Question for creatives: what part of your craft are you trying to improve right now? Where are you pushing? How is it going?
Me? Elegance, and ask me in 6 months.
Me? Elegance, and ask me in 6 months.
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On the art side, I’m trying out nontrad comic formats (mini-comic, de Campi comics, et al); this is all going a bit like Victorian operating theater.
Writing: Getting back to being weird. The kind of commissioned work I’ve been doing a lot of lately tends make you conservative.
Just the sense of 'I've reached the limit of my approach so far' pushing me to put it all aside so I can go out, live a lot more, acquire totally new influences, thinking, more experience, to come out a changed writer.
I’ve now written a script that requires (at the moment - I’ll probably cut it back) over 3,700 words
So that should help
It's not going *great*, but I keep reminding myself that this is the worst part, where giving up feels the smartest move.
In about 3 months I'll be good, but OMG I hate this part SO much.
Personal? Self belief. I'm writing fiction again, and it's great, but this year has been nothing but professional challenges and industrial chaos in every field I work in so far. It's very hard to maintain self belief in that
Working in LA made me trade messy actor-brained writing for tidy / efficient / populist plotting and it really robs stories (and me) of excitement.
The world's hard enough. I dont want to starve people of positivity or connection to where its punishing / adding to misery.
Navigating the line between the two.
The instinct to rockist is strong in this one!
trying to escape my lyrics/melody background, I have found a nice clear beat is the key. An unflappable white wall at which any amount of 'weird' can be thrown.
Where: "finishing / publishing" - putting something out there to see what others think and what suggestions they have, rather than incrementally thinking on a project.
Pushing: "realising some solutions are sufficient rather than optimal".
How is it going? "improving" I think.
it's not going well
I also had my first two commissions this summer--thankfully with friends. It taught me so so much. I need to sit down and structure how my commission process works for the sake of streamlining communication. And uh, so it really looks like I know what I'm doing.
Absolutely screwed up atm
I don't know if I can say I'm doing specific things to improve these parts of my craft, but they're something that I'm increasingly aware of as I write nowadays.
And I would say I'm making good progress on them.
I’m having to relearn how after a long time without medical support for my adhd
2 - Trying to stretch my traditional media skills with pencils, Posca markers, etc.
I want to get better at spontaneously churning out stories.
To do this i started a caption story where i write out ~400 words at a time to keep a story going
Also beating my inner critic.
Coherence of tone in works with broad tonal ranges. Why do some works give whiplash when they move between joy and tragedy, while others effortlessly make it part of the same story?