I’ve been avoiding updates because I don’t want to overload people’s dashes with unnecessary milestones. Particularly because, realistically, they’re all the same thing: me sitting in a dark room wearing week-old pajamas and writing to the neon glow of my computer and cheap fairy lights.
But I did want to share that after a literal entire re-write because I wasn’t happy with the plot Wish Our Hearts Away (YA, LGBT romance novel) is nearly at the nitpicking stage. Aka, no more major changes. The animation script my friend and I are working on is also coming along smoothly after like five thousand plot iterations and it’s looking plausible that we can produce this as a graphic novel so it at least exists in some form beyond a script if the film isn’t possible :) This project doesn’t have a name yet, but it’s essentially a Disney/Ghibli inspired movie (it started as heavily Disney, but has since swayed more towards Ghibli) with a sapphic romance and heavy Diana Wynne Jones influences.
So basically projects are coming along well :D Though I cannot stress enough how much more work there is to go -- for the love of god, don’t expect these to be done tomorrow.
But I ALSO really wanted to share a piece of advice a good friend gave me last week. I have a tendency to pour all of my energy into things, produce something massive, and then fall in a heap because -- surprise, surprise -- that kind of approach isn’t sustainable. Nonetheless, for years it’s been all that I had the time to do -- large but short bursts of manic energy. Now that I have all the time in the world, I’ve been trying -- and often failing -- to adapt to an entirely new work style. Which basically resulted in me doing like a timezone rotation on Skype and periodically calling everyone I know to tear out my hair and sob bitterly because it isn’t working and it’s so slow and I just want to finish something. My friend said this:
Don’t let your zeal for ‘getting it done’ ruin your passion for it.
Which was kind of humbling. So now I’m trying to always remember why I write, and to not get bogged down by the pressure of when will it be done or will it be good enough. I write for me, because there are some feelings that can only be put into words if there’s ninety thousand of them. If other people enjoy it at the end, that’s great, but you can’t let that be what drives you.
Anyway, I thought I’d share that bit of advice because I know so many of us do the same thing when we’re writing or drawing or anything like that, and I felt so, so much better when I stopped and remembered why I do it in the first place.