Doing It Wrong

in which I confront one of my biggest fears

Dear Readers,

It’s been an interesting month. I started out June creating models in Daz Studio for use in my upcoming graphic novel, The Blood of Seven Queens and I ended June wondering if I was doing things wrong again. So it goes in my life, I guess.

The truth of the matter is that I feel at my most confident when I’m at my desk working all by my lonesome, when I’m not paying any attention to what anyone else thinks. But by the end of the month I was at the nine-day MFA in Creative Writing residency that I help to run for work, surrounded by talented writers whose approval I crave, and all it took was one or two well-meaning comments for me to question all the well-laid plans I’d set down for myself just weeks before.

Was the way I was scripting Seven Queens all wrong? Was the way I was planning to create the art all wrong? Was I fool for thinking I could do this?

I sat in on a number of incredibly useful sessions on creating graphic novels and comics, took lots of notes, felt lots of encouragement from both faculty and students, and what was the one thing I stewed on for days? What’s the one bit of advice I’m still grappling with now?

Don’t use products like Poser or Daz Studio. They make your characters look stiff.

It was a bit of advice offered before I’d shared anything about my project or my process, and it was offered up as one person’s opinion and not a hard-and-fast rule, but the insecure little boy inside of me who’s been hearing “You did it wrong” since he was a kid—hearing it sometimes even when it hasn’t actually been said—he just dug in his heels and started yelling at me.

I’m better now, at least to a certain extent, and I am trying out an idea that one of the faculty gave me—a weekly hand-drawn diary comic—to see if I can get any of my illustration skills back. And it was fulfilling to write and draw that strip this morning. But I still plan on using Daz to create The Blood of Seven Queens. It gets me where I want to go. It helps me fulfill my vision for the project, in the way that my unsteady hand and timid line work never will.

At any rate, here’s the diary comic, in case you’re interested.

And that’s all for now. I’ll be back in a week for paid members and in a month for free subscribers. In the meantime, you can check out the fun I’m having with World Anvil’s worldbuilding Summer Camp, where I’m fleshing out all sorts of fun stuff that will play into the graphic novel.

Thanks, as always, for your support.

Your friend,

Chris