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.

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.

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.

Momentary Breaks

Writing or drawing is work and like all forms of work, it can get so god damn boring at times. One idea, one story, one bit of art that drags on forever. It is at those times when your mind begins to wander and procrastination sets in.

When I hit a snag or when sometime takes far longer than I thought it would, then that’s when a combination of frustration and boredom sets in. That leads to constant wandering around the house or playing games online.

To counter that, I’ve been trying to juggle a few different projects I want to do, which are different from the main project I’m focusing a lot of my energy onto. I can focus intently on a project for a few days, but after that, all my will power is used up and I’ve gotten sick of looking at this story. Therefore I’ve been trying to distract myself from the main story with writing a few short stories, in a different tone, in a different format, but it’s a productive distraction.

Currently the Novel is surging forward, but it falters and staggers at times. Which isn’t a bad thing, as long as it eventually gets done. Finishing the project is the goal and sometimes finishing something requires skipping off the main path and taking a scenic route for a spell.

While working on the side projects, my brain is still digesting a lot of information I’ve shoved at it. It’s making the connections of thought and hopefully by the next day I’ll have a clearer image of what I want the next chapter in the Novel to be.

Alright, back to writing.

To be honest, it’s been a weird couple of months.

There’s been a battle for change and all that good stuff going on behind the scenes over here. Not big changes, just, y’know, the smallish life changing changes that have to be made so that a certain individual doesn’t succumb to the siren call of laziness. The battle is on going, but so far so good.

It began one sweltering July evening, while I sat hunched over my computer trying desperately to not fall asleep while drawing an All Manner of Bad update. You see, when one wakes up at five in the morning and sixteen hours later tries to complete an update for the following day, things get a little on the physically exhausted side.

Then in one of those Eureka! moments, I thought to myself: “Perhaps drawing when you wake up would be better than drawing after a loooong day at the day job”, it took a few moments to realize that yes, indeed, drawing when waking up would be far better than drawing when completely exhausted.

So began Vampire Hours. Instead of crawling out of bed at five in the morning, I began crawling out of bed at ten in the evening.

You’d be surprised how much energy you have in the wee hours of the night, while the world slumbers and snores away. I wake up and go about my normal routine, drawing, writing, and reading. It began to reflect in the fact that for nearly two months I haven’t missed an All Manner of Bad update and I’ve only missed one Zombie Roosevelt update. Plus, there was the continued blogging and sketching (which reminds me I have to get back on that).

Now that things are moving along a bit more smoothly, productivity wise. The new change that’s been going on is adding more productivity. I’ve been jotting down the things I’ve been doing lately and discovered to my semi horror that the weekdays are the only days I’m drawing or writing. In addition, I usually take Mondays off and sleep through Wednesdays. Which means that only three days and a hurried Sunday evening draw session are the only days where anything gets done. I’ve got the time and the knowledge of what needs to be done, now I just have to saddle up and ride off into that sunset.

Change is once again the big word for this last quarter of the year. There’s a lot that still has to change, not only in what I’m doing artistically, but also in the, y’know, real world stuff. There’s always that big cloud of worry that floats overhead of Health, Finances, Relationships, etc. etc.

As they say, the best time to tackle problems is right now…

Smallish Goals for the last Quarter of 2011
Draw a page a weekday (All Manner of Bad or Zombie Roosevelt)
Write two pages (physical pages) a day for the Novel.

Y’know, I do love me some music. It’s pretty much been apart of my life since I first discovered how to record CDs onto cassette tapes and listen to it on my old school Walkman when I was a kid. Heck, even these days I wander about with ear buds practically surgically attached to my lobes and music blaring all the live long day.

Yet, for all of that. The most I can say about the music I listen to or anything relating to it, is that “oh, so and so is a good band”. When people ask why, I just stare blankly. It’s that thing of where you know what you like, but you seemingly can’t articulate why you like it.

That’s music for me in a nutshell. I know I like certain bands, I know certain music inspires certain feelings, and there are musicians that are good. But I can’t seem to explain why they’re good and why I like them. Most likely it’s a lack of the vocabulary to describe the music, but it might also be because I’ve never really settled down and thought about it, through and through.

There are scads of bands that I love, but I have no other knowledge about them, beyond the music. I consume their product, but rarely seek more information about them. The way I figure, writing these little reviews is a good way to fill in those gaping holes that surround all the music I love.

So, I’m gonna write as much as I can, share as much of my opinion on the songs as I can, and hopefully in time get better at it. Practice make perfect and there’s no time but the present to begin that practicing.

Hero by Night?

Written By: Alex Claw

By day I’m a mild mannered office worker, by night I’m a sword swinging urban hero fighting the good fight in this corrupt city. I am the Blade of Justice.

I’ve fought the crime bosses in the Central District to save the heart of the city. I defeated the crazed Doctor Burner in East Landing and saved half the people that lived there. Atop the Kilkenny Towers I fought Vigilante Jones and his recruits, ending his deluded sense of justice that was terrorizing the city.

The night is safe again. The city is healing.

And then I wake up.

In Ancient China they got a proverb that goes a little something like this: “Even a blade of grass screams when it gets eaten”. I’m not one hundred precent on what that really means, but its Truth, buddy.

The last few weeks have been like some bad music mashup of exhaustion, conflicting paths, pure unadulterated laziness, and a smattering of WTF to screw with things just a tad.

This all accumulated in watching the entire series of Stargate: SG1 from beginning to end. It got bad there toward the end of the series, when I began plotting out Stargate fanfic whilst watching the episodes. Fast forward another week or so and I began to realize that all this computer television watching wasn’t getting me where I needed to be.

Where is that, you might be wondering. Well,  sit back and relax, because this is going to be a story.

A while back I made all these deadlines for myself, everything I needed to do for the next six months, planned, written up, and with hard deadlines that didn’t take into account my laziness. I’ve got this ability to not remember all the days I’ve spent lying about watching Stargate, Farscape, Terminator, Deadliest Catch, Battlestar Galactica, and Bones episodes for days on end.

But damn it, Netflix is just so damn convenient.

Those deadlines are coming up, sadly, and the way I’m seeing it, I’m suppose to be providing entertainment instead of consuming it. There’s gotta be some kid out there that’s just like me, who’ll spend days reading something, watching something, or listening to something and damn it, it’s my books, my webcomic, and my droning voice they should be consuming. Not hot television actors. Me!

With that in mind, I’m getting back to work. There’s a lot of it. And my back hurts. But I’ve got coffee, I’ve got the AC on, and Johnny
Cash playing, so I’m set.

Prepare for updates.

You’re welcome.

Work, work, work.

there’s two bits of news.

One is that I’ve finally created a Facebook fan page for All Manner of Bad, go here.

Two, I’ve also have begun a discussion forum around the projects and interests I have, AMOB and AH the series, go here.

Beyond that, it’s been a rush to organize the loads of work I need to do. The novel is basically plotted out, the writing must commence. I’ve also got a lot of work to do for AMOB, there’s that to deal with, along with resurrecting a couple of old projects that fell to the wayside when I hit my Month of Pain (Feb for all you guys).

But I think slow and steady is the course to take. I can’t overwhelm myself again with all the stuff that needs doing, especially when there’s a finite amount of time to do it.

Which reminds me, I’m already behind on some stuff so back to the Photoshop mines I go.