(no subject)

[jdstanford]

I got directed to actor/author Wil Wheaton's blog through Astronomer Phil Plait and I started exploring back a few days. In there I found a post on Five Ways to Just Keep Writing. They're really good so I'm going to reprint them here, but by all means check out the link, because they're pasted from his blog.

1. Blog less. It's incredibly hard to blog and write a book at the same time, because you're using different muscles. Think of it like trying to run the 100 meter dash and do a marathon at the same time.
2. Make a deadline for yourself, then work backwards to have milestones every day or week, whichever works better for you.
3. Give yourself little rewards when you make a big milestone (5K words, 10K words, 20K words, first draft completed, etc.)
4. Don't show your work to anyone until the first draft is done. Don't even excerpt little bits and put them on your blog. I put about 30 words from House of Cards online, and I lost all of my momentum as a result. I'm not sure why this happens, but it really sucks when it does.
5. Find an editor who you trust to work with you. Good editors do more than just edit the draft you give them, and I know this because I have a great editor.

Again, that was posted by Wil Wheaton, and he even credits it to someone else. Upon reading it, I started thinking about how it applies to comics, because Penny posted a picture of my drawing table on her flickr account and mentioned that it was obviously of a time when I wasn't drawing. That got me to thinking that I'm not drawing an awful lot of the time. I always feel like I need to post something whenevr I'm working on it, and if I were working on a regular, open-ended webcomic I'd agree, but I'm not. I've never worked like that. I'm working a finite stroy, all my projects have been or are finite stories. It's like writing a prose novel, only I'm adding lots of pictures to help move the stroy along.

The only adjustment to the rules would be be to make your editor someone who can offer you honest critique, when I say you, I mean me. So, I'm almost done re-designing the web site and then I'm probably not going to be doing much updating. I am going to need an "editor" and I'll be giving some thought to who that should be.

Any thoughts?