2024-W31 EOW Report
Highlights This Week
- Got Marvel Unlimited. Reading comics every spare moment now. Tracking issues read as well. See new section “Comic Book Issues Tracking”.
- Hung out with Ogrebeef and talked about faction and NPC creation as a monthly hobby for the TTRPG space. Mothership, Mausritter, Cy_borg. Maybe OSE.
- AJM couldn’t use her tickets to see Tim Minchin and offered them to me on Saturday morning. I had not heard of him, but my son had. He took them hoping to find a friend to see the show with. Due to the last minute nature, nobody could go and I ended up going with him. Thoroughly enjoyable. He tells stories in his mumbly, rambling accent inbetween musical numbers. Was tempted to buy a piano rhythm book, write songs, and upload a musical or EP on Spotify afterwards. See above bullet and “Book Reading” section to see more creative divergent temptations this past week.
Project Status Dashboard
The following are ongoing fiction writing projects broken down to what stage they’re in. Legend in footnote1.
| P | prj | st | fd | ed | rv | xd |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | MINOS | 2/11 | 2/27 | X | X | 2 |
| 2 | SAVED | 3/12 | 3/25 | 4/28 | X | 3 |
| 3 | BECKY | 1/7 | X | X | X | 1 |
| BACKLOG | ~~~ | ~~~ | ~~~ | ~~~ | ~~~ | |
| SATSU | 1/21 | X | X | X | 1 | |
| ROBOT | 1/28 | 1/29 | X | X | 2 | |
| YOKO | 2/18 | X | X | X | 1 | |
| STAR | 3/3 | X | X | X | 1 | |
| BELLA | 3/10 | X | X | X | 1 | |
| AURA | 1/6 | 1/6 | X | X | 1 | |
| FIRED | 1/14 | X | X | X | 1 |
EOW Time Tracking
This hasn’t been a good week. I’ve been “sleeping in” more and not getting up at ungodly hours as I thought I could/would/should to put in my thirty minutes for fiction. It doesn’t help that I’m working 10 hour days right now at work. The struggle continues. And yet, I’m daydreaming about laying out OSR modules with Ogrebeef, writing musicals/songs, and writing comics. I’m all over the map like Seven of Cups again.
Three Sentences First Thing Streak
- CURRENT STREAK: 35 Days
- BEST STREAK: 35 Days (August 4, 2024)
Thirty MInutes A Day Streak
- CURRENT STREAK: 0 Days
- LAST STREAK: 5 Days (June 14, 2024)
- BEST STREAK: 18 Days (May 10, 2024)
Four Thousand Weeks
| Wks Lft | HP |
|---|---|
| 1733/4000 | 43.325% |
Creatively, what really ate up my psychological and mental bandwidth this week was chasing/finaliing the layout for a physical print newsletter for the lawyer client. To say I got a hit of satisfied dopamine at “shipping something” is an understatement. This newsletter, which I wrote, designed (well, stole JB’s design), and laid out… which will then be professionally printed and shipped to VSOs in every state… and read by hundreds (hopefully)… that is some satisfaction serotonin right there. (I have no idea what the key differences between dopamine and serotonin is and I am being willfully ignorant on it on purpose so that I can retain my alliteration above.) ANYWAY – yeah. So it got me thinking. Where and how else can I use this newfound skill? Could I layout a physical newsletter for myself? What about putting together a zine? (Which led to a conversation with Ogrebeef on Friday night).
And then, and then, I got into comics again because of Marvel Unlimited. And I’m like… what about writing comics? Wouldn’t it be cool if I could write X-Men? JFC. And I looked at the Image submission process again and went down a rabbit hole there, bought a few books on writing comics, and looked up how to find collaborators as I can’t fucking draw. This is terrible and horrible. And finally, while at Tim Minchin’s show, I’m like… what if I wrote music again? What if I put up an EP. Wrote a musical and did all the voices? I am all over the place. I need to shut this all down and get back to the original purpose. Short stories. I hit multiple walls this year, had a breakthrough last week, and now my brain is like “I solved that fucking puzzle, let’s go hunting for more puzzles to learn and break”. It’s not a good pattern.
Book Reading
- So I got Marvel Unlimited on Tuesday. And it’s become a non-stop binge since. Steve Orlando’s run on Scarlet Witch (2023) is a heartfelt, tea cosy, but with superheroes. I love, love, love Sara Pichelli’s art and whatever Matthew Wilson is doing to create that watercolor effect for the coloring is also magical. Started Jed MacKay’s run on the Avengers (2023) as well since my FLGS convinced me to get issues 17-18 as Storm will be joining them. Finally, spent hours copying the X-Men reading order from this guy named ghost. I was going to start at the very beginning, but decided the Krakoan Age might be better.
- So with that said, I barely touched anything prose wise. I read da bit of Time of the Twins (1986), but ignored everything else.
- Getting this deep back into comics has me looking at books like Words for Pictures (2014) by legendary Brian Michael Bendis, The Insider’s Guide To Creating Comics And Graphic Novels (2009) by Andy Schmidt, and Comics Experience Guide to Writing Comics (2018) by Schmidt as well. But then also, I’m also looking Grid systems in graphic design (1996) by Josef Müller-Brockmann as recommended by JB, who taught me layout. I think in general, I’m getting distracted, but also feeling a sense of creative freedom/exploration this past week in general.
Comic Book Issues Tracking
| date | title | issue | writer | artist |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 7/29 | Wolverine (1988) | 75 | Larry Hama | Adam Kubert |
| 7/30 | Uncanny X-Men (1963) | 162 | Chris Claremont | Dave Cockrum |
| 7/31 | Scarlet Witch (2023) | 1 | Steve Orlando | Sara Pichelli |
| 8/1 | Scarlet Witch (2023) | 2 | Steve Orlando | Sara Pichelli |
| 8/1 | Scarlet Witch (2023) | 3 | Steve Orlando | Sara Pichelli |
| 8/1 | Scarlet Witch (2023) | 4 | Steve Orlando | Sara Pichelli |
| 8/1 | Scarlet Witch (2023) | 5 | Steve Orlando | Sara Pichelli |
| 8/1 | X-Force (2024) | 1 (291) | Geoffrey Thorne | Marcus To |
| 8/1 | Scarlet Witch Annual (2023) | 1 | Steve Orlando | Carlos Nieto |
| 8/2 | Scarlet Witch (2023) | 6 | Steve Orlando | Lorenzo Tammetta & Sara Pichelli |
| 8/2 | Scarlet Witch (2023) | 7 | Steve Orlando | Lorenzo Tammetta & Sara Pichelli |
| 8/2 | Avengers (2023) | 1 | Jed MacKay | C.F. Villa |
| 8/3 | Scarlet Witch (2023) | 8 | Steve Orlando | Lorenzo Tammetta & Sara Pichelli |
| 8/3 | Avengers (2023) | 2 | Jed MacKay | C.F. Villa |
| 8/3 | Scarlet Witch (2023) | 9 | Steve Orlando | Lorenzo Tammetta & Sara Pichelli |
| 8/3 | Scarlet Witch (2023) | 10 | Steve Orlando | Lorenzo Tammetta & Sara Pichelli |
| 8/3 | Scarlet Witch & Quicksilver (2023) | 1 | Steve Orlando | Lorenzo Tammetta |
| 8/3 | Scarlet Witch & Quicksilver (2023) | 2 | Steve Orlando | Lorenzo Tammetta |
Archive of all EOW reports here
LEGEND for Project Status Dashboard
- P = priority (limit to 3 projects at any given time)
- prj = project codename
- st = start date
- fd = 1st draft completed
- ed = edits (before beta/crits) completed
- rv = revisions (post-feedback) completed
- xd = current draft being worked on