This week is so busy....my sister's Long awaited, twice delayed and generally dreadful wedding this this week

I think she's marrying a facist turnip but whatever

I'm dreading having to be Viewed by people, because my body dysmorphia is at a critical peak

I don't know how I'm going to squeeze any work in over this week, but I certainly have to try. It's my sister wedding, but then the other days are also my birthday and I'm seeing my dad for the first time in a couple years, so I'm not going to be able to sneak away much

I expect im probably going have to drop but I'm sure that's not much of a surprise considering I literally couldn't even find the time to do the OOC meme！！

I really wanted to come back for the end, I really miss playing with people, but the stars just aren't aligning

I mean, in more positive light of that though, a lot of why I don't have time is art stuff is going really well!

I've gotten into a really good working place with my GN, behind as I may be, I'm making really good time and I'm mostly pretty happy with the results

Im also starting work in earnest on my next GN pitch! I don't know if this will be the one I take to publishers or not, it's very special to me and probably not very marketable to mainstream publishers.

I definitely have some indie publishers in mind who I think might like it, but they pay smaller advances so I would really like to do one more project with traditional publishers for financial security first

Because I WANT to work with some of those indie publishers very much, I just need to be in a self supporting place financially because they can't offer as much (but they give a lot more flexibility wrt content and still have great reach within the community, it's just more niche)

For December I have a zine pitch deadline to a small queer publisher taking submissions, so I am prioritizing that right now. I have a loose goal of inking 50 pages a month, which would see me being totally done with inking by June.

I would love to be done before that but I think it's better to not overshoot the goal too much and risk burnout or disappointment

I'm also looking at generally doing more physical/in person type things next year, going to cons and really setting up going to a LOT of cons in 2025

But in order to do that I really need to work on a lot more stuff, and update some older stuff...I've been out of the con game for a few years, even before the pandemic shut it all down

I've been doing a lot of soul searching and deep dives into the whole process of this. It's always a roller coaster, but creativity is definitely a muscle that needs to be trained, and now that I feel like I'm feeding and excercising it better, I can feel myself working better

I've been trying to be a lot more conscientious of what I consume....more intentional. Putting stuff in that is feeding my creativity better, not letting algorithms take the wheel and guide all my music, movie and reading

I've been dipping into more audio books because they're kind of perfect while inking?

The Creative Act by Rick Rubin and I was acepto al of what insights it could offer but honestly it's been pretty amazing.

*skeptical

While it's definitely a "self help" book for creatives (creative here being defined as literally any act of making, so it's quite broadly applicable which is nice) it's kind of what I needed right now. A lot of calm, non judgemental pep talks about the patience of art making

It's absolutely got the fanciful mysticism of the role of creativity, but honestly, I prefer that to like, the more hard edged notion of art as "content" and business. And it still encourages actual paths forward through how to make your own life more optimized to allow you to be creative

I think it's just nice to have something that doesn't feel like it's trying to sell me anything, and is really removed from the rise and grind culture that's so thoroughly infecting art making in our society (for understandable reasons)

Social media's big collapse in 2023 has been distressing as someone who GOT their career through social media and like all of us, I continue to rely on it for connection to audiences. The situation is pretty dire right now for visual artists (plus, you know. The whole AI thing)

But it's kind of encouraged me to think about it less, and to think more about making real things and less about how well a sketch I made is doing on any given platform

Like, Twitter is so broken at this point, it kind of doesn't matter how much or little people engage compared to a year ago

Which, in some ways sucks a lot

But is also kind of freeing....I feel like I've been able to sketch and make exploratory stuff without feeling like I was wasting time that could be spent on a polished piece for the Medias

I have never been an artist who relied on like, commissions or that kind of thing though so I'm sure it's a lot worse for some people than others. For me this is helping me get back to my roots, as someone who makes comics, with an ultimate goal of people reading comics they hold in their hands

Or in some cases, like, pdfs or whatever

I totally missed this plurk but omg your next GN pitch

👀

It's such a good book, I need to reread it again