In Which Brigid and Greg Become a Thing Again
It's been some eight-plus months since I posted a Fictionlet and at that point they were already running few and far between. There were lots of reasons for this: stress, grief, trying to concentrate my creative efforts on Suburban Jungle, and so forth, but there was also the relatively straightforward "nothing was coming to me." The snarky adventures of Brigid and Greg were always largely inspired by my interactions with the world and observations thereof, and for the past year I've largely been a hermit, for better or worse.
But as I was thinking on Terry Pratchett's death and the whole "wanting to do something that's meaningful to people," I decided to indulge myself in a little Wodehouse, and a magical thing happened: the plot roadblock that's been bugging me about the potential B&G novel suddenly evaporated. "Uncle Bob's subplot causing trouble?" my muse said. "To hell with him then, consider him kicked out. How about this instead?"
Suddenly... poof! The structure of the book fell into place. As I was at a "hurry up and wait" portion of moving, I spent yesterday bouncing back and forth between Snowflake and Scrivener, creating a five-act outline, working up a list of scenes, and generally working it all out. As if patiently waiting all along, Writer Brain just kicked into gear. When I demanded of Writer Brain, "Where were you when I was trying to come up with Short Story X, Anthology Submission Y, and Other Novel Revision Z?" it quite innocently blinked at me and said, "I beg your pardon? You must have me confused with someone else."
Undisciplined punk. :P
Anyway.
So while SJ is on hold for the move anyway, I'm trying to strike while the iron is hot and get what I can done on this. I hate to think that I might have to choose between writing and doing comics, because I love them both, but if nothing else, NaNoWriMo showed that if I really put my mind to it, I can get a major writing project done a lot more quickly and efficiently than a major comic project- and when I look at successful "career" creatives, the first thing that is notable about them is their volume of output.
For the moment, however, such big-picture thinking is premature. I'm in the middle of a major upheaval and I have way too many half-finished projects floating in the air like so many spinning plates to make "forever" choices. Right now, I'm going to work on this thing, and see where it takes me. But one important thing that jumped out at me: when I mentioned on Twitter that I was working on B&G, responses indicated that people eagerly interested in it. Brigid and Greg, for all their snarky silliness, speak to people, in the sort of way I'm looking for. This is significant.
-The Gneech
But as I was thinking on Terry Pratchett's death and the whole "wanting to do something that's meaningful to people," I decided to indulge myself in a little Wodehouse, and a magical thing happened: the plot roadblock that's been bugging me about the potential B&G novel suddenly evaporated. "Uncle Bob's subplot causing trouble?" my muse said. "To hell with him then, consider him kicked out. How about this instead?"
Suddenly... poof! The structure of the book fell into place. As I was at a "hurry up and wait" portion of moving, I spent yesterday bouncing back and forth between Snowflake and Scrivener, creating a five-act outline, working up a list of scenes, and generally working it all out. As if patiently waiting all along, Writer Brain just kicked into gear. When I demanded of Writer Brain, "Where were you when I was trying to come up with Short Story X, Anthology Submission Y, and Other Novel Revision Z?" it quite innocently blinked at me and said, "I beg your pardon? You must have me confused with someone else."
Undisciplined punk. :P
Anyway.
So while SJ is on hold for the move anyway, I'm trying to strike while the iron is hot and get what I can done on this. I hate to think that I might have to choose between writing and doing comics, because I love them both, but if nothing else, NaNoWriMo showed that if I really put my mind to it, I can get a major writing project done a lot more quickly and efficiently than a major comic project- and when I look at successful "career" creatives, the first thing that is notable about them is their volume of output.
For the moment, however, such big-picture thinking is premature. I'm in the middle of a major upheaval and I have way too many half-finished projects floating in the air like so many spinning plates to make "forever" choices. Right now, I'm going to work on this thing, and see where it takes me. But one important thing that jumped out at me: when I mentioned on Twitter that I was working on B&G, responses indicated that people eagerly interested in it. Brigid and Greg, for all their snarky silliness, speak to people, in the sort of way I'm looking for. This is significant.
-The Gneech