Alex Claw

I’ll tell you what, this whole new year thing has rocketed forward with some shakiness.

It’s the overall picture that kills you, that distant thought of ‘oh, shit. I’ve gotta do all this.’ that sort of grows and grows and grows, until your brainpan in filled with nothing but the noise of ‘oh, shit.’

Good times.

There’s this thing I keep telling a friend of mine who tries to do too much.

“One thing at a time.”

I’ve been trying to do it all once. That’s not working I’m feeling overwhelmed and lazy. I need to compartmentalize and attack. Divide and conqueror. Separate and pounce. I need to follow my own dang advice.

I’m going to follow my own advice.

This is me following my own advice.

I’m gonna draw an update. I’m gonna finish a short story. Then I’m gonna read me a book.

One thing at a time.

We’re going to make this year rock, am i right?

Yeah, we are.

BITTERWATER TALES

So a two years ago I began Bitterwater Tales in hopes of updating it regularly, but then I got too bogged down in drawing and spacing out. Well, after a year and a half of it wallowing in not-being-used-ness, I’ve decided to resurrect the site and begin anew.

The goal is for a five day a week update of drabbles, 100 word mini stories.

One update per week of a short story I’ve written.

and one Friday Flash Fic, which will be posted on… Fridays.

So, lets gather around, folks and give a hearty smile for Bitterwater Tales’ restart. Huzzah!

I’ve been thinking a lot on what to do next year and I’m all about selecting various dates on the calendar and declaring that it’s a day where everything is going to change. A day where I’ll begin writing more, drawing more, and doing all the things I love to do. It’s the new year and what better place to start than on the first day of 2012?

This New Year, I shall be trying to do the following…

Resurrecting Websites
Desolation Station, the forum that shriveled up due to not having enough time.
Alternate History the series, the site that hasn’t updated due to the usual not having enough time. The plan now is to finish the titlecards for all the episodes written.
Bitterwater Tales, I got caught up in drawing and did far less writing than I should have. The site will be resurrected and hopefully updated daily with daily drabbles, weekly flash fics and short stories.
My Tumblr account – There was the October Zombie Month that sort of fizzled out, but I plan to restart it with general daily sketches and see how my drawing and skill have changed over the course of this new year.

Books I Plan to Write – hopefully all this year
Zombie Novel – working title – Two years of planning (or thinking about it) and only ten thousand words written.
The End is Nigh – The obligatory apocalypse novel. Full of destiny, good and evil beings, a world suffering from all kinds of apocalypses, and two people trying to survive it all.
The Black and Sway – A noir-ish story involving blood magic, gangsters, and a retired hit-man, in a world that’s a mishmash of Rome and Aztec cultures in modern times.
Depression Era – working title – The United States is gripped in a crippling depression, violently polarized politics, and social unrest, in this a rift opens up leading to new worlds that bring hope and terrible threats.

Other Writing Plans
Get a short story published in a professional market.
WRITE EVERY DAMN DAY

Drawing
Finish and compile All Manner of Bad into a book (book 1)
Finish and compile Zombie Roosevelt into a book (book 1)
Lay a better foundation for Project Whiskey (it’s a comic)
Daily-ish sketch.

Other drawing stuff
Guest comics, there are some sites I’ve been meaning to ask to do some guest comics as a way to network, expand my readership, and give back to some folks who’ve been inspiring and fonts of information.
Fan art, the same reason as above.

Educational stuff
Learn more about Character Design and Visual storytelling
Learn to write better stories
Begin my education on the business side of writing and drawing (hey, its what I wanna do for a living)

And finally…

READ MORE BOOKS!

That’s about everything I plan to do this year. It seems like a lot and it is a lot, but I feel right here and now that I can do it. Ask me again in a week if I still feel that way.

Now, off to do stuff.

You’ve watched Aliens, of course you’ve watched Aliens. No one here has not watched Aliens, hell, most of us can recite the entire movie, scene by scene. Anyways, you remember when Bishop was half a man, his milky innards flopping about, and Ripley goes and opens the hatch to suck the Queen Mother out into the vacuum of space?

Well, I’m feeling like Bishop right now. I don’t know what the fuck just happened, suddenly my torso’s gone, my innards are gushing out, and someone’s gone and opened the hatch thereby sucking me and Newt toward this gapping maw of deep interstellar space (I think they were still in orbit, but I forget the minor details). But I’m hanging on.

The Christmas suck occurred, a giant black hole that consumed all my time and emotional energy (thanks, mom). But in a good way. Christmas, stressful and family filled as it may be, is still one of the holidays I look forward to. So, although work was not had and no thoughts of work was even attempted, I feel oddly rested and ready to hit the bricks again.

I’m hanging on, I’ve got Newt by the hands, and ole Ripley’s punching in the codes to close the hatch once again. The Queen is blown out into space and it’s free sailing from here on out. (of course there was Alien 3…)

Let’s get back on track and renew the whole business of staring wistfully into the future where we’re all making money doing what we love.

Back to writing it is.

After ready tons and tons of scriptwriting and story structuring formulas and instructions, I finally staggered to the realization (which many of you might have already known) that short stories (3000 or so) aren’t full blown stories. They are in fact similar to one act plays.

In this case, the short stories I’ve been trying to hammer out should have been one act, one scene stories. Instead I’ve been trying to focus on telling a story from beginning to end, the whole three acts that should be in a story versus the singular act that should be focused on when creating a short story. .

There’s a finite amount of words that have to be written and the more emotion, the more conflict, the more everything you can shove into those word limits, the better a story can become. In my case, my verboseness and trying to structure a short story like a novella or a novel was my undoing. Not only did it bloat my word count, but it also meandered on for a while before the final showdown in the end could commence.

It’s an odd revelation to come to this late in the game, but it’s one that I think will change a lot of things for me.

For instance, the All Manner of Bad scripts I’ve been hammering out lately should be a single act thing. Be it an intro, the conflict, or the final act aka the final battle, it shouldn’t try to focus on all those things. I do belive it was said that only a hundred words or less should be put on any one comic page and after all these years I’ve finally staggered onto the method in which to do that.

Sheesh, late comers, no?

So back to rehashing my stories and rewriting huge chunks of things. Man, this is going to take some work.

Mostly focusing on the short stories, but after today’s revelation, I may have to completely rewrite those to make them better.

ZOMBIE NOVEL

Short Story: HAVEN

Short Story: VAMPIRE

ALL MANNER OF BAD

ZOMBIE ROOSEVELT

I’ve realized I’ve been balancing a lot of balls (snicker) lately.

There’s the webomic, All Manner of Bad.
Then there’s the second webcomic, Zombie Roosevelt
Then there are the short stories I’ve been trying to write (currently), Haven and Vampires
Then there’s the novel (working title: Zombie Novel) I’ve been writing
And not to mention the third webcomic I’ve been slowly building.

Add on top of that, my renewed interest in learning more about character design, visual storytelling, and writing. Which means reading more books and looking at more information, LEARNING!

Also, the fact that I’ve been trying hard to begin reading books again (currently, Alice in Deadland) and finally:

Doing research on self publishing and marketing, and all the things I want/need to do in the next year.

Woof, that’s a lot on my plate.

Plus, I guess there’s also family.

And I think the last two days of just thinking on all these things that have to be done, wiped me out mentally.

I suppose the phrase of one day at a time is what times like these were made for.

This concludes the first week of trying to actually write and draw as much as I can in a seven-day span. Did it work? Was I happy with the results?

Well, let’s look at the numbers. First of all, I wrote a very solid 9400 words for the Novel and a pair of short stories. Seeing as the week before the total number of words written was about zero, this is a major success.

I suppose I could look at the productivity of this week as a baseline for what to expect in the up coming weeks. I personally tend to plan for way too much things to do in a given day or a given week. My initial goal for Week 1 was about 14000 words, 2000 a day, and about six pages drawn. I came up with two thirds of the words and about half of the pages.

I suppose aiming high and coming in short isn’t a very bad thing if there is words and pages being produced. Productivity is the keyword for this month and the upcoming year. Do as much as I can as fast as I can and keep the momentum and cycle going.

So, I suppose this means I have to get back to writing and drawing.

ZOMBIE NOVEL

Short Story: HAVEN

Short Story: VAMPIRE

ALL MANNER OF BAD

ZOMBIE ROOSEVELT