I let myself have the rest of last week off to get used to the idea of being out of work (and to a larger extent, no longer tied to a company I’d been employed by since 2006), though I think it’s going to take a little more time than that for it to truly sink in. It’s been a very weird couple of weeks and the most I could do is just take each moment as it comes, with a calm and stable mind, and my eyes and thoughts already towards the future.
Right now I’m not even sure what my next writing projects will be, considering. I mean, I have a few possible ideas that I’ve been toying with, but this particular situation has given me a much larger playing field to work with. A much larger playing field. Some of these ideas seem a bit…small, in comparison. I’ve been given time to reach further. Go further. Be better. [Mind you, being successful, while up there on the list of things to achieve as a writer, it’s not the only thing on the list, and it’s certainly not on top. Being better, in my eyes, means being able to write stories that I’m proud of. Right now I feel I’m almost there, but not quite. There’s just a bit more to go.]
I don’t really know what I’m going to do next, other than do all I can to change this life and this writing career as much as I’d really like to.
Yesterday over at Walk in Silence I talked about using this free time I suddenly have to finally work on all those creative endeavors. You know, the “if I only had time to do (x)” things. Since that’s my music blog, I talked a bit out making more time for my guitar playing and getting better at it.
As for the writing side of things, I’ve been thinking a lot about artwork. I mean, a lot. Back in the pre-pandemic days when we went to the gym, I’d find myself listening to the same things over and over on my mp3 player, because I was working out specific scenes of my novels in my head. This is a super-old writing process that I used as a teenager, first starting out. It was how the Infamous War Novel was written.
One scene in particular that I’d work through during those gym sessions is the final scene/credits sequence of Diwa & Kaffi. The novel itself ends with the two taking off and flying towards home, with their two friends watching them, proud of what they’ve become. But there’s a bit more that follows, a purely visual segment, that’s not in the book. Set to The Sound of Arrows’ “Stay Free”, it starts with their liftoff and progresses through multiple shots of them feeling the pure joy and freedom of flying, interspersed with flashbacks and flashforwards of their lives at their apartment complex. There’s also a section of this where they fly alongside a train containing their tenants, returning back to the estate by land, showing that they are also bonded to their neighbors. [Picture credits flashing or rolling throughout, of course.]
Once I was free of the Day Job, I thought: you know, I have this film studies background that I’m not using…and I’ve been told by numerous people that I’m a very visual storyteller (“I can see this as a movie” is a common phrase — to which I secretly pump my fist, as that was my plan all along). And I also follow a lot of artists and animators on Twitter and elsewhere, so I can check out how they do their work. [Side note: Natalie Nourigat’s I Moved to Los Angeles to Work in Animation is a wonderful short graphic novel about exactly this, and I highly recommend it both for the information and the enjoyment.]
So. Why not learn how to storyboard?
I mean — why the hell not, right? I’m a visual storyteller, I have the general knowledge of film, the practice of screenwriting, and I understand how it all works as a whole. And thanks to the artists and animators I follow, I don’t feel too self-conscious that I’m not the best artist right now — it’s been repeated by many that it’s not the artistry that pushes storyboards but the way the format’s used. Knowledge of how to visualize a story well is more important than getting every sketch perfect.
I have no idea how this will pan out, but what the hell, right? It combines my love of writing and my love of drawing, and that’s certainly a start.
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