drafts...and the importance therein

Hey everybody...so I know you're probably reading the subject heading and giving a giant collective, "duh" but I wanna share a few thoughts on the subject which may make you retract your "duh" and go "huh?"...exactly, you read me.

So in the past week and a half I have: formulated an idea, worked out the general overall plot, built specific plot points I wanted to achieve, set up scenes I am hopeful will work and written the first draft of a pitch for the story. Now, for those of you whom are writers will probably (hopefully) give me at least a smattering of respect (since I do have a job and I was doing this on lunch breaks and in the hours after work/weekend when I didn't want to curl up and sleep from mental tiredness). For those of you who aren't writers and have no understanding or ability to appreciate how tremendous this is, I'll lay it out for you like this; I have a one comic I developed for two years that has 6 pages of completed art (phenomenally done by the artist) and 22 pages of script that hasn't moved in a year.

Sometimes thought processes get lost, sometimes you lose interest in a project. These are somewhat natural things, but often times they are things that can be avoided or negated with better forethought and planning. Now, I'm not here to preach and I swear I'm not trying to, so if you feel that's coming across here please comment and let me know. Because I'm really just trying to share my experiences.

The project I mentioned before, yeah...that really has no outline. I just started writing it. That project was in my early days of comic writing and I thought I could approach it like I used to approach prose which was just to start writing out everything I had in my head to start and I would either fill in the blanks later or add things as needed along the way. Sometimes I'd end up making an outline, sometimes I'd just continue to write. Now I truly see and appreciate the value of outlines. Writing scripts are SO much easier when you've got an outline that you can just look at, see the bullet of where you're supposed to go next and the idea is right there for you. Now, outlines shouldn't be the script in bullet form. They shouldn't be overbearing with information. If you have some specific dialogue or a specific sequence of scenes that you know ahead of time then you should definitely put that in so you don't forget it. But you want to let the script flow and the outline should be short and direct. Plot keys, points you know you want to/need to hit on.

The outline for the project I'm working on with Matt Anderson long, because it outlines the entire story so far; four issues, but it's got: Main Plot Keys, Scenes, Specifics for those scenes (including bits of dialogue, scene cue's, etc.) because that's all you should need in order to build the dialogue of the scene. I also find it really helpful that after I work out the entire outline I put a tentative page-count next to each Main Plot Keys bullet, so know how long I expect that scene to be. If you go over your page count for that issue, don't worry because you can nip and tuck from other areas to make it all fit or you may end up cutting/replacing entire Plot Keys as you develop the story. That definitely happens in a lot of my projects.

I've even gotten to the point now where I do outlines for my prose projects. The story I'm writing for Asimov's Sci-Fi magazine has a full four page outline. It hits all the Main Plot Keys and helps me guide the story through to completion. I don't always need it, because I know a lot of where I want to take the story, but definitely when I get even the least bit stuck of where my transition is supposed to come in or where exactly I'm supposed to go next I reference it and get back on track.

So, my point here was really to say that...I'm always learning and improving my writing skills and styles. I wrote a little 5-page story that actually made it through the art and lettering stages, and when I look back at the script itself I literally cringe. It just looks so...ugly isn't the right word, but...yeah, ugly. I use a much more stream-lined and easy to read (i.e. artist friendly) model now. An important thing that can't really be understood until you work with a few artists is that how they interpret your script will improve greatly when it's easy to decipher and work through.

Ok, I think I've rambled on that long enough...on to rambling about other things. I watched Land of the Lost and first of all, it's freaking hilarious. I honestly didn't think I'd laugh as much as I did or enjoy it nearly as much as I did. Not only is Anna Friel gorgeous and a valid reason to watch the movie all on her own, but the story itself is really interesting and fun. I also watch Batman: Under the Red Hood and it was PHENOMENAL. I highly recommend it to anyone who enjoyed Batman: The Animated Series, and though (sadly) Mark Hamil doesn't play the joker, you will be pleasantly surprised with the darker side of Futurama's John DiMaggio playing him. It's pretty awesome. What I'm really excited about is that I got "9" and "Justice League: Crisis on Two Earths" in the mail today. I'll have reports on them next time! Man I love Netflix.

Alright, I think that's about all I've got for now. I hope you all checked out the first page of my first published comic at Ape Entertainment's Online Publishing Division it's called Journeys and page two will be up tomorrow. But don't worry, I'll be posting stuff about that too!

Peace,

Tim

I'm a published writer...? Hell Yeah!

So I know I haven't posted in like...a week. And I do apologize for that, truly I do. The fact is this past week has been somewhat new and crazy with things that require my attention. This upcoming week will be the same, but I should hopefully have slightly more time and as such I may actually be able to post one or two times before next weekend when I will surely have the time to devote to my readership which I truly feel bad for neglecting.

I sit here today a proud, smiling man. Why, you ask, is that? Lots of reasons to be sure. But we'll just go with the easiest and most obvious to explain, which would be that the first page of my first published work was posted today on http://apecmx.com/ufo/. The 13-page short story comic is called Journeys and follows two main characters, Frank and Greta. I don't want to give away anything, because it'll be more fun to read it as it comes out, but sufficed to say as the link may imply to you, there's some UFO's involved along the way. I hope that you like the start and I hope even more that you continue to read it. A new page will be posted every Sunday. I believe they may add pages on Thursday as well, I'll keep you all updated.

Now that I'm a published professional writer what's really changed? Aside from everything you mean? I get to go to conventions now wearing a creators badge. That's something I've wanted to do since I was about 15 and went to my first convention. And if I could actually draw a lick of art I probably woulda been to this point a long time ago, but I spent a lot of my formative years writing Star Wars novels and dark poetry (don't ask) so my comics writing skills didn't come until recently...and by recently I mean the last 5 years or so.

I'm excited to see the fruits of my labor come to fruition with this first publication but it gives me even greater anticipation and excitement for my current project with Matt and Shawn to continue to move forward. I've been really inspired by Matt the last few years. Not only by his success but with his support and willingness to always turn to me for my opinion but also always being willing to read what I've written and provide me with honest feedback that is actually useful, not something that's always true with people.

For now, I shall take my leave and say that I thank you all for your readership and support! I love my readers, I really do. I write not only for myself but for my audience, any good writer will tell you that. The story and it's heart and soul come from me and are written for me, but my audience is something that always maintains a piece of my mind whenever I'm putting effort into anything I do.