Saturday 21 August 2010

In The Land Of Fog Notes

Well, the pages keep on being added, albeit more slowly than what I'd like. Patience, patience... I'm on page 34 of my first draft (96 long, A4). I managed to do 11 pages yesterday. I was hoping to do even more today but I'm still on page 4...
Ah well... the night is still young...

peace!

Thursday 19 August 2010

Drifting Ideas

Lately I've been playing quite a bit of guitar and have even composed a few tracks. Nothing fancy - I can't be bothered to polish things to death - but honest!

Today I typed up a series of ideas that had been bobbing around in my head for a few days. Quite a few of them, as it turns out, for Batman.
I have a few files with just random ideas that I have in some of my favourite characters (those are the ones where ideas for stories come about...). I don't know if I'll ever write a Batman comic, or an X-Men, Wolverine, Hulk, Daredevil, Superman or whatnot but, if I ever do, I'll have stuff I can look up and quite possibly use. You see, I'm always aiming at stuff that is as atemporal as possible. Ie, I try that the plots are never technology dependent. More often than not, plots that are technology dependent simply bore me. As soon as I read them they become self-centred and dated.

In any case, I typed a couple of pages with synopsis and plots as well as some notes on the character and stuff I'd like to see Bats go through.

I also made some notes for the expansion of a short story I've posted here a while ago (Legacy) into a proper book.

Besides that, a couple more ideas for an post-apocalyptic story. I don't know where these will fit but, since I have quite a few post-apocalyptic scenarios thought out, I'm sure they'll fit in somewhere...

If possible today I'd like to at least write half of a review for Starman vol.02 Night And Day - which is as far as I've read so far. I'm just adoring this comic. And I want to write about it as much as possible since, if I ever do something in comics, it will be very similar to what James Robinson tried to do here. Not in terms of plot, story or characters, but perhaps quite similar in terms of inner truth, feeling of closeness and complicity with the reader. Similar in the objectives James had towards the story and the readership. Something that I'm finding increasingly important.
If you haven't read it my advice is that you do read it. Even if you don't like superheroes stuff. It is a boy's comic, in a way (it has lots of adventures and most characters are male) but it's so much more than that. And that's precisely what makes this book tick and awe.
Read it!

peace!

Land Of Fog Update

It's been ages, I know.
But here's a quick recap of what's been happening for the last couple of months...

I managed to finish the first full revision of the original text some 5 minutes before I landed in Lisbon on the 21st of July. That felt really good since I really wanted to start my holidays without having that thing incompleted, roaming around my head...

Until the 5th of August I was in Portugal on holidays. Still I made my objective to type 10 pages a day of the revision notes I'd compiled.
There were 249 pages.
I more or less stuck to the schedule (it takes so long to type... it just tires me...) and on the 14th of August, last saturday, I finished the typing. Dead on schedule...

I more or less took sunday off. I let the book rest.

But on monday I started weaving the revision notes into the body of the original text, thus slowly compiling the second draft. My aim is to have this second phase ready by the end of the month. Which means some 7 pages a day...

I've been a bit behind schedule. But yesterday I started to catch up and today I'm also more or less on track. I'm off until next monday so... I have to be ahead of the game by then - particularly because a couple of friends are staying over for a week, starting on monday...

Having said this, I have also started to type up notes that I compiled during the re-write for books two and three (now tentatively named Lands Of Mist and Tide)

As soon as all the text is ready I'm gonna read it all out loud (flatmates watch out!) and make a few corrections along the way. Don't know if I'll print out the whole thing (the second draft) or not. I guess I'll decide as soon as the text is ready...
Hopefully the second draft will be concluded by first week in september. And, before the end of the month I'll be able to revise the whole text a couple times more (I'm betting it won't take long, just re-reading and making a change here and there... keeping my fingers crossed....)

And start sending the thing out (at least the first few chapters to publishers - their requirements do vary...) in october. Beginning of the month, preferably...

Peace!