Imagine me just now, on the floor, arms and legs stretched out, head thrown back drunkenly, sighing in relief. Life’s been one giant bundle of busy-ness, what with work, and working on comics and books, and Matt & I searching for an apartment together. We’re waiting to hear back on a place in Sunset Park that we both <i>adore</i>, so I have my fingers crossed! I have terrible to no credit yet make good money while Matt has perfect credit and makes much less. We hope we can at least balance each other out. Credit checks always set a big ol’ lump of coal in my gut because I had a car repossessed several years back (for missing two months payment, thank-you-very-much), and it’s pretty much ruined my credit since because I don’t have any other credit to negate it. I don’t believe in using a credit card, and I avoid loans because I hate owing money to ANYBODY. I prefer to live within my current means than to project upon my future means, because you never know what could happen and then be in a mountain of debt due to unforseen circumstances … as happened to my mom and step-dad when they got sued the year I thought I’d be going to college (that never happened, apparently).

Anyway … nervous. :\ I want to live in a place more accessible to my work, and really, I just love Sunset Park. It’s mostly Latino and … it feels like home to me. My dad and I were talking about how much more comfortable we feel in a Latino community than a heavily white one (which is how it is where I live now, in Brooklyn). Maybe it’s because I grew up in Texas, or maybe it’s because people meet your eyes there and don’t look away guiltily, but rather smile or nod or at least acknowledge your presence, just as curious as myself. It’s where I was for the census, and I fell in love with it.

Other things I’ve been up to? Well, working a 45 hour week at a real-estate company lately. Oddly, for having longer hours, I’ve actually had MORE energy to draw outside of work than I did working at HarperCollins. People here are energetic and friendly and there’s a nice sort of family feeling to the place. HarperCollins was well … it’s a lot of creatives and a lot of use sort of keep to ourselves or develop little cliques that make it difficult for outsiders to intrude. I do miss all the books however … I have a stack of books now against my wall, that if stacked on top of each other, they’d reach my ceiling. My 12-foot high ceiling.

So every day now, at lunch, I go to the break room overlooking Grand Central Station, swing my legs from a stool perched along the wall of windows, and draw my little heart out. It’s never a lot … but it’s enough. Enough to know that I’m still going. Enough to know I’m setting pencil on paper every day and slowly .. but surely … making progress.

In the meantime, proof that I’m actually working and not just saying it. It’s been a while since I’ve gotten to post art:

PS. I can’t believe I get up every day at 6:30 for work and go to bed at 1 after drawing for several hours when I get home, and yet I still feel happy and rested the next day. I must be getting old to be able to survive on only 5.5 hours of sleep every night … I’m turning into an old lady! Oh noes!!!! ;D

PPS. I love my job. My boss yells a lot (not at me) and it’s amazing.

PPSS. But I also miss my friends. I think once Matt & I move, life will be a bit less crazy and hectic, and I look forward to seeing my friends again! Maybe we’ll even have a little party once we get settled in a bit. <3 <3 <3 If we get the apartment we want, we’ll have roof access with a view of ALL of downtown Manhattan PLUS the Statue of Liberty PLUS the island next to it (Staton Island?) AND the park behind us. I WANT THIS APARTMENT. ;_; But I will accept if it’s not meant to be. ;_;

PHEW! It’s the last week for the US Census, and lordy are my back and body happy about that! I’ve felt like a mule carrying twenty pounds or more of paperwork every which way across Brooklyn. Also, I’ve been simultaneously juggling a new temp job with HarperCollins, so obviously … it’s been crazy busy.

And yet, in the midst of all the craziness, I’ve been drawing and working on “Jeannie Carnini” again. I’ve been redrawing and simplifying the first pages and made the format slightly wider. The plan is to release several formats: a high-end letterpress version in “simo” (as they say at HarperCollins instead of “simultaneous”) with an ipad digital version. I want people to read it, but I also know there are those like me out there who love the hand-made and are willing to pay extra for it. I’ll probably price the letterpress version around $30 and the digital around $4.95.

I know. Steep price difference, huh? But I’m not a Scrooge. It infuriates me when publishers want to charge as much for a digital book as they do for a print book, or even more than $5 honestly. There is next to NO UPFRONT COST in making a digital book: other than the time that goes into making it. Which is still a significant amount of time, but it’s miniscule in comparison with the cost of printing, storing, shipping, and maintaining a print book.

That, and I like the idea of my work being accessible to anyone of any income.

Also, you never know. With the low price of a digital book, perhaps that’ll make the idea of a print book that much appealing; if you really like something, you want to keep it and cherish it forever.

Eventually, I would also like to pitch my children’s book to larger publishers, but I really want to just focus on self-publishing right now. I’ve also already fixed it in my mind that I won’t sign to any publisher without the right to continue self-publishing print runs of under 500, specific print requirements (no glossy interiors) and keeping my digital rights (which is a contest, because that’s what all the major houses are focusing on).

Oddly, my new job at HarperCollins is in their digital rights department, working on … of all things … ebooks. Funny how these things work. :D

In the meantime, off to visit my Census crew and collect the last of their paperwork. It’s been grande making money and saving up to move (either to Sunset Park or Park Slope) but LORDY AM I GLAD IT’S ALMOST OVER.

Toodles!

-Rivkah

“We must bestow commendation on all people, thus removing the discord & hatred which have caused the alienation amongst men.” -Abdu’l-Baha

And bite our tongues when we do not.  I have to admit, I’ve struggled most over the last few years with curbing my tongue when I have a critical thought. In my head, I see it as trying to making something (or someone) better (including myself!), and I always went out of my way to put it nicely, but it took me a long time to realize that sometimes it really is better to just bite the words in half and swallow them. Too often I see the negative before the positive, and it takes a lot of self-discipline to work out of that. It’s not about being a pessimist but of having a world view that anything can be better.

But, because I struggle to improve myself, that doesn’t mean I have to broadcast every criticism to others. Not unless its’ a request or I fear someone may come to physical or mental harm if I don’t speak up.

We used to talk a lot about this in Ruhi (my Austin Baha’i study group), and it seems too common to want to open our mouths “for someone’s own good” because we also teach truth and honesty, but what is one person’s ideal isn’t always another’s. The motivation to improve as a person must come from within, it cannot be forced. To force someone down a path is to shut it off from them entirely. Unasked for criticism breeds doubt, resentment, and a closed heart, even where it is not intended. But praise where it is earned, love and encouragement makes the heart blossom forth and bloom, nurturing a sweet scent for others to follow.

Though I’ll be holding off several years before getting any sort of tablet reading device, I have to admit that the iPad does make the idea of reading color comics in a digital format far more palatable. My greatest reason for standing behind b/w comics has always been simple: they’re cheaper to print. My greatest reason for staying away from digital comics has been simple as well: horizontal screen format.

I started out trying to make comics for the web, and trying to make a vertical format work on a horizontal screen is iffy at best. The horizontal format works for strip-type comics, but it doesn’t work for dynamic, panoramic comics. Action comics in particular seem to suffer; the body is vertical, so trying to make an action scene where the body takes up the full page in a horizontal format doesn’t have the same impact.

Tablets like the iPad (of course, I’ll be buying something more like the Lenovo tablet eventually since the Apple OS is poison for this Windows geek) enable a vertical digital environment that wasn’t previously available. The same kind of environment that print has embraced for centuries. The vertical format is preferred for innumerable reasons, and the main two reasons the horizontal format has worked for digital for so long are because of the shape of the keypad and navigation. But get rid of the keypad because it’s a consumer device, not a productivity device, and move the navigation bar to the top, and you have, essentially, a return to the print format.

I look forward to having a tablet myself, one day, and being able to purchase color comics at, I HOPE, a fraction of the current price. I do love color … but if only it weren’t so expensive. And considering color is printed at a lower resolution than b/w anyway (sort of…),the loss in quality from print to screen isn’t as noticeable.

You know … I’m not afraid of putting up work that’s still in it’s raw stages because I realize that making art is a process that churns out an awful lot of crap. I’ve never professed to be a genius at my art or to be anywhere even close to the best. But what I do profess is a love of learning, of knowledge, and a pride in exposing my veins.

It’s hard putting up work that’s less than perfect, the flaws of which even I can see. But I believe it is absolutely ESSENTIAL as a source of encouragement to those fresh at pursuing their passion.

When I was younger, I used to get discouraged in art, in writing, in music, because all most people ever see of an artist’s (ALL kinds of artists/writers/photographers/etc) work is the end result. Rarely do we see the process, the progress, the 50,000 pages of pure CRAP that gets churned out before its made beautiful and whole.

While it should come as no surprise that because of my lack of fear at displaying the worst along with the best, I often get comments like this: http://lilrivkah.livejournal.com/303076.html?thread=3038948#t3038948

…it still hurts.

But I keep moving on, because I actually fucking BELIEVE in something.

I. WILL. NOT. LET. GO.

I. WILL. NOT. GIVE. UP.

And I won’t let somebody too afraid to state their name or show their face control how I feel about myself or how I face the world.

That is all!

When writing, try to keep constantly in mind not how YOU, the narrator, perceive the scene, but how your CHARACTER perceives it. Too easy is it to write what happens without giving the reader insight as to how your characters feel about what happens.  This is a case where “telling” can trump “showing”. Sometimes it adds dynamic to spin outside your character’s head, but occasionally spinning back in again helps the reader to connect and feel a part of the story instead of hovering outside of it.

Write your books through your character’s eyes and mind, not your own.

This, of course, came up because I just rewrote the opening paragraph for my next chapter. The following is unedited, but you should still get the gist of how the feeling for the scene changes simply by moving into my character’s head instead of outside of it.

–

Original:

It was a while before any of them could find the strength to speak. Mikey was the first, pointing at a little yellow bird that had alighted on the ground in front of them. They had been forging their way through the overgrown jungle, ducking beneath leaves the size of baby elephants, winding around brightly colored mushrooms that grew taller than their heads and vines and moss that grew like curtains across their path. So far, though, the jungle had been silent except for the wind, not a bird or a bee in sight, and the little yellow bird drew them up short, staring. It fluttered to a bush a few feet away and turned around and chirped at them.

“I think it wants us to follow it,” Mikey said.

–

And revised:

Jane didn’t at first notice the eerie stillness of the jungle that surrounded them. Her mind was filled with the dimming of the stars in the Red Stag’s blue eyes and the shine of his golden wings. She hung her head, ignoring the plants that slapped her face and the dew that shook down onto her back. A lonely wind soughed through the vines that hung like curtains from graceful, curving branches and shook leaves the size of baby elephants, arching above their chosen path.

“Do you think it wants us to follow it?” Mikey asked, and Jane looked around, for a moment shaken out her despair.

There was a little yellow bird perched upon a low bush in front of them, and it hopped to another bush, turned, and fluttered its wings at them.

–

Personally, I like the second one SO MUCH BETTER. It feels more character-driven and sets a deeper mood. But what about you guys? When do you think it’s appropriate to dive into the character’s head and other times to pull outside of it?

I wonder how this concept can be applied to comics as well?

Phew. I reached a little over my seven page goal today, and I actually want to keep writing, but I think my brain needs a rest. I spent the last several days working out the previous twenty-page scene, and finally reaching the end of this chapter has left me triumphant but drained.

I’ve had a few people ask me lately why I keep going back and reworking pages. A common bit of wisdom for writers working on their first draft is to just GET IT DOWN. And wise indeed! The first draft of “Jane’s S.O.S.” was written in two months on lined notebook paper, filling journal after journal of my dutiful plotting. Hand-writing, I’ve found, makes it impossible for me to hit “delete” or to get stuck on a word or two that may eventually get thrown away.

However, I am no longer on the first draft of this book, nor the second. Last year, I finished what I thought was my most polished draft and put it in a drawer to sit and ponder. I’ve gotten in the habit of self-editing which many writers and artists claim is impossible, but I believe merely requires the weathering of time on my neurons. A year later, I dusted off that manuscript and read it through, beginning to end.

My decision after finishing that read-through was that the entire manuscript needed a rewrite. The basic structure and themes would remain, but the plot needed tightening. The characters also weren’t as compelling or dynamic as I believe they could be. My voice lacked the focus that the story needed. The samples I’d sent to friends all said that they enjoyed the writing itself (yeay!) but that it needed more punch (owch!). I agreed.

This later incarnation of this book is basically me folding over my old manuscript and writing it from memory. I do not reference or go back to the old one. As far as that’s concerned, it’s an outline, not a manuscript.

As I began to hack away at the new book, I realized that part of the problem with the old book is the science. My fantasy writing is heavily influenced by my love of physics. Even if I don’t sit and talk about Einstein’s models of Special and General Relativity (okay, maybe a TEENSY bit!), in order for the fantasy to work, the science has to work in my head first.

Reaching a major “reveal all” scene in my book–the pre-climax I guess you could call it–I found myself going into detailed explainations of the physics behind the fantasy. Five pages turned into ten, into twenty, into fifty. I could have written a novel on the science alone!

My internal dialog:

Okay, so I obviously need to cut this down. Fifty is a quarter of the book!

But! But! It needs to make sense to the reader! There are reveals about plot, story, character’s deaths and motivations, etc.

Wait a sec. You’re revealing it all at ONCE?

Well. Yeah. You know, she meets a major character and he knows EVERYTHING–

Hold up. Listen to yourself! You can’t just DUMP on your reader.

I can’t?

NO YOU CAN’T! You’ll blow their braincells! And worse? You’ll BORE THEM TO TEARS. I’m not sure which is worse.

Oh my god. I hate being bored. But the science is so NEAT. How could it be boring?

Print it out. Read it.

So, I printed it out. I read it. And the little devil of my editorial conscience was right.

And instead of whining, I went back and rewrote it. The science bits? They didn’t need to be thrown out entirely, but they could be revealed in stages in other ways and toned down. The character bits? The most interesting parts are revealed, but I left out one or two key pieces of information to be revealed later, because you know the other annoying thing about info dumping?

You lose your hook.

Explain too much to the reader, there is suddenly less mystery. The less mystery, the less your reader is going to wonder what’s going to happen next. The less they wonder what’s going to happen next, the more bored they become and wander off to do other things. Like clean their bathroom.

So fifty pages became twenty again, got revised and became twelve.

Sigh of relief, I finished the chapter, and now it’s one of the best bits (so I like to think) of the entire book. I was literally jumping up and down in my seat as they made their escape, shivering with fear as they got nearly caught, and crying when ____ ____ (major plot spoiler there).

At a certain point in this draft, I took on the mantra “as short as you can make it”. I’m ADD girl. I loathe books that drag out further than necessary. You don’t need a mountain of description to establish mood or setting. You give just enough to the reader to fill in the rest themselves and what comes out is a story that’s just as, if not more compelling than if you’d spent pages describing the color of their hair or the freckles in the shape of Kansas on their forehead (okay, that is kind of neat, but you get the point here).

Anyway, I think I want to get back to my book now. Listening to the Asylum Street Spankers (um… not quite work-safe) and Squirrel Nut Zippers. Wammo (singer in the tophat) reminds me of my ex. HA! Eerily similar facial expressions and singing voice. And that devil beard goatee thingy… LOL.h

I love how things seem to just work themselves out on their own sometimes. I just got a call from the US Census Bureau, asking me to be Crew Leader for two months. The whole time, I was crossing my fingers, hoping it wouldn’t be something I’d have to start tomorrow, or next week, or even the week after that because I’ve gotta book to finish damnit. But they also pay $20.25 an hour, and who wants to turn down that?

And well, waddaya know? I don’t start until the 12th. The day after MoCCA in fact. Two weeks off, exact.

Life is neat like that. :)

*pets the poor website* I’m sorry blog. I have neglected you. I’ve been a terrible host the last month and a half. But never fear! I’ve many things to impart after 5pm tomorrow, Eastern time!

I don’t know if most of you know, I have a twitter account that I update fairly frequently: http://twitter.com/lilrivkah/ I miss talking to people and holding discussions via blog/livejournal, but at the moment, I have little energy for anything other than work and writing. That’s changing soon, though. :)

However, no Facebook. I actually just deleted my account with them because it always takes forever to load (sometimes doesn’t) and the interface is crazy along with realizing it would be REALLY EASY to hijack and my family likes to post things like their phone numbers and personal info they think is private (NOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!). At least twitter being public, nobody ever is under the mistaken impression that what they say won’t ever be seen.

So, I’m not dead, just working my little fingers off and occasionally twittering my rants, be they about Lady Gaga (HEART), the latest Disney flick (GUH), or YA and Children’s literature in general. Working at HarperCollins has certainly given me some interesting insights the last two months!

See you lil gals and guys soon!

-Rivkah

What my daily four to five hours of writing is like:

Write on subway for hour while traveling to work. Write for hour during lunch break. Write for hour on subway ride back home … if I can find a spot to sit. Evening trains are considerably more full than my morning train. Get home. Fuel up. And erase the entire last three hours of writing. Rewrite what was a couple hundred to a few thousand words to a third of its previous existence.

I think I spend more time writing things I eventually erase than I do writing what I end up keeping. It’s a lot like drawing a comic page, though: even an initial rough penciled page usually involves pages worth of drawings and sketches and thumbnails just laying it out. My writing process seems to work the same way: scribble furiously in the margins for hours in order to get that half to full hour’s worth of credible content.

My temp position at HC is up at the end of the month, so I’m taking a week and a half off to work on “Jane’s S.O.S” and “Jeannie Carnini”. As much as I enjoy this job, I’m happy to be getting the break to work more solidly on my personal projects again. It’s only been a month, and I’m experiencing the pangs of loss from not being able to work on my comics full-time. Snatches here and there aren’t enough. I think temp work agrees with me!

Last week, I was terribly sick, and I’m only just now starting to recover. Congestion, throat, and lung issues, and feeling like a leech was stuck to the back of my spinal cord, draining every ounce of mental energy from my brain. Spent my few semi-lucid hours watching Harry Potter and Indiana Jones. The latest Harry Potter, “The Half Blood Prince”, was so beautifully directed and composed I ended up watching it twice. Without a question, the best Harry Potter movie so far. It even beat out “Prisoner of Azkaban” which was my previous favorite, and that, honestly, was the only movie I liked better than the book. Though I can’t say that movie six was better than book six. The book “The Half Blood Prince” was so exponentially better than any other that it couldn’t even compare.

The music in “The Half Blood Prince”, however, was what made it truly stand out for me. The composer, Nicholas Hooper, moved away from some of the tired tropes of the earlier movies, and composed scores that managed to capture the essence of the previous Harry Potter music themes, yet played with an originality, diversity, and finesse that every musical scene sparkled with emotion and depth. I ended up downloading the soundtrack, and the entire movie unfolds through the score alone. I’m reminded of “Peter & the Wolf” in that every character has a unique sound or instrument perfectly suited to their temperament and theme. And while the score is generally very simple, it’s rarely repetitive and musically directed with the kind of emotional skill you find in modern music, not classical. It’s been a long time since I’ve enjoyed a classical soundtrack, and having once wanted to be a composer myself (Didn’t realize I was an avid music student all through middle and high school, did you? Why do you think I got such a late start with my art?) it’s refreshing to hear emotive, compelling music that isn’t over-composed or cliche.

Anybody who’s a fan of a broad range of music that explores the depth of human emotion and thematic mood really should check this composer out. Very few are so skilled in their craft.

On that note, back to work for me. It’s only ten, so I still got a few hours of writing time left. Less deleting, more saving. :)