Other Scribbles

Because people are amazing, my Kickstarter campaign will be fully funded this Thursday (though there’s still time to jump in!). I am more than a little excited. This also means that as of now, I am in full book-writing mode for the next two months. I probably won’t be posting here much, unless I have something of world-changing import to discuss. Or, y’know, just something cool to share. Otherwise, I’ll still be writing over at The Mary Sue, and it’s rare that a day goes by that I don’t stick my head into Twitter.

Here I go!

My buddy Blake recently asked me how one goes about writing comic scripts. I started to make a list of books and resources, and then realized it was far easier just to send him one of my scripts for Uncommon. While I was digging through my old files, I found something silly. And fun. And possibly share-worthy.

See, a year and a bit ago, Berglaug asked me if I was still interested in making comics. My answer was a resounding “YES.” She told me that her friend had a sister who was an art student interested in the same. The trouble was, this girl needed a writer.

Perfecto.

There was just one problem. Ragnheiður, the artist in question (and now my artist-in-crime), had never worked from a script before. She’d never seen a comic script before. So I wrote her a guide.

It’s short, casual, and never meant for public consumption. But I found it amusing, and I thought some of you might think the same. So, here. Some rough scribbles for your enjoyment.

Becky’s Script Guide (PDF, 3.23 MB)

There it is. No more mentions of that “thing” I’m working on, or that I’m “busy” and I’ll tell you about it “soon.” I’m writing a book. It’s called The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet. It’s science fiction. It’s two-thirds of the way done. And I am very excited.

The only trouble is that after months of doggedly working on it, I’m now lacking in the time to write. My freelance work has been slow as of late, and that means more hours spent trying to cobble together new gigs. After years of tinkering with this story, and after months of hammering away at it, I can’t quit now. As such, I’ve decided to raise the curtain on my writing cave and launch a Kickstarter campaign. There’s all kinds of stuff there about the project and the story, and there’s even a video of me talkin’ about it. Hooray for books! Hooray for space! Hooray for Kickstarter!

More than just garnering support, I also want to make you part of the process. As I discuss in the video, back in my theater days, it was common to have donors sit in on rehearsals. I’ve always liked that idea. I liked that the people who believed enough in the production to help fund it got to become part of it. To that end, one of my low-level rewards is the promise of weekly video updates keeping supporters posted on my progress. Not only will folks get to see just how they’ve helped me out, but I’ll be making them part of the project. I tend to be a bit of a hermit while I’m writing, so this is a very new thing for me — but I think it could be a lot of fun.

If you are inclined to chip in, a million thank yous. I’m looking forward to taking you to space with me.

Oof. After living in a Mass Effect bubble for a few days, I’ve had very little brainspace for bloggery. I reviewed the game over at The Mary Sue, but my neurons have been pretty hung up on the ending. I was briefly tempted to write a few of those thoughts here, but no. Some of you haven’t finished the game, and more importantly, I need to stop thinking about somebody else’s story and get back to my own projects.

More stuff soon.

Once upon a time, I was a bartender in Scotland. One day, a gentleman in a sportcoat with slicked back hair came up to my bar. He drank something straight — I can’t remember what. I couldn’t place his accent, but it was definitely from somewhere on “the Continent.”

Mr. Sportcoat told me I had a nice smile. I thanked him. He said that I could be a movie star. I laughed, kind of. It sounded like the sort of thing he said to a lot of bartenders.

“Isn’t that what all women want?” he asked. It was less of a question and more of a statement. “All women want to be glamorous. To be a star.”

“Not really,” I said.

“Sure you do,” he said. “Wouldn’t you love to walk down a red carpet with cameras flashing?”

“No,” I said with a smile. “I wouldn’t like that at all.”

Mr. Sportcoat seemed at a loss. He drank the rest of whatever-it-was in silence.

This memory popped up just a little bit ago, for no apparent reason. It was an odd synapse to have fire, though I think it probably was triggered in a roundabout way by Merlin Mann’s Webstock 2011 keynote speech, “Scared Shitless,” which I watched yesterday. It’s been turning over heavily in my brain, because I, too, am scared of everything, all the time.

In the talk, Merlin showed slides of index cards with his fellow speakers’ fears written on them. How brave and terrifying is that? Something about sharing fears with a roomful of strangers seems a bit like painting a big target over your heart and saying, “Hit me right freakin’ here.” Which, of course, if you’ve ever seen any action movies, is the most badass thing a person can possibly do. It’s like that scene in Breaking Bad when Gus, totally unarmed, marches right towards the hill where the sniper is shooting at him. He throws his arms wide, looking scorched-Earth mad, daring the dude to take the shot. You know right then that absolutely nobody can hurt him.

So here’s my fear:

I am constantly afraid of what people think of me. I am afraid of doing something stupid in front of them. I am afraid of them thinking badly of me. I am afraid of them laughing at me.

This fear increases tenfold if the people in question are strangers.

This is a problem, because I love writing very much, and the whole point of writing is to have people read it. If you’re going to attempt to earn your bread by writing, then your very livelihood depends on getting your work out to as many strangers as possible. Sharing the things I write with other people, especially people I don’t know, scares the ever-living shit out of me. Every single time.

I’ve struggled with that fear for a long time. It gets in my way almost every day. It makes me dig in my heels when I think of new projects. It makes me beat myself up when I realize after the fact that I didn’t say something the way I wanted to, and that other people have already seen it (that happened today, incidentally). Some days I dread getting on my computer at all. It’s stupid. I know it’s stupid. I am a tiny person who writes things of little-to-no consequence through the most impermanent medium our species has ever known. I know it’s a baseless fear. But it’s there. I can’t shake it.

That video of Merlin’s confirmed something that I already knew: that fear isn’t going away. That makes me mad. That makes me want to scream and swear and break things, because dammit, I hate being scared. I do not want to be scared my whole life. But maybe, as Merlin said, everybody is. And maybe that’s just how our species rolls. I guess from here on out, I just have to keep doing what I’ve been doing: making stuff anyway.

So, there. That’s what I’m scared of. I’ve just admitted it in the scariest way I can think of. Maybe that’ll give me +1 to my armor class, in the end.