See. I said I'd be back.

Thought I'd talk a little about my writing process for a short story I'm working on at the moment. It started off as a fairly straight forward affair as far as the plot is concerned, but as it began to take shape, it was apparent I was growing more dissatisfied with it.

The story as it was seemed a little flat. While you could consider it non-standard, it wasn't particularly remarkable. I was happy with the concept, but I think the execution isn't all it could be. If I left it as it is, it would reek like a Deviant Art comic. Full of fanciful art, flat storytelling, relying too much on exposition (well, not in my comic, but I want to rag on DA a little) and a shock ending for juxtaposition you'd see a mile away because that's in at DA.

I didn't want the high notes of my comic to be the first and last two pages of my comic, and the rest to be filler. It's standard at the typical mainstream publishers at marvel and dc to write that way, I tend to like my own writing to be more experimental, a bit challenging for the reader, and try to leave room for the reader to interpret the story in their own ways.

Then I watched a movie called What is it?. I'm going to preface this by advising that the movie isn't very watchable. I doubt even if you read my stuff or have similar tastes to my own that you would sit through that movie. It's really uncompromising. I appreciated that. I'll leave it at that. The point is, that I really inspired me to approach my story again differently; from disparate directions.

I began to form new ideas. I could still use the existing story, but use it as a sub narrative over a more ambiguous and surreal counter-narrative. I would use them to weave a rationale behind my theme for the short story I'm working on.

Moral of the story: Don't be precious with your work. Be prepared to shit all over it. For art.

For people in Sydney; I'll be heading over there for Supanova. I'll most likely be at the Oztaku booth. Come say hello.