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Virtually alone

2010-06-07

417

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Almost a placeholder.
Gary
Well, we almost had a placeholder comic today.

Here's a little history about this comic and myself. I've always loved comics. They were an escape for me, and a means of learning moral values (I'm talking about super hero based comic). I read a lot of them as a kid, and even came up with a few myself, but I rarely had the follow through I needed to really see one of the ones I was creating to the end. In the past I've also had a similar problem with stories I was writing. I would come up with a plot, an outline, and I'd start writing it, but once I figured out how everything was going to come together, I'd stop. In my mind, I knew the entire story at that point, and I lost interest. Needless to say, this left me with a lot of unfinished stories laying around. Perhaps some day I'll finish some of them (heh, a true statement of procrastination).

I started this comic in 2007 for fun. It was just something I thought I would enjoy doing. I was going to vent about a previous company I had worked at, which I had lots of issues with, and try to make it funny. It turned out that I didn't have the heart to rip into that company, and that was probably for the best. When I started this, I thought I would be lucky to make it a year. I didn't think I had the drive/follow through to keep it going. Now here I am over three years later, and I'm still doing it. I have a small following, which I would like to thank, and in all that time, I think I've missed posting a comic on the scheduled day twice in that time. Considering I have job, which isn't this, I think that's not too shabby. True, the quality on occasion has slipped, but I'm still learning how to do a comic.

That path of learning, brings us to today's comic. Almost a year ago, I came up with a broad outline of a bunch of story arcs I wanted to send my characters through. Unfortunately, I didn't fill in all the details. I didn't sit down and plan out each comic. Instead, I had a general start, several events, and a generic end. Basically it was like the stories I used to write. Leaving it half planned out has made it a bit unfocused (in my opinion). It has also made it hard for me to jump back in to the story line and continue it. Today was one of the days where I sat here, uninspired, thinking I should work on the story arc, but leaning more toward just throwing up a comic about how I was uninspired. Then I remembered something Ray Bradbury said in an interview, and I'm paraphrasing here since I saw the interview when I was in grade school. "Some people sit and wait for inspiration. The problem with that is that you can sit there and wait your whole life and never be inspired. Writing is a skill you hone, not some magic thing that just happens. A writer should get into the habit of sitting down and writing everyday, whether they're inspired or not. Some days it's just for an hour, other days, you mind hits on something and you're writing until it's time to sleep." Again, that's not an exact quote, it's what I remember from his interview, and it's something that I think has a lot of truth. So, instead of expecting to be inspired and just know what to write, I sat down and wrote out what will happen in each of the remaining comics for this arc, and even the dialog for some of them. It's a good feeling to see this coming to a close. It's been a real learning experience for me. Though I'll probably put in some hooks for up coming arcs, I'll probably take a little break after this one, so I can properly plan out the arcs. I hope you all enjoy where I'm going with this, and the journey so far.

Other interesting things:
After getting pretty sore while practicing to play softball, and exercising, I've learned that those crazy Russians might've been on to something. They have a massage where they beat you with reeds, or some such, in a hot room, until you have a fever. Then you run out into the snow, or jump into a cold pool or river. A bunch of Russians I know also swear by the cold shower in the morning. So, I decided to try out these concepts to see if they helped with the soreness. I took a scalding hot bath followed by a frigid shower. Other than my heart getting a show when I went from hot to cold, it seemed to work rather well. The soreness was mostly gone, and when I woke up today, it was just a dull soreness.

Another thing, I'm catching up on some of my comic book reading. Right now I'm reading the "Blackest Night" story arc. I had stopped reading my Green Lantern comic lines when it started, waiting for it to end so I could catch up. So far it's been ok, but I was less than thrilled with the ending in the "Green Lantern Corps" comic. Maybe there's a bit more after the most recent comic I read that'll make it better for me, but right now, I'm left with a "well that's was a lot of build up with a quick and pointless end."

Well, that's about it for right now. There are some birthdays coming up, but I won't announce them here, since I doubt they'd want me to, but still, I'll say, happy birthday.

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