Getting there.
All of the pages of issue #9 are complete.

Two of them need to be re-written…..but I know what is going in there, so it should not take long.
Clearly it is late, but it is done…almost done.
It’s strange that I should be writing these issues about dealing with death when there is so much of it really going on around me.
Last week I didn’t even have shoes to wear to a funeral, and since then I have been to two of them.

Normally I try to channel real life stuff into the stories that i am writing. In this case, though, the character’s connection to these events is very different from my own. It wouldn’t feel right to force that. I am writing these characters from my own life, but not based on this past week.

I’m human, so some of it must have come out. But not intentionally. Somewhere down the line, maybe, but not in this story.

Humans are pattern makers. When we see the world around us, we force new things to look like things we already know. It helps us to understand the world.

When we apply these “patterns” to events they are called “stories”. Stories are simply understandable, related, patterns of events. They make sense to us because they echo patterns that we have seen in the world around us. It makes sense to us for a story to have a beginning and an ending because we have seen that days begin and end.

The patterns into which we cram our stories come from observing events in our real lives.

Or maybe not.

Maybe we perceive our lives in story units because our brains have been wired with story patterns.

Simply, does art imitate life or does life imitate art?

Case in point.
I have been stuck on the 9th issue of my Rapid City comic book.

The first eight issues left the character in a very dark place from which there seemed to be no salvation. He was stuck there, and I was stuck also. How do I get him out? How does he get himself out?

I reached out. I called people I know who know how stories work.
Micah helped me to get a little bit of perspective on the story as a whole… and had a hilariously bad idea about the ghost of a puppy showing up to offer Yoda-style wisdom.
Helpful, but not the answer.
Then, late last night, Nik finally got back in touch with me. I laid out the problem for him and we talked about some solutions.
The answer, it seems, is to make the original motivating drama much deeper and more painful.
To get past what has just happened, my character must go back and deal with the problem that put him in this spot to begin with.

Of course.

And so, in proper metaphorical style, I must go back into my own life and dig up similar experiences and draw upon them for my character’s reactions.

It is too late to save issue 9. Just like it is too late for Kinetic to save those people that died in issue 8. That problem can’t be SOLVED, it can only be taken in and reconciled internally.

Now, thanks to reaching out to various mentors I know how to move Kinetic forward.

So, did my life follow that pattern because I have seen it in stories, or do these stories fit that pattern because it fits my life?

My deadline for issue #8 is today.

I am going to miss it, but not by much. This is bad, but not terrible. I started this project as a learning experience, and I am learning a hell of a lot.

The story that I am writing is a about a man trying to be a superhero. The idea is that his progress at being a superhero will mirror my progress at writing a superhero. So far it has been working out pretty well.

The intentional parallels are very nice, and work well whether or not any reader ever notices them. The real fun for me, though, is when things pop out at me that I did not initially intend to include.

For example, the reason that I am late with this issue is because it is moving toward a definite ending. Two characters and a story arc WILL END within these next few pages. I know how it is going to happen, but I am afraid of doing it. I am afraid that I will bungle the execution, and I am afraid of what will happen after.

Each page brings me closer to that uncertainty, so the longer I can stall it, the longer I can exist in a state of pre-determined purpose.

And guess what the characters are going through in the scenes that I am writing. Exactly that. They are comfortable with DOING when it means going after a bad guy or racing to a new fight… but the lingering dread that every step brings them closer to a conclusion eventually becomes paralyzing.

So take a guess what has been happening to me as I wrote those scenes.

Same thing! The allegory holds!

So last night I was at the scene where the final decision is being made. To be or not to be. And I was afraid to start it. Starting is the first step toward finishing. And finishing one thing leads to the uncertainty of the next thing.

The thing that made my characters move is the same thing that made me move. A ticking clock. For them it is a countdown. For me it is Celtx’s session timer. When I see that number going up, adding seconds… and I am not adding words…. I just start typing. If it sucks, I can come back and change it. I just need to fight that clock….. and so do my characters.

This is not disastrous.
That bump I took last month threw my schedule off by about 15 days.

I am recovering from it, but I think that I will probably miss my upcoming deadline by a few days. I don’t like that, but I can live with it.

See, what I am doing here is writing a monthly superhero comic book. I have set my monthly deadline for the 15th. That avoids all of the other end of the month pressure and every recognized month has a 15th.

This writing project is my attempt to learn how to write superhero comics, and the story is about a guy learning to actually be a superhero. We are following the same learning curve.

Maybe the next story arc will feature him busting his ass, but still being just a little too late to save the day.

Josh

I spent the last week in Florida with my family.
And the week before that getting ready for the trip.
We did Family Christmas while there, so that week was spent making and shipping gifts. It was exhausting and stressful to scramble all of that stuff together, but it was well worth it to see the results.
My girlfriend, Bekah, and I each got dedicated writing notebooks. So, while my brother fished for sheepshead in the intracoastal waterway, I was able to sit and write for a little while.
I also managed to punch a few keys on the two flights on the way down. All told, though, this was NOT a productive fortnight.

Now that I am back in my routine, though, I think I know what I need to do. I have a few scenes to re-work, but the characters seem to be moving into position.

There is a confrontation at the climax of issue two, about which I have not done enough thinking. Ideologically it makes sense. The characters are in conflict with eachother. One represents a subject about which the other is in deep denial, so it makes sense for her to respond with strong emotions…. which in superhero terms means FIGHT! I just have not paced out the escalation of that confrontation.

Once that is done, I can put this issue to bed.

I just hope I don’t go too far over my page count. It is dense as it is and I would hate to have to chop things or move them around.

It occurs to me now that if I do need to cut some pages, I can set up that fight, and leave the pay-off for the next issue. That has the added benefit of putting that fight in what will be the last issue of this story arc.

And, hopefully that will mean that the third act will wrap itself up with minimal coaxing and I will be able to get back on deadline for next month.

As always, keep up on my blog here.
And read my Rapid City scripts here.

Of course I need to re-read and spot-edit the final draft…. But I believe I just wrote the last panel of the last page of Rapid City #5.

More than half an hour ahead of my deadline!

I am not going to post it until it is spit-shined and polished. So, maybe tomorrow evening. The most important thing here…. I got it done.

I don’t have it all in front of me to do total count, but I believe I am very close to passing the 100 page mark with this most recent issue.
It will not likely be 100 published pages, but close enough to it that if you count the pages that very nearly made the cut….I believe that pushes me over that line.

On the weight of that alone I will count this project as a success.

It will be an even bigger success, though, if I make tomorrow’s deadline.

Josh

I have just a few more pages to do to get issue #4 completed.

In order to do it right, I may have to make it a few pages longer than the other three. Thinking of it in terms of a print book, I would have to make it so that it is the same physical size. For the last part of a story arc, it seems perfectly acceptable to eat up the inside covers and stuff with actual page content.

With a different story, I would say just make the issue bigger. However, a lot of this story, and this issue, is about getting through the times when nothing is happening. I worry that it looks like space filler. Because, in a way, it is. That is fine, because it fits the story.

That is no problem at all with a digital copy…or in script form….but when those tension building down-times equal more actual pages and a higher price, then I get worried.

It is just a matter of controlling the size of the issue.

***

I have already written the last scene of this arc and issue. All I am doing now is making sure that the stuff in between the middle and the end carries the story through.