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September Newsletter (Patreon)
Content
Heyooo everyone! Happy September! I always really like this time of year. It reminds me of new beginnings, reunions and being excited to start new projects (In case you couldn't tell, I was the kind of person who always enjoyed the first day/week back at school haha).
September 2020 is going to be a weird one for a lot of people, myself included, for obvious reasons. I hope you're hanging in there and just doing the best you can. I hope you're taking time for yourself and managing to find a nugget of peace in these turbulent times.
August was a strange month for me! I was very very busy but a lot of the work I did was prep work, so in a way I feel like I don't have a lot to show. I'm still juggling a bunch of projects all at once and struggling to strike that balance, but I'm sure things will even out eventually.
Diary Comics
I'm still working on my autobio comics, same as always. I was hoping to be able to get back up to making three new comics a week, like I was doing a couple of months ago, but I'm looking at my schedule and there is just no room for it right now. I'm not actually sure if I'll be able to make that many comics per week again for a while, but I'll keep doing my best to put out two new ones every week!
I'm hoping to compile them together in a book by the end of this year! I'm going to pitch it to my agent, but I might be more comfortable just self-publishing them via Kickstarter or something rather than going through a publisher. I also have an inkling that a publisher wouldn't really be interested in them, mainly because they're all only kind of vaguely related to each other and there's no real story or throughline. I'll see what my agent says and I'll let you know!
It also occurs to me that I really need a title for the book (and just in general for this project). I've been calling it Mood, mostly because it's on-the-nose and I think it's kind of funny, but that was back when my comics were different to how they are now so I dunno. If you have a suggestion for a name though, let me know :)
Comic Commissions
I've been commissioned to work on a 4 page comic called Darkward, an 8 page comic called A Better Tomorrow, and a 5 page guest comic for The Hero Dies Alone. If you're on my $7+ tier, you'll have already seen some of the progess for these (and you'll see the finished comics when they're done).
My plan is to finish A Better Tomorrow by the 14th of this month, finish Darkward by the 24th and finish The Hero Dies Alone guest comic by the end of October.
I've got a lot of work to do to make this happen *sobs*
Graphic Novel Pitch
So my agent, Tara (who opened queries literally today btw if you happen to have a story you want to pitch), asked me a month ago to pitch her a graphic novel, and I spent a bit of time kind of floundering and not having any ideas, but in the last 3 weeks I've been working really hard on it and I have some semblance of a first draft!
I still don't have a name for it, and this is really embarrassing but I've just been calling it GIRLS WHO FIGHT because it's basically the all-girls fighting manga that I always wanted to read and one day make as a teenager.
It's a story about a friendship breakup and how sometimes you need to be apart from the people you love in order to grow as a person. But it's also an action-drama with lots of fighting magical girls who have tons of emotional baggage!!! I'm comping it as RWBY meets Tokyo Ghoul meets Evangelion so... make of that what you will :)
Something that I've finally come to understand is how much harder it is to write fiction than autobio. I've heard people talk about it and agreed with them, but I didn't truly understand it for myself until now. Wow. With autobio you don't have to worry about plot, or arcs, or character development.... A stories, B stories.... A villian.... Autobio doesn't require structure in the same way as fiction.
Fiction also comes with the weight of themes. It's true that autobio, whether knowingly or not, sends a message, but fiction tends to put all of its eggs in the 'moral of the story' basket. I'm super self-conscious of what kind of story I'm telling; of how I'm framing certain actions and what that tells people. I think this is a good thing but what I'm saying is just that it's hard and requires a lot of energy, concentration and critical thinking.
When I'd finished my draft, I was so nervous to send it out. There are plotholes and things that aren't explained enough and a whole bunch of problems but for where I am right now in the process, I'm happy with it! And I'm also happy that I managed to actually do the thing at all!
I finally sent it to Tara on Sunday night (at 1am...... I'm very professional) and she says I can expect to hear feedback in about two weeks but she's extremely excited about the project, based off my initial email! I was worried that she'd be expecting me to send something autobio and I thought her reaction might have been something like 'fighting girl comic? That's unexpected and random? Why... have you done this?' but thankfully my fears have been put to rest in that regard haha
I'm really really excited to get her feedback. I know RSD is going to kick in and a part of me will be embarrassed and want to run away, but a stronger and more level-headed part of me is extremely looking forward to actually receiving professional feedback that's going to make my story better!!
I am so so so so so so so excited about this project and I cannot wait to share it with you. I think it's become a new special interest for me? I've started dreaming about it and thinking about it all the time. It's my dream to make a graphic novel and I will do it.
$7+ patrons can expect to see my first draft at some point this week, along with more development sketches. I hope this goes without saying but please do not share anything about GIRLS WHO FIGHT with anyone outside of this Patreon! (tbh that really goes for everything I post here so you probably know already, but this is especially true for GwF!!)
Tara has also asked to see my Violapse pitch (I didn't pitch it to her because adult comics are a hard sell) so I might move forward with that instead but honestly... Violapse is important to me and I desperately want to make it, but I have so much more passion for this other project right now and I think it would be really good for me on a personal level to just work on something fun (that's not to say that Violapse isn't fun but it's Very Heavy for me in a way that GIRLS WHO FIGHT is not).
Useful Tools
You may have seen me tweet about this, but I recently discovered a free web-based app called Miro that has helped me immensely with the writing process for GIRLS WHO FIGHT. I was writing the whole thing in a google doc and several note apps and I was struggling to make sense of the whole thing. I remember thinking so many times that if I had a corkboard or something, this whole process would be so much easier. I started looking for a sticky note app where you can move the stickies around and I ended up finding Miro instead.
It's basically a digital corkboard where you can put notes on it, move them around, join them together, change shapes and colour code them, you can even import images. It's absolutely amazing and it saved my life so if you have similar struggles, I cannot recommend it enough!!
I'd also like to briefly talk about the books I read that have helped me through this whole process. I started off reading The Anatomy of Story (John Truby) because I saw Celine Orelse talk about it a while back and I deeply admire her work. It taught me many useful things about story structure, themes and character webs but it is also very dry and I only got about half way through it, though I might revisit it. There's also a lot of casual misogyny and transphobia sprinkled throughout the book so I struggle to recommend it, although it does have some useful info.
What I think is a much better book though, which I was personally recommended by my agent, is Save The Cat! Writes a Novel (Jessica Brody). This book is fantastic and I cannot recommend it enough. It was written in 2018 so it has a much more accessible writing style and supports its lessons with modern examples. (You may have heard of Save The Cat in relation to screenwriting but this book takes the method and applies it to novel writing)
The main thing I struggle with in writing is structure and plot and Save The Cat was like an instructional bible for me. My first inclination was to watch a YouTube summary or find a summary on a blog but honestly, reading the whole book cover to cover was extremely good and valuable in a way that a summary never could be.
Also I should probably say none of this is sponsored (I wish!) I'm just really excited that I managed to find some tools to help me in this difficult process of writing a graphic novel and I really think they could help others too!
Patreon Sketches
I'm a little behind on the Patreon sketches this month (this only applies to patrons whose sketches were due at the end of August) but I'm hoping to have everyone's sent out to them by the end of this week! I'm really sorry for not delivering them on time. Hopefully, from what I've detailed above, you can understand why!
There are also a couple of new Patrons who pledged in August who I haven't messaged about sketch requests yet. I'm really sorry, I'll be sending you a message about it soon!
Personal Stuff
I don't really have a lot to say on personal stuff in this newsletter. I'm still trying to figure out myself in much the same way I was doing in the last newsletter. I'm still not sure if I'm comfortable being open about ASD yet, but I want to be. It's been at least 2 months now that I've been sitting on it and I still haven't mentioned it to my partner, which is weird because I've never felt like I couldn't tell him anything before. It's not really that I don't feel I can't tell him, I guess, it's more like, once I do then there's no going back from it and it's become real.
A part of me wants to get an official diagnosis before I tell people but that could take literally two years and... ugh.
I'm just going to keep collecting intel on ASD and using it to analyse my own experiences until I'm at a point where I can say for sure. ...I honestly just want to make a written guide with an F.A.Q for my family/friends/partner and just be like 'hi here is my analysis which has led me to realise that I'm autistic. Here is also an F.A.Q so that I don't have to spend hours defending myself while you interrogate my lived experience :)'
I'm joking but also... I'm not. lmaoo
Anyway that just about wraps things up for this month's newsletter! I cannot say enough how grateful I am to you for supporting me, thank you! The fact that you would choose to support me through such uncertain times is truly a great honour that I do not take for granted.
I hope you are able to stay safe and take care of yourself this month. I hope that whatever you're trying to do goes well for you!
Chat again soon!
Your artist,
Bex