Late last month, she turned for the worst. All the chemo in the world couldn’t save her. She threw up whatever she ate, refused to eat even though she looked longingly at the pieces of cheese my mother-in-law held out for her, and couldn’t go to the bathroom properly. She lied on the couch, head hanging off the cushion. Her breathing was becoming labored.

As I tweeted a few days ago, I wasn’t looking forward to this Sunday. That’s because a few days prior, my in-laws had made the brave decision to have Jody put to sleep on this day. I couldn’t begin to imagine planning such a thing, but then, in the two cases when it happened in my own family, they were quick decisions. There was no planning or second guessing. No chances to wonder if maybe there was another way.

I remember struggling with my own decision to have my beloved cat, Pepper, put to sleep a few years ago. Renal failure stole her health. The strict diet she was on gave us two extra years together. Two painful, anxiety-ridden years. There were days when I wondered if I’d come home from school to find her gone on her blue chair. But as long as she could still move, as long as she could hop into my lap while I worked on my computer, I was happy to have her. The day I made that awful but freeing decision came the day she meowed pitifully at me after I’d come home. Holding her in my lap on the car ride to the vet’s, I knew it was the last ride we’d have together. It was the hardest decision of my life, but to let her go on just so I could have her a bit longer would be selfish.

I told her I loved her countless times as she went limp in my arms.

I had her for nearly eighteen years. Jody’s family had her for twelve.

This Sunday, we all gathered in the family room. My mother-in-law sat on the couch, holding Jody. My father-in-law held her paw. My husband and I held each other as we stood off the side. Seconds after the injection, the light went out in those eyes. “Go to heaven, sweetie,” the vet said softly.

I can’t call myself religious, but it was the most beautiful thing I’d ever heard a vet say.

So while Jody wasn’t my dog, I was very fond of her. I loved the way she bark-greeted us when we walked past the couch. I loved walking up to the door and seeing her little face in the lower section of the side window. Logically, I’ve prepared myself for this. I continued my projects as usual, spending as much time with her as possible (when I felt like it didn’t cut into my in-laws’ time with her). But now it’s a different matter. I barely got 300 words written in my project, and it took me longer than the usual 2-4 hours to finish a whole TIJ comic.

It just hasn’t been a good day for working is what I’m saying. I just started writing this post the moment I logged in to the site. I’m not going to bother editing it much. The habit-drugged brain is begging for work, but the heart really isn’t into it right now. (And if you think that’s no excuse, I’m going to ask you to kindly go to hell, because you have no place on this blog or in my life.)

Next week won’t see much of an update, either, but it will have do more with the blog itself than any family tragedies (here’s hoping). TIJ will update as usual.

But first, let me go back in time. Back to May 18, 2010. I know the exact date because the file properties for Evan and Ronny say that’s when it was created.

I’d been working on a middle-grade sci-fi novel for the past several weeks. Determined to finish something and attempt to get it published, I dove into this project with nothing more than an idea and a handful of characters from one of my many abandoned projects. That project was a webcomic about a trio of college roommates trying to make it through the next four years in a topsy-turvy world. Yeah. Frigging groundbreaking.

But the protagonists were going to have more fun in this new project. For one, I turned them into preteens. What better age than those magical years when the world is still new, adventures can be found just down the sidewalk, and sex was something you’d heard about but weren’t too interested in (yet)? The limbo between childhood and the teenage years. You’re not quite aware of your own innocence, you don’t yet envy younger kids, but you wouldn’t mind emulating a few of the cooler kids. Toss in a few aliens, subtract a mom, sprinkle in a few elements from my actual childhood in Puerto Rico, and I had a bestseller in the making!

Outlines? I had a rough one, which was constantly updated as I barreled through the first draft. It took about 30 pages, but I got my characters where they needed to be. They were going to save the world! They were on their way to adventure!

Then it stalled.

I struggled over the last few words, looking back and forth between the sloppy outline and my word processor. Forcing myself to type. But nothing. I was stuck. Again.

Another abandoned project.

I was never going to finish anything. My creative life would be nothing more than a string of half-finished manuscripts and scrap paper with scene notes, notebooks filled with what-ifs and colorful sketches. I’d only dream about my characters. I’d become what I hated: a never-been, a mere dreamer. But at least I tried, right?

My eyes remained plastered to the black words frozen in the word processor. I knew I’d never revisit them again with any real intention to add to them. I accepted their fate. I was about to accept mine.

Then something clicked in my brain. Maybe my subconsciousness, maybe a muse whose existence I doubted, but something rang out through the desperate groans echoing among my frenzied thoughts. I’m calling it the spark. And this is what it said: “Open a new file.”

I did without hesitation. Then the spark started working. The ideas came spilling out like oil.

“Take some characters from another project, people you like. How about that other webcomic? How many of those did you abandon, anyway? Never mind, take that one that was supposed to take place in Hollywood. That had a cast of a thousand. How about Evan? You liked him a lot. How about Ronny? He was a great one, too. They had some real chemistry. Let’s throw them together again. Let’s choose a time. The future. How far into the future? Let’s make it a thousand or so. We can figure it out later. Wait, wait, let’s write something now. Something to stabilize this story, get it started.”

After mulling it over, I typed this:

Bradyn Corbeil’s alive, though not very well. He’s not talking. So I’ve been sent in.

“A mystery!” the spark said. “We’re not writing a mystery, but some mysterious elements won’t hurt. So Evan’s telling the story? Don’t worry about his age or sex. You’ve never been a girly girl to begin with; you can probably fake a gender-neutral voice pretty well. Let’s just get a story going. What, is this first part too boring? Okay, let’s skip ahead. We’ve got an anchor in place; we can follow the chain back after we’ve had fun. Let’s get Evan in trouble. What kind of trouble? Life-threatening? I love it! How’d he get there? Unknowingly ingested something? Is he seeing weird nightmare-fueling shit? Awesome!”

Back and forth, back and forth, over the next several weeks. Going ahead to the adventure in progress, then skipping back to figure out how he got there. Probably not the best way to write, but many authors had done it. Why couldn’t it work for me?

Somehow, it did. Over the next three months, I watched Evan and his friends struggle through an unforgiving wilderness. Editing while I wrote, throwing away entire chunks of the story, weaving in elements from Evan’s previous project, making second draft notes in another file… Oh, it was an awful, wonderful mess. Nearly 141,500 words later, I had a workable first draft which I would later transform into an even better draft.

Over five months later, I had that second draft of nearly 213,400 words. Now I know what I need to do to create an even better, and hopefully final (and somewhat shorter), draft.

While writing the second draft, I got it in my head that I needed to turn this into some sort of trilogy. (All the rage, right?) Explore other parts of this galaxy I’d created. Weave in some sort of family saga. I could do that. Hell, I got through this novel twice. I could do it all over again with TSoS.

So that’s what I did. Or attempted.

Start, restart, restart. Graphic novel or heavily illustrated novel? Back to plain text? Change POV. Try to like these characters. Why isn’t this working? What the hell am I doing wrong? What the fuck?! Did that doorstop spoil me for other novels? Am I so stuck on writing and drawing a webcomic that I can’t think in words anymore? Of course I can think in words! I’m writing notes for everything! What the hell is wrong?

It was happening all over again. I couldn’t abandon this project. Not again. If I did, that meant I could easily abandon E&R.

I was getting scared.

Not too long ago–last week, actually–I decided to continue my quest to read 50 books this year (downgraded from 100 books, which was a pretty insane undertaking). Write Faster, Write Better was one of those books I bought during my “I’ve got to learn how to WRITE” phase, long before I decided that I knew everything possible and it was time to study “how to SELL and PROMOTE”. David Fryxell could have gotten his point across in a short paragraph, but he stretched it along 245 pages. I wasn’t looking forward to struggling through another page of my novel in progress, so I was snappish towards Fryxell and his meaningful advice.

“Yeah, I get it. You’ve got to prepare. Need to think about the topic, need to do research before you write. Why are you repeating yourself?”

It didn’t hit me until the thirteenth chapter, “Writing Fiction Faster and Better”. I was thankful for Fryxell for hammering the point home several times, because it was only then that I realized what I need to do for this current novel: I need to be prepared before I even write.

The more I thought about it, the more my predicament made sense. I wasn’t in love with my story.

I fell in love with E&R. From the start, after I put Evan’s life in danger, I was concerned for all of the cast. It was more than just feeling bad for them or crying when something horrible happened. As I was forcing them through crises or giving them crippling backstories, I told them, “I’m sorry I have to do this to you, but you can’t grow otherwise.” Then I proudly watched them move through their trials. I loved them, even as I harmed them. I wished I could have given them perfect beginnings and endings, but if they’d been coddled, would they have stories to tell?

With this current novel in progress, I’d set up a few obstacles and was planning to move my characters through them. I knew what they were going to do from the beginning. No movement for error, misjudgement, or backtracking. No one questions motives; everything was plotted out. It’s perfect.

It’s rigid, boring, and it leaves no room for real adventure.

All that just to satisfy the desire to write another first draft in record time.

I was trying to repeat my success with E&R. Talking to my husband about it, I realized something else: E&R was a fluke. A wonderful fluke that proved my determination to see a project through to the end, and fed my confidence as a writer and creator. That’s probably the real reason why it was written, even though I intend to publish it one day. The spark did it to give me hope.

Yet along the way, I fell in love with the story and the characters. That’s why I stuck with it. I wanted to see everyone through, even if some of them weren’t going to make it or have very happy endings.

With TSoS, it was all a race. Can I write another first draft in three months? Sure, I could. Would I enjoy the rush? No. I wouldn’t.

***

Last night, I took out the TSoS journal and continued my protagonist’s bio. Writing on paper forces me to think words through. It’s easy to get carried away on a keyboard and write a bunch of crap you don’t intend to keep.

An hour later, I’d uncovered little bits of Tedric and his family I never knew. I learned why he was angry with life in general, yet how he maintains a cheery disposition with his friends. I found out that despite the hasty divorce, his mother still loved his father. More surprisingly, Tedric’s half-siblings also liked his biological father. What would the stepdad think if he ever found out? I’ll solve that little mystery when I get to his bio.

I think I’m getting to the heart of this story by plotting it out on paper. If it turns out that I have to do all the rough work in my journal before I can write the real story on the computer, then that’s how it’ll be done. If I need to plan out the story for several months or even a year before I can create a fantastic final product, then that’s how it’ll be done.

Like I said, E&R was a fluke that boosted my confidence, and I’m sure it’ll go places once the time is right. But now that the thrill of a whirlwind, breakneck love affair is over, I need to properly court this other story. I need engagement rings in the forms of loose outlines and character journals. If it takes several months or a year before the “marriage” finally begins, that’s fine. I shouldn’t be in a hurry to put out a sloppy, half-assed (or quarter-assed) story; I’ve got an ongoing webcomic and other projects, so it’s not like I’m unproductive.

In other words, I need to take the time to simply fall in love with this story.

(Now that I’m done with this post and all its awkward analogies and metaphors, I think I’ll get back to watching MST3K. I’m saving the courting for tonight. All right, that was a little too weird…)

Also, Ibuprofen and Tylenol mixed together makes a wonderful, legal narcotic substitute. Dentists know all the good things that make people feel good… *continues to feel good*

Welp, back to work.

Got an appointment today to get my teeth checked out. Maybe this week, something can be done about them.

Got this week’s Johnny comics done and uploaded to the queue, so they’ll be posted Wednesday and Friday.

Regular posts will resume when I’m in proper working order again.

I worked through a doorstop novel. Twice, in fact. There were scenes I didn’t care for, but they were necessary to the plot. Either they explained something pertinent to the story, or they bridged two other scenes. So, while I disliked them, I nevertheless enjoyed (to an extent) writing them. Getting through these scenes meant my story would make sense, and I’d be getting to my favorite scenes. It was a chore I was more than willing to get through.

(On that note, anyone who tells you that “every step of writing must be a complete, rapturous joy or else you just don’t enjoy it” is full of crap. Writing is pretty much like living: there are days when it’s mind-bendingly awesome, and there are days when it sucks hairy ass, and still there are days when it’s so-so.)

TSoS, this current book, started out fair. It took some getting used to, what with the new cast of characters and setting. Oh, and the loose outline I’d written. But when I got to a crucial scene where the protagonist is sent on the first leg of his mission, I started to stumble. Hard. Like “stumbling until I’ve twisted both ankles three times each” hard.

I would write a sentence. Figure out what the characters needed and how the scene should progress despite the fact that I already knew. It was like a block had been put on my brain, making it refuse to acknowledge the prescribed plot points. What the hell was going on? Had I lost my mojo? Had the doorstop spoiled me for other novels? Would this series ever get off the ground, or was the doorstop destined to be as I’d originally intended: a standalone novel? Then I’d slave through another sentence.

Two weeks of this. And I’d managed to sluggishly meander through one page. I was 15k words in, and I was already coming to a dead end. I believed in this story. I had to save it.

So I scrapped the first draft and started anew.

Instead of third person POV, I went to first person, getting deeper into the mind of my teenage male protagonist. I felt firsthand just how desperate his situation was, and how important he would eventually become to his own people. I was able to describe how lazy he felt, how useless he believed himself to be, how dense he was when it came to girls. And in going with the first person POV and present tense, I was keeping in line with the doorstop, which was told in the same fashion. Consistency was found. (Why the hell did I ever decide to deviate from the original story’s style is beyond me.)

Now my story is back on track.

Not to worry, though. Next Monday is going to be a doozy, what with the entire issue of the next Disney Afternoon comic. More Darkwing fun than you can handle! (I think. He’s on the cover, so I’m assuming it’s yet another DW-centric ish.)

Despite the decided lack of bloggery, I was working in some capacity: drawing concept pages for upcoming storylines in This Is Johnny. Here’s a peek:

If you’ve been reading the comic (AND I KNOW YOU HAVE BEEN, RIGHT?), you’ll know that these three have yet to show up, but the one in the middle should be making his introduction before too long. Say, mid-Marchish, if the next storyline plays out the way I want it to. And the incident portrayed in this image will happen… um.. dunno yet. Let’s say July or onward.

Hooray for sneak previews, even if they’re sketches!

(By the way, did you notice something that the comic in its current state is lacking? A certain something that could put a certain Narrator out of work?…)

Free Books

The big difference between books and music is that for most people, the superior version is still the one based on atoms, not bits. For all their cost disadvantages, dead trees smeared into sheets still have excellent battery life, screen resolution, and portability, to say nothing about looking lovely on shelves. But the market for digital books–audiobooks, ebooks, and Web downloads–is growing fast, mostly to satisfy demands that physical books cannot, from the need for something you can consume while driving to the need for something you can get instantaneously, wherever you are.

Whether it’s a limited-time free download of a few chapters, or the whole thing in a well-formatted PDF available forever, the digital form is a way to let the maximum number of people sample the book, in the hopes that some will buy.

For example, Neil Gaiman gave away American Gods as a digital download for four weeks in 2008. The usual fears and objections were presented at first: that it would cannibalize sales in stores or, at the other extreme, that a limited availability was counterproductive since by the time many people heard about it, it would be gone. The second worry is hard to check, but the first turned out to be mistaken. Not only did American Gods become a best seller, but sales of all of Gaiman’s books in independent bookstores rose by 40 percent over the period the one title was available for free. Eighty-five thousand people sampled the book online, reading an average of forty-five pages each. More than half said they didn’t like the experience of reading online, but that was just an incentive to buy the easier-to-read hardcover. Gaiman then gave away his next children’s book The Graveyard, as free online readings in streamed video, a chapter at a time, and that, too, became a best seller.

[I]n a world of shrinking bookstore shelf space and disappearing newspaper book review sections, authors are keen to try anything that can help them build an audience. As publisher Tim O’Reilly puts it, “the enemy of the author is not piracy, but obscurity.” Free is the lowest-cost way to reach the largest number of people, and if the sample does its job, some will buy the “superior” version. As long as readers continue to want their books in atoms, they’ll continue to pay for them.

Food for thought.

I need to hold another Kids in the Hall marathon.

Craving a giant peanut butter cup like you wouldn’t believe.

Gotta continue writing this comic recap.

The room looks great when it’s vacuumed.

Wonder which unbearable YA novel I should read next?

Wonder which unbearable YA novel I’m going to attempt to write after I’m finished with the doorstop?

Hurry up and finish downloading, Soul Reaver soundtrack.

Chris Chan needs to give in to his twisted needs and post more videos.

Can’t believe I ate liverwurst… and enjoyed it.

Wonder how many comics I can ink tomorrow afternoon?

Gotta draw more tarot cards.

Still astounded that it took me less than half an hour to write that plotline for the next novel.

(Wish I could write the whole thing in that much time.)

Studying all these videos Chris Chan uploaded, it’s almost scary to see how violent he can get.

I’ve got Audacity just sitting on my desktop and I haven’t used it for anything.

For that matter, I’ve never used Anime Studio.

Holy crapezoids, I’ll use them both!

Must storyboard something!

Maybe a Chris Chan short.

Too many books to read; too many I’m sure I won’t enjoy.

I’m so impulsive when I go to the Kindle store.

I could make this whole six-book series into a dresser drawer full of paper beads.

Artistic bent + recycling + acrylic paints = jewelry.

I wonder if anyone’s tried to turn animal dung into jewelry?

Wonder if that peanut butter pie has set yet?

Not that I’d mess with animal dung. Just wondering.

There’s a type of coffee made with beans that have passed through an exotic animal’s digestive tract. It’s expensive as hell.

I could feed my cat coffee beans and get the same result.

Must train husband to clean litter box.

Kevin thinks I’m obsessed with Chris Chan.

Geez, I found some old Crayola metallic coloring pencils! I feel like making art with them.

Never did use those Prismacolor markers all that much.

Think I found a coloring medium for the tarot cards.

Too bad scanned metallic coloring pencils don’t show up.

Think I should draw mini comics of important scenes from my novels. Got a few ideas worth sketching.

Think I’ll update This Is Johnny twice a week, starting this summer.

Maybe I’ll make Johnny fatter, too.

There aren’t a lot of fat webcomic characters who get “top billing.”

No, I can’t make him fatter. He needs to be able to move around if the story is going to move in the direction I want.

I learned a new word: hypocorism. It’s a pet name, or the practice of using a pet name, or baby talk as used by a non-infant.

Why they needed to get so damn technical about something so stupid, I don’t know.

It’s kind of odd, but I almost don’t want to finish the doorstop novel.

I wish older women didn’t use baby talk. It’s just creepy.

What am I going to do with all these ARCs? I’ve got enough paper for beads. Too bad we’ve got a propane fireplace.

Cripes, I’ve got to continue reading Voyager sometime this month.

So tempted to work on another novel while finishing up this one. Must resist. Must finish one before starting the other.

Hey, the peanut butter pie is set now! Nom nom time!

Was that baby talk I used just then?

Hey, maybe I’ll start coloring the webcomic!