Things to do: writing (sort of)

1) Finish 100 girls #8 script
2) Write ideas for "Horror Thing" I want to do with Ben Stenbeck (at this point that just means putting all my ideas regarding possible characters, themes and plot into a document and throwing it at Ben for his consideration)
3) Come up with an actual title so we can stop calling it "Horror Thing"
4) Work on proposal for the novel, which, I hasten to add, is one-third written
5) Finish assembling materials for "Book Thing" (parenthetically, we are still waiting for the contract on this. It has been weeks now since we requested changes and The Company said they would make those changes. Why does it take weeks? End of parenthetical.)
6) Bug Dave Land about "Dalton" (or should I wait until announcement about "Book Thing"?
7) Stop using Internet as a work-avoidance technique

Productivity

Last night I forwarded to a few people about one-third of a novel, currently called Crunching Numbers. I have been working on this third for about, what? Two years? Working and reworking those same pages. Not two years straight, mind -- but two years of grabbing a minute here and there when I wasn't writing other things, working the day job, making the word safe for Democracy, etc. The thinking is that if I polish up those pages real good (that's an example of my writing style) that we can use it to attract an agent and then, of course, start earning some of those big publishing dollars. This is a realistic expectation, right?

The process of writing prose is a lot different from that of comics. With comics, I can't even start writing a script unless I've plotted the story to within an inch of its life. With prose, I don't want to know from a plot. I just dive in -- which may cause some problems, but still feels like the way I need to approach it. When I first started writing the book, I thought it would be about just one main character, but now find myself splitting the story between three main characters (and several peripheral characters, too!).

Now that that section of the book is polished, I'm looking forward to writing the next section. And one hopes that I'll move at a faster rate on it. I already have another book in mind, but there's no way I'll start until I have this one finished.

Getting a polish on those pages was one of the things I wanted to finish before leaving for San Diego. The second thing I'd like to do is write the script for the first issue of the next 100 Girls storyline, tentatively called "Living Rough." I may not finish that one up, unfortunately. But I feel newly energized to work on 100 Girls. Todd and I got some potentially interesting news regarding 100 Girls and it has inspired me to actually sit down and start putting words on paper. If and when details on said news firm up, I'll let you in on it.