Crisis Weekly, Week Two!

The second installment of Crisis Weekly has been posted!  Find it here.

When I conceived of this project, I thought it would be relatively simple to execute.  The only thing I didn't count on was...finding time to actually, y'know, write.

This is thanks to having a regular job on top of spending time with my niece, with whom I'm currently living.  The job hours tend to be erratic.  This week was a full one, and as I said, my day doesn't end when I get home.  I'm not complaining.  The thing is, I used to have the rest of the day free.  When I was writing book-length manuscripts in 2009-2014, or even the NaNo efforts in 2004-2006, even if the hours were somewhat equally erratic, I could always count on having the time to just write, not worrying about other commitments.  Or feeling truly exhausted, whether from the demands of work (these days I work in a child development center as a teaching assistant; no cracks, Pat) or giving my niece the attention she deserves.  I often don't feel like I have the extra energy to tackle something more.  It's enough to just try and unwind without falling asleep before doing anything at all for myself.

And yet...I had to do this thing.  Even if it doesn't get me anywhere closer to my ultimate goal, I had to do it. 

The idea is to produce a new script every week, even if it's just eight pages of comic book material.  Sounds easy enough, but as I've suggested, it seems like a lot more when piled on top of everything else.  And this is only the second week!  I set out with cockamamie schemes of having scripts out at roughly the same time, the same day, every week.  Yeah, that didn't happen even for the second week!  But here we are, second script down, second week.  Hopefully good enough.

And the delay (relatively speaking) was fruitful.  I came up with a new character who wouldn't have existed at all if in the original scheme I had already written the script, a spy who came in very late from the cold, and I think the story will be richer for it.

And I gave myself permission for the first time in the story to play with one of my personal favorite toys in the DC sandbox, a relatively obscure Justice Leaguer named Bloodwynd, and I addressed right away one of the common misconceptions about him, that he was always just Martian Manhunter in disguise.  But he wasn't.  And I'm not nearly done showing my hand with my intentions for him. 

All this is to say, I'm having fun.

Crisis Weekly begins

I've just posted the first installment of Crisis Weekly (here).  This is going to be a series of comic book scripts, eight pages each, in which I play with various DC superheroes (and some new creations).  I've developed some parallel plans for a Marvel story and an entirely original one.  All this is to help demonstrate that I have the chops, and the speed, to be a comic book writer.  And to write a long project again.

I'll keep you posted.