nativecomic

I had been lamenting that it was so far away from November, and do I spend the summer planning to write, or just write and try to deal with a rewrite during NaNoWriMo?

Well thanks to a tweet from @NaNoWriMo this morning, I was happily reminded about @CampNaNoWriMo! I'll participate in June this summer, writing the first draft of Native as a novel!

I always mourn the end of a writing month.

Despite a week without power and the onset of a stressful holiday season, rewriting Native last November during NaNoWriMo was one of the most enjoyable creative experiences I have ever had. Carried forward by that momentum I have even successfully cranked out comic pages twice a week for three months straight - a productivity record that stands unmatched in my personal history.

I was genuinely conflicted at the end of March, having to decide between continuing that streak or taking another break for Script Frenzy. How could I justify disappointing readers for four weeks straight while I twiddled with the script rewrite? Finally I took another hard look at the second draft I was on and decided it needed some changes, either way, and I'd rather approach them comprehensively than page-by-page. Also, to date, I wasn't quite happy with the art. There were so many things I wanted to show - so much background information I had developed - that drawing two pages per week didn't seem to afford me the time to do it any visual justice. I had planned to perhaps drop back to one page per week once May started.

In early April, I took a break from the rewrite for a day to read a book that was recommended to me. It was the first book I'd picked up and read on my own in over a year, and it felt unbelievably good. I read multiple books per week when I was young, but at some point (possibly around the time I got my first AOL account) I stopped reading. Still loved reading, but rarely afforded myself the time.

I enjoyed diving into that book so much, I began to lament that Native is not a novel. The descriptions of each scene in the transcript were my favorite to imagine and develop; immersing myself in a scene as if I'm stepping into the world and observing it first hand. When these things disappeared in the translation to the illustrated page, I missed them, and eventually I included the transcript for each page on the website so it would not die before it saw the sun. But I'd never thought that anyone would read it. I didn't trust that anyone still reads.

I'd been making the wrong assumption about how people read based on behavior I've learned about (and observed) in my career as a graphic designer in the marketing field. But when we pick up a book and dive in... we don't read in the same way that we receive (and filter) the bombardment of information we are exposed to every day.

I have been mulling this over for a while, wishing I could describe a scene with the words that I can't seem to convey in a comic panel. I hesitated because it was, frankly, embarrassing to be switching gears again after rebooting the story only earlier this year.

But I realized that if I don't do this in the way that my creative muse demands, this project is dead in the water already.

Meanwhile, I've received more positive feedback about the written transcripts posted with each page than on the pages themselves. Some told me that the words describe the scenes in a way that clarifies the dialog and fills in the gaps for those who don't live in the strange world my story takes place in. Others said that they simply enjoy the way I write. I was frustrated with this feedback before ("What about the pages?"). Now I see it as a little golden light in this dark room that I find myself in. A little ray of hope that I am making the right choice.

The characters and plot will remain the same as I established in November. I look forward to manipulating the scenes and the reader's perception of it through words, but it will be to tell the same story.

I am not interested in becoming a career writer, but at this moment I plan to finish the novel before I release it, whether to preserve the first publication rights or just to allow for a thousand rewrites before it sees the light of day. Essentially, Native is going offline. The website will remain up for at least another year (as the domain renewed last week), but I have not yet decided what, if anything, should be done with it. I will continue to use the Friends of Native Newsletter to broadcast my thoughts, so if you are subscribed you will still get updates whenever they are available.

I would love to hear your thoughts, whatever they may be (comments screened, so go wild), in response to this change. Thanks for reading the comic, sticking with me, and not rolling your eyes too hard at each of my track changes.

When the Muse says "Jump," she'll make you fly, but only if you do what you're told.

R. Korol
illustrator, author(?)

I'm 84 pages into my script re-write. I am not feeling satisfied by that, but according to that little image above, maybe I should be.

Truth be told there's so much going on that I have trouble imagining resuming the schedule of drawing two pages per week, though clearly it's not impossible because I did it for three months straight without too much angst.

However when I look back at the pages I'm not sure I'm happy with how everything is depicted. The scenes are much more vibrant in my head. A picture's worth a thousand words, but dang sometimes I wish I could just write a novel and describe everything to you instead! Especially now that I took a day out of my ScriptFrenzy to read a novel, and remembered how nice it is to just read for leisure once in a while.

My husband suggests that when I return to the comic, I should relax and post just one page per week, and get the page right to how I see it in my mind.

Pages are scheduled to resume on Tuesday, but depending how I work on the next page over the weekend, I may decide to follow his advice, in which case I would probably publish pages on Wednesday.

Feedback always appreciated. What do you think?

I'm thinking this is not quite how Talis wanted to quit the Keeper biz...

View today's page at the website!