Been a few weeks since a journal entry - I decided to ease up on these, and only write when I had something to say - partially because I sometimes forget to do this, and partially because it doesn't quite have the same benefit as the weekly short story does.
But! This week a few things have gone down:
1) Dave Keen has come on board, as mentioned. A couple of weeks ago I did two stories in one week, so that I could shift the schedule to be a week ahead of the curve. I now write a draft, kick it to him to come up with a piece, and then a week later get the piece from him, do a polish for an hour on Monday morning, and upload. So what you're reading each week is actually last week's story. Worth it.
So excited for this, for a number of reasons. One, I'm pumped just to see what he comes up with every week. There's no direction here; I'm not asking him for a specific type of work, or giving him an insight into what the story means to me. I think this is important for a collaboration; I hope (know) that Dave will be invested in this project too, so he has to have total ownership over those paintings. It is as much his project as mine, now, and that's an exciting place to be.
It also puts a bit more pressure on the work, which is a happy evolution. It's important that over the year I find ways to push this so it doesn't stagnate. I'll reevaluate in a couple of months to see where I need to go next.
It also feels like this way, there is a practical outcome to the project beyond the exploration of my craft. At the end of the year, we'll have this big slab of work, both visual and written, which feels more complete for Dave's contribution. Thanks Dave!
2) This week I uploaded the last part of 'Homeward.' Really enjoyed doing a more sequential work, which allowed me to move around and explore bigger ideas and arcs. I think this is the future of the project. Next week's story is a bit more abstracted and conceptual, a one-off, but I'm going to try and come up with an ever bigger sequential story to tell over the next coming months.
3) I finally kicked back into gear with other writing this week in a meaningful way. Made some small written-steps but big conceptual-steps in the next draft of my short, which I'm hoping to get out over the weekend. I also finally completed the step outline for the feature I've had gestating in my brain for like 3 years. I finally started the outline in February, and haven't been able to get back to it. But now, NOW, it's almost done, and I'm just going to force myself to write the first draft of the script as quickly as humanly possible.
This week, in order to get going again, I've been getting up earlier and doing an hour's worth of writing before going to work. This was recommended to me by Matt Cormack (he of Closer and 52 Tuesdays) and it's starting to help. Even if I don't achieve that much, it keeps my mind ticking over, keeps the work ticking over, and helps to start to build momentum which will feed into other parts of the day. Need to stick with it. I realised that I have a habit of constantly waiting for the "right" time to write - oh, next week I'll have more time, next week I won't be so distracted... it's all bullshit. There's never a right time, there's only RIGHT THE FUCK NOW. Which is easy to write down in a blog, and easy to commit to for one week - I need to keep that moving.
As I work more, I'll keep improving the technical aspects of my craft, but this year is as much about that as it is about just working on finding balance for writing amongst my life - learning to schedule it better, to get motivated more easily, to not let life get in the way as much.
If the Crows could beat Richmond this weekend that would be really great. Cool.