I need to do a little writing about writing today. Not about my non-fiction writing that I do here but some fiction writing. In the past I’ve done a bit of fiction writing. Short stuff. I’ve never written a novel nor had the desire to write one. Most of my fiction writing these days has to do with my comic strips but in the past I did a lot more comic book writing. I even self published six issues of a comic book with my friends back in the late 1990s.
The last thing I wrote and published along those lines was my “Ghost of Fifth Street” comic about five years ago. I actually wrote an art and pictures book after that but never bothered to publish it. Mostly because no one but a few friends cared about my “Ghost of Fifth Street” comic so I didn’t want to bother. It cost me more money to publish it, even with a print on demand service, than I made from it. That killed my motivation.
Now enough time has gone by that I want to make a couple of books again. I actually have a few in the pipe but I haven’t been motivated to sit down and write them. I still have the last one I wrote five years ago. It’s been unlooked at since then so I’ll have to read it again and see how it is.
I also have a second art book from that same time period that I never wrote. It’s put together visually with notes but that’s the exact time that I lost any motivation to make books. I could get back to writing that one but that doesn’t appeal to me. Of course nothing else fiction writing-wise has appealed to me either.
I have one more book in progress from eight years ago that I started but never finished. In 2012 I filled a small red Moleskine sketchbook up with drawings done in a red pen. I was going to make a book out of it that used the sketchbook as an artifact the story revolved around. I scanned in the whole book, set it up in InDesign, and started writing the story. I never finished the story. It’s still sitting there undone.
One of the pieces I’ve been wanting to work on has been a story based around my fortune telling cards. In the early 2000s I worked on a deck of forty eight fortune telling cards. I not only came up with the cards but I came up with a whole system to use them. All the cards have meanings and I can deal a few of them out and figure out the meanings of them interacting. No one can really tell the future but I like cards and found it fun to do.
I’ve always had an idea to write a story involving the cards. The cards would be artifacts in the story. Maybe a source of power and information. I see the story as a noir story where the main character finds an old set of fortune telling cards and they lead him on a path in the darkness.
My fortune telling cards aren’t old like the Tarot. They’re supposed to be modern. Most of the concepts in them, like “Sky Blue Tie” are 20th Century concepts so the guy in the story who finds them won’t think that they’re ancient. Just last night I had the idea to make them from the 1990s. In the early 1990s there was a boom in trading cards. Sports cards were especially successful but the rising tide lifted the boats of non-sports cards too. I think I can make the mysterious cards from that era. No one knows where they come from and why would they? That era was flooded with cards. No one knows them all.
The problem is that all that doesn’t make a story. That’s just the background. A lot of people mistake “Having and idea for a story” with just having some background material. A story has a beginning, middle, and end and not just an “Idea.” I have the beginning in mind but not much else. I have to actually sit down and write it. Along with some other stuff.
I continue to write my “Four Talking Boxes” comic strip in the morning. Before breakfast, as I get ready for the day, I have my laptop open and write the strip. I’ve been writing five to six strips a week for many years now. So many that I’m now over a year ahead in the writing part of the strip. At least I’m good to go with that.
The other thing I have an idea to write is “A Hundred Words About A Hundred Drawings.” All during the Covid-19 summer I was drawing six by nine inch ink drawings. At this point I have 99 of them. I got the idea of making a book of them back when I had fifty of them. It was going to be fifty words about fifty drawings but now the number is higher. Why not? Each page will have a drawing on it plus a little story to go along with the drawing. I’ve go ten little stories done so far.
I did a lot of writing last spring to get ahead on my “Drifting and Dreaming” and “Message Tee” comic strips. I wrote many cartoon art cards, Middle Stories, and pithy sayings for T-shirts. Though it was all short writing it still took a lot of time. Now maybe I can take some time and write some art books.
I’ve been writing this blog for 15 years now. A thousand words a week and I’ve never skipped a week. That’s an accomplishment that no one cares about but me but I’m glad I’ve done it. I know I can get writing done so now I’ve got to get some more book writing done. Let’s see if I can.