Archive for October 2009

10 Reasons to Try NaNoWriMo

October 12, 2009 Blog, Writing Stuff

Writer HeadThere’s a new challenge coming up in November for writers to consider taking on. It’s called “NaNoWriMo“, National Novel Writing Month.

What is it exactly? It’s a “competition” to try and write a 50k word novel during the month of November. Sound crazy and over-whelming? Well, you’re probably right, and many of the writers signed up for the event all over the world might openly agree with you!

“What’s the prize?” you may be asking? The prize is that you complete the challenge. You get a digital web badge that you can show off on your blog.

“What?! That’s it?” you’re wondering? Yes. That’s it.

If the goal of the sheer act of competing in NaNoWriMo for the sake of trying to hit a 50k word goal isn’t enough “goal” for you, than this simply isn’t the kind of competition meant for you.

Too busy? Life is too crazy right now? Got a full time job and family? etc? etc? Those aren’t excuses for not trying the competition; they’re stories put in place to convince yourself why it’s not worth failing, because you just know it’ll be impossible to hit the final goal–and therefore you’ll “lose”.

NaNoWriMo is about more than “winning” or “losing” and I’ve created a list below of ten reasons that I’ve contemplated for why I’ll take on this challenge. These reasons might work for any apprehensive writer out there. I, like many of you, also came up with the excuses mentioned above and more. This is my counter-list, and ultimately, the one that wins out considering the most important satisfaction of taking the challenge for me is simply for the experience of trying.

10 Reasons to Try NaNoWriMo

  1. Writing a Novel: Ever want to write a novel, but never had the time? Here’s your time! One month: November. It’s a limited time window to think of nothing but achieving your goal. The rest of the year you can go ahead back to the routine of life.
  2. Taking a Challenge: Challenges are healthy. They keep the mind active and going in creative directions that it might never have gone in considering the new pressures involved.
  3. Being Creative: Sometimes writers hit that dreaded “writer’s block”. During NaNoWriMo, there really is no time to deal with these blocks. This challenge helps you gain confidence in defeating those blocks, ignoring them, or smashing through them with resilience.
  4. Excitement: Who doesn’t get excited when completing benchmarks in life, or work, or even video games? Make 5k word goals for yourself if 50k seems unattainable. Be excited about “clearing the level” then pump yourself up to move on to the next level, get yourself anxious to defeat the next end boss!
  5. Community: NaNoWriMo is not only a competition, but a community of like-minded people. There can’t be a better support group than these writers for getting help, guidance, support and encouragement for you to meet your goals.
  6. Escapism: After dealing with the responsibilities in life, find that moment in time for a sit-down with your NaNoWriMo story and grind through it. Get lost in a fictional world outside the real one, let the mind flow and embrace the fact that in your fictional world you make all the decisions!
  7. Time Management: You want to get a hard lesson in time management? Take this challenge. There’s nothing like adding a 50k word novel to your life, done in one month, to get your time management skills really refined!
  8. Testing Ground: Have ideas that you never have time to explore or put into motion? Here’s your chance to at least start it! At the very least you can create a free-flowing brain dump rough fiction novel as a framework for later. If you never do anything with it later: Who cares! At least you got the thoughts out and it’s made room for new thoughts or pushed you towards “the next step” of refining your product into something more complete later. That choice is up to you.
  9. Role Play: Ever wonder what it might be like to be a real novelist? Someone who’s main goal in life is to be published? Here’s your chance to role play the life they live, the sacrifices they make, the challenges they have to defeat, and hopefully, the thrill they get out of the process of it all.
  10. Fun Of Course!: If you can’t see the fun of trying a challenge like this, then you’ve missed one of the most important benefits of NaNoWriMo. Even if you don’t make it to 50k, try to keep it fun all through November. Let NaNoWriMo remind you of a fun time when you accomplished an outlandish goal regardless of word count, or digital web badges. Just remember the fun of it all!

What I learned From 24-Hour Comic Day 2009

October 9, 2009 Blog, Comic Stuff

Let me start this post off by saying: “I didn’t make it”. Not only did I not make it, but I only got two pages done which you can see below. Do I consider the 24 hours of little sleep and hyper-brain-activity a failure? No. Let me explain why.

My Quick History With 24 Hour Comic Day

When I learned of 24 Hour Comic Day it was maybe 2005–I can’t remember exactly but it’s not important for the point of this post to make sense. I was following tons of webcomic podcasts at the time because I got it in my head to start one “just because” and I wanted to know what was going on concerning the topic on the web. I learned of the epically talented and superbly efficient creating-machine-of-a-man, Ryan Estrada–his 24 hour comic and then later his “Ryan Estrada Day” where he’d do guest webcomics for dozens of web-series and they’d all get released online on the same day: Brilliant. The guy was fascinating to me! He became an instant legend because the concept of an immensely active creator like this inspires me to this day.

I missed 24 Hour Comic Day that year. I dreamed of it the next year but just couldn’t do it. Then the original hosts of the world-wide midnight oil extravaganza stopped organizing the event (sorry, but I forget the actual details of who they were, I just remember the note on their site the one year I wanted to know more about when it started). I got a couple of the 24 Hour Comic Day collection books from the library and devoured them. They energized me. The chosen comics ranged in skill levels but each carried with them the notion that someone out there gave it their all, for one day–and through self-motivation and determination–got what they set out to do done! Inspiring, right?

Starting the 24 Hour Comic Day Challenge

When I found out this past August that 24 Hour Comic Day was back on the map, I immediately added October 3rd to my Google Calendar so that I’d be prepared to commit to the challenge!

Then I kinda forgot. To be fair, I incorrectly assumed it was going to happen 2 weeks later. This was at Friday 11:30pm.

At 12:30am I said, “Screw it! No excuses! Not again!”

I made a batch of strong coffee and I set to work on the brainstorming, the plot breakdown, the per-page breakdown, then gathering studies for the subject matter. When all that was done it was 7am.

It had been nine years since I did art with any committed intent–sure, a concept study here, a rough spot art piece there, a random scribbling–but draw… technically… and sequentially… not since I was 14-years-old and never from technical training since taking Fine Arts nine years ago.

That’s something I mildly regret about past choices. I took Fine Arts in university, not Illustration in college. What I had in skill was self-learned through just doing it; analysing my favorite artists, reading books about anatomy and technique. Not all was lost though. What I learned from university was building concepts, executing on a strategy, thinking in modularized steps, being efficient and problem solving. When I went to college after university for web development, I zipped through the courses at rapid speed with a near 100% in my whole term.

Committing to an idea became easy to me–over-committing also became one of my greatest flaws. Everything becomes a challenge that needs to be confronted, so, getting back to the lesson learned, I took the challenge!–

–And I hit a wall. One that scared the hell out of me to climb over. I had to draw what I built up in a beautiful pitch-style master document. More coffee poured in a mug, and I began.

Confronting Fears and Learning About the Self

What I learned is that if I applied myself, pulled to the forefront memories of how I learned to draw in the past, then reapplied those memories: I could do it! I was even overtly impressed by the result; but the first page took me three hours to produce. I say “overtly” because, already to me, that first page was way more than I believed I could personally do–not because I thought it was amazing work on an industry standard. That’s not for me to decide. Nor was it something I cared about. I wasn’t an industry artist. I wasn’t trying to be an industry artist. All I was trying to do was defeat the fear in me; the one that repeated “You can’t do it!”

Truth was though, things were not looking good for 24 Hour Comic Day. I started the second page and then finished that one in 2 hours. My brain did the math and I accepted that the challenge had defeated me. No matter how much I wanted it, I realized that I misjudged my efficiency with the art stage and getting through the remaining 24 hours was still going to result in either an unfinished comic, or one that was less than acceptable to my now-determined mind. I wanted this idea done as a professional 24-page comic!

24 Hour Comic Day Page XEI

24 Hour Comic Day Page 2 XEI

Finding Success in Failure

How do I consider 24 Hour Comic Day a success then? Because it taught me something about myself. I’ve become a better and more efficient concept-maker and idea-producer than a sequential artist, or illustrator for that matter. This is what I got out of the choice to go to university, and it became very apparent that October 3rd 2009, during 24 Hour Comic Day.

I was disappointed at first, but then realized: That’s ok. Every failure re-visited in a positive light can be turned into a lesson for success. That’s my maudo and I try to live it. What I got at the end of the whole process was another well-built comic book concept. One that I will pursue one day with a more efficient and proficient artist. Something that I’ll be proud about and say: “24 Hour Comic Day made this book possible!”

In Conclusion

Finally, what else came out of 24 Hour Comic Day? You’re looking at it. This website: Mr. Brain Jar. A place for me to write about my experiences concerning challenges, brainstorming techniques, rut-breakers, idea provokers, anything that I think can help other creators JUST DO IT!

Too many creators are affraid of failing. It’s a creators worst enemy. I know because I’ve been there countless times in the last 15 years, and some of them had large amounts of money attached to them. I’d go into debt–then I’d get back out of it and make enough profit and savings to go through the journey again. That is what I’ve chosen for my life because I’ve taught myself to not be afraid of failing. There’s always an answer and part of finding those answers start with learning what you’re capabile of, and what you’re willing to do to transform your life, so that you learn from the past instead of getting caught up in it.

This first post, one week after 24 Hour Comic Day, starts another challenge. One I think will help people–and that’s already success enough for me.

Beholder Series #2 Being Printed in October Blueprint Magazine

October 8, 2009 Beholder Series, Blog, Comic Stuff

After an awesome September issue of Blueprint where the “Beholder Series” got its launch, Emmanuel and I threw together another strip for submission tonight for the October issue of Blueprint Magazine! The issue’s theme is gender and sexuality (amongst other sub-topics like feminism, eroticism, etc). Due to my “out-of-nowhere” work load over the last 2 weeks, the scripting of the half-page script took forever to get to.

Blueprint Magazine - Submission Gender and Sexuality

I had the concept fairly early on–one that, after you see the strip, seems almost self-explanatory. At least in my head since Hellmouth as a world has been brewing for nearly 6 years! I passed the script onto Emmanuel and, like always, he nailed it on the first go around! His thumbnail sketch was more like rough pencils (at least in my eyes) and he went straight to ink from there. All in one day!

Letters will be done this evening and then off it goes! Another great little chance to show a piece of Hellmouth that may never get a larger story told about it… maybe.

On a related note: If there are any artists out there in particular who have work that they’d like to see in print, please go to the Blueprint Magazine Submission page and consider sending in work for future issues (or this one if it’s not too short notice!!!). There is no pay for the work, but check over the mags content and feel out for yourself whether it’s a product that you wish to support with a contribution. It is a freely distributed magazine in the Kitchener-Waterloo community relying on funding to be produced. If you aren’t an artist but know artists: Please pass on the word!

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