Boy, today was touch and go…and I knew it would be. With my inability to focus on one thing for more than about a half hour, and with the difficulty I have beginning challenging projects, let alone completing them…NaNoWriMo has officially begun. I’m not sure if I’m going to make a special page and an updating word-counter or not…but I’m definitely not doing it tonight.

I spent the majority of the day organizing and did a spot of test painting on one wall for a future project. That one will likely have to wait until December…but perhaps not.

While Inktober proved to be a smashing failure in its original intention, it actually spurred me on with some of the prompts to create a comic universe of my own. I’ve done it before (back in grade school) and have read about forty years worth of comics since….and I’m a writer so…why the hell not? This is a pretty long term project, but many of the core ideas have already taken shape, including the setting, time, long-term story arc…it could be fun if it takes over in my head long-term, but we still have a long way to go before that happens.

With this universe, I am hoping for at least some of the look and feel that Mignola gets with his Hellboy universe, but mine won’t look anything like his. I suppose my influences for looks will come more from Kindt and Lemire, though Mignola will not be absent. It will be a futuristic weird-sci-fi type world (more weird than sci-fi). With characters like The Angler, The Bulk, Petrol Man, Detritus, The Living Brain, this will not be a super serious world, but nor will it be light-hearted. The story will be a sort of unraveling mystery that takes place over three acts.

ANYway, back to the novel… I DID actually get some writing done at the last minute on The Mycelium Network. I sat on the couch in my studio to think about how I was going to approach this part of the book and it practically wrote itself before my eyes even closed. I don’t have a word count because it’s three pages of quickly hand-written scribbles in my Moleskine, but it’s a good start….better than I was expecting of myself if I’m being honest.

So my grade for today is probably a B-…that’s what it feels like. I got quite a bit done, but not nearly as much creating as I’d like…it’s likely just beginning intimidation after being idle creatively for so long. Baby steps and perhaps I’ll get around to the word counting tomorrow. I also would really like to get some art in the books and try out my new watercolors. I do need cover art for the aforementioned elsewhere in this blog comic zine for Peregrine Comics, so maybe I can do something for that.

Long-winded me is back. That’s a good sign for a productive writing Needles.