Well, two weeks cut by three or four days of driving and a couple book events, but: done with the first draft of the scripts for the comic project I can’t yet talk about, as it’s being announced [also redacted . . .]. Five issues, though. About two-hundred pages? But, am doing a new thing—well, new since True Believers—of writing by page, not panel. Give me panels, and I go granular, but the artist doesn’t need to be constrained like that. Best to let them use their amazing ability to figure the layouts out: they have that kind of imagination. I don’t. But I know the words, and I know what happens.
Anyway, when I did Earthdivers, I hit up Daniel Kraus for how he made The Autumnal come together so well. He said he just wrote all the issues at once, so he could adjust on the fly. Great advice, but I didn’t take, had to instead be like that last unicorn, and know this thing called “regret.” This time, though, I just burned through fast, so I could pull all the strings tight. Which? I think this being a very limited series instead of open-ended helped with that? Who knows. Every time out, it’s a learning process. Like Gene Wolfe said, You only ever learn to write the novel you’re writing. I think that goes for comic books as well.
Anyway, wish I could say more, but, you know. And, ‘first draft,’ yes. There’s a lot of different entities who need to approve the first script, still. Bad thing is, I’ve already written the next four . . .
Or, maybe that’s a good thing, who knows. We shall see. Either way, I really like the story, now. Was worth the two weeks’ writing.
