Page 5b roughs

Rough Draft 1 (using the original placement of word balloons)

Rough Draft 2 (Ooops, students came out way too big; Dr. Q looks shrimpy!)

Rough Draft 3: tidying up placement of students

Rough Draft 4: still trying to place word balloons so they don't bleed off the page

Rough Draft 5: ready for color

Finished 5B fully colored (though not yet shaded....)

This half page took 5 hours. Ouch. I don't anticipate many future splash pages like this since they're so labor intensive. I've added several of them early on to hook readers into the story. I know that page after page of talking heads await unwary readers so I'm subtly creating an unspoken expectation that future pages will contain sufficient visual variety so as not to bore readers. It's blatant manipulation.

Finicky readers will note that the students are not sitting in the same places they were on page 3. If I were making a movie somebody would catch this inconsistency. I'm hoping that readers will read quickly and not catch the mistake; I hope they get the sense that the students have an enthusiastic naivete about Dr. Q's lecture. That'll change soon enough but on this first day of lectures they're on board.

Page 4a

As I drew this half page all the voices of all the writing instructors, books, and coaches I've ever had screamed in my head, "Show, don't tell!" I scream back, "I don't have time. Shut up." My attitude is a less than perfect finished manuscript is better than a perfect unfinished one. Right or wrong, this is the creative path I've chosen. This somewhat simple page took only 2 hours; my speed is increasing. Yay.

Cutting and Pasting Digitally

I outfoxed myself. In my last post I displayed page 3. However, when I drew it I thought I'd save time by NOT sticking closely to my rough draft and chose rather to omit one of the students (Betty). To my dismay when I saw my rough sketch for page 4 I discovered I needed to have Betty appear in page 3. What to do? I didn't want to redraw the whole thing...so I tried the digital cut and paste feature. Here is the result.

Like magic Betty has now appeared. I simply cut and then pasted Terry and Karenoia to the right. I drew Betty on a separate file and cut and pasted her into the panel. You'll see on page 4 why this was necessary. This digital world will put eraser companies out of business.

Re-engaging, Believe it or Not

My new filing system; two top boxes are EU rough drafts

Since my last post three and half months ago I married off a son, practiced being a new grand father, spent five weeks in a motel with Zelda the cat while repair persons replaced all the floors in our house due to water damage, reignited a speaking career (one gig included creating a 50+ slide Power Point presentation), made daily visits to my beleaguered wife whose health continues to deteriorate, began a massive de-cluttering project in prep for selling our house, transferred all my digital copy (projects, tasks, grist for new books) to Evernote, sent a bulk mailing to 400 former clients giving them a free updated version of a 55 page book, Managing Marital Irritations (get your free copy here), launched a silly website about volvelles (click here if you dare), and discovered Netflix after giving away our TV. (New guilty pleasure: 30 Rock). All this on top of running a one man therapy shop, writing a new book about grief and doubt, frying my synapses reading Kierkegaard, and launching a weekly conflict mediation blog. Click here to take a gander.

Even though I read another book about finishing creative tasks during this hiatus from drawing Ecclesiastes University,  I've been badgered by guilt. I entered my third third (age 60-90) determined to illustrate Ecclesiastes in graphic novel form and have been waylaid by these and a dozen other delicious diversions.

I'm back, planning now to begin drawing this weekend. What has spurred me on (beyond a sense of calling) is the wacky idea of turning Ecclesiastes University into a series of books featuring a host of guest lecturers. I'd love to do to Pascal, Chesterton, Lewis, Kierkegaard, and Camus what I've done to Qoheleth (which would really gum up the works since Ecclesiastes University would include classes NOT based on Ecclesiastes. Sigh....what a mess). But I dare not start anything new until we get Dr. Q finished. I'm looking at 450+ pages of 6 panel drawings each...gulp. Here goes.

Color Me Purple

As I continue to familiarize myself with this new WACOM digital tablet I realize how little I understand light and shadows. To teach myself the ins and outs of painting with pixels I feed my eyes with the art of experts. Here's a clip from a Tom Richmond spread from MAD magazine. Study this and I'm sure you'll be astonished like me at the profound technical proficiency of his skill. Ignoring for the moment the spectacular amount of detail in this cartoon, I'm blown away by the 3D effect his shading's had on this guy's face (and clothes and hands). Copying this is very difficult. 

Tom Richmond once told me his inspiration was Mort Drucker. He didn't paint digitally and look at how well he colors.

Here's today's attempt at coloring with the "airbrush" tool. The number of decisions one makes to color as Tom does above is incredible. What palette color, what brush, what blender, what layer, what highlights does one use? For me it's trial and error. At this point, mostly error. 

Never one to let a challenge like this daunt me, I pulled out my notes from the digital painting class I attended with Jason Seilor last February. I attended that lecture to learn about caricature and paid little detail to the intricacies of digital details. Pity. He did however recommend a book which I just purchased on Amazon. The reviews for James Gurney's work are spectacular. I want to learn from the best. Let's hope it works! 

Tasks Out of Order

From Toon Art by Steven Withrow (p. 22)

After ten months of work on my graphic novel I stumbled onto this. It gave me a chuckle. The order of my tasks is very unlike Withrow's. I barged into the world of graphic novel-dom with eagerness but no map, all sail and no rudder, flailing about as a novice without the aid of a mentor. 

My order is as follows.

WRITING A STORY LINE: Write rough draft script (I originally toyed with writing a play but chose cartooning instead). Edit script, dialog, and the content of random word balloons. 

CHOOSE FORM: Choose format (page sizes and panel distribution). 

LETTERING: Data entry (creating and filling word balloons with text). Editing data entry (recreating word balloons with different font). 

CHARACTER DESIGN: Choosing shadowy characters who will speak the text in those word balloons. Assigning individual characters to each quote. Grouping like minded quotes into a narrative flow and continuity.

COMPOSITION: Printing further edited versions of text. Adding characters while improving characters. Drawing and posting on line rough draft for first readers. Stopping at page 35 and doing further character design. Adding narrators and 15+ more pages of rough draft. Sketching rough draft and coloring digitally.

Still to do: SKETCHING BACKGROUNDS AND COMPOSITION, COLORING, ALTER DIGITALLY, POST/PRINT

Creativity isn't easy to plot!

First Half Page "Flat" Color

First attempt at full color (half) page. (I plan on combining half pages so the book is taller than it is wide).  The number of decisions required to produce this page was enormous. Trial and error, scouring manuals and chat rooms, watching Youtube videos, and more trial and error and here's what we get.

I've abandoned shading for the time being. Adjusting pixels, brush width, scanning resolutions, gradient fills, remembering colors so skin and clothes don't waver, and a zillion other tasks were technical  challenge enough. Once I'm relatively facile with drawing with a stylus, managing files, and so forth, and then I might return to Art School 101 and study shading, light, highlights, reflected shadows, again. However, I'm not going to live forever and this project already is ten months in the making. Even doing flat colors is arduous and time consuming. I estimate about 450 half pages are to be drawn, scanned, colored, and posted. It just doesn't seem right to me that, should this take ten years, a seventy year old man is still drawing comic books.

Three Characters in Color

Qohelet wrote, "What is crooked cannot be made straight." I believe it. 

Vicki and I once read and applied assiduously the principles of de-clutter king, Don Aslett. In his humorous and helpful book CLUTTER's LAST STAND he wrote something to the effect, "Writers are notorious for saving their rough drafts as if they'd someday need proof that they actually wrote their book." Sadly, I'm crooked that way and despite Aslett's best efforts, I still save my rough drafts. He couldn't straighten me out.  

Take these for example. They're the halting, amateurish, scribblings of a novice colorist and do not deserve to be saved much less posted for the world to see. And yet, in this memoir blog of the evolution of my first graphic novel I feel compelled to document every stage in the process. Forgive me, Don. (This female pose is a swipe from Tom Richmond).

Progress Report & Update

Six character model sheets to go, then I buy a Bamboo Wacom Tablet with which to color the scanned drawings.

When writing dialog it was easy to post my musings on this blog. Now that I'm drawing I find (oddly) that writing about drawing doesn't come effortlessly. I really am living in a new part of my brain.

Drawing a profile is easy. Drawing a front view is easy. Learning how to rotate them while keeping the likeness requires much concentrated visual thought. When looking at a profile it's easy to see how long/short the nose is. When looking at a frontal it's impossible to see how long/short the nose is. I once read that old time animators built clay 3-D models to turn 360 degrees. This can be done (so I've been told) with pixels and good animation software (which I don't have).

Which raises this question: is this work of a thousand actions a book of prose or a collection of drawings? Since there isn't a lot of action I gotta say it's a book of prose. So why all this effort with model sheets and a soon to be purchased software coloring tablet? I have faith that the symbiotic relation of word balloons and talking heads will create something bigger than the sum of its parts. If I fail, I fail. A year + wasted.

But once the finished pages are unleashed on an unsuspecting public my hope and dream is that I will have created a bona fide graphic novel of philosophical import.

In perusing the shelves of graphic novels at Barnes and Noble yesterday I was astounded at the quality of the illustrations and pictures. That wasn't enough to draw me into reading the stories, however.

What will draw readers into Ecclesiastes University? They must possess five preconditions: an interest in philosophy, humor, existentialism, depression/angst, and Hebrew wisdom literature. Without these I suspect my work will languish.

On a Personal Note

It was one year ago today that we moved my wife out of our house and into a nursing facility. In an uncharacteristic moment of lucidity she begged me today to let her come home. It was agony for me. I then visited our new and first grandchild who is 18 days old. It was ecstasy for me. Our 20 year old son moved out a month ago and after 35 years of constant laughter, noise, pet/home school mayhem of raising five kids I find myself home alone in the deafening silence. My hope is that this comic treatment of Ecclesiastes will help me (and others?) give shape to the existential quandary of life in an often precarious and sometimes profoundly meaningful universe.

Project Management

Working my way out of the quagmire I got myself into requires outlining my project's next tasks step by step. Here's my outline (subject to adaptation if necessary). Before posting any new pages on my other blog (click here) I need to complete the following tasks.

1.  Continue to write/insert new narrator rough draft pages in the first 35 pages (which comprises  Ecclesiastes 1 & 2). Those pages comprise what I've been calling Draft 5 (but viewers of that other blog know only as the first draft). I've yet to find the narrators' voice, father and son alien observers of Ecclesiastes University. They riff on the students' riffs on Dr. Q's lecture. It adds a layer of complexity AND clarity. Somebody's got to make sense of what those students are jabbering about. Once I've caught up to page 35 it's time to....

2.  Create model sheets for the 20 or so key characters. For your information, here's what a model sheet looks like for one famous cartoon character.



I need to nail down what each character looks like in various poses. Those model sheets will "force" me to be consistent as I draw the final draft, "force" me to clarify the appearance, facial expressions, and stature of each student (and Dr. Q and the aliens), and "force" me to slow down. I'm eager to tackle inking/coloring but I MUST hone the penciled roughs first. Once those characters are fleshed out then....

3. Print hard copies of the polished, edited, and "finished" (will I ever "finish?" I'm constantly tweaking) pages (which will probably end up growing from 35- 45 pages) of dialog in Publisher on card stock.

4. On that card stock I'll sketch with pencil the characters, setting, interior of the classroom and space ship, folds in clothing, props, costume, and visual details. Here's an exquisite pencil "rough" from MAD artist Tom Richmond. Here's a link to his fabulous web/blog.



5. Ink the penciled rough in black. Here's the above drawing "inked."



Using Tom Richmond as my inspiration is a fool's errand; he's the industry standard for cool, creative, and technically savvy. I am but a lowly left-handed Norwegian therapist/skeptic/theist prone to melancholy. Nevertheless, my motto is: "shoot for the moon; you may hit the fence."

6. Once "inked" I'll re-scan the pages into a digital format on a yet to be purchased gadget (Adobe Illustrator? Corel Draw? Bamboo Tablet?) and color it. Here's Tom's finished cover.




Having never created digital art before there's going to be a massive learning curve (do these technical learning curves ever stop?). But my goal is to draw the old fashioned way and then color and shade on a tablet. The class I took last February with Jason Seilor was digital and mind blowing. (I was born 40 years too early to "get" digital life but if Ecclesiastes 3 is correct it was meant to be). Those posted pages will be a new and improved First Draft but behind the scenes I'll call that Draft Six.

7. Once pages 1-45 (Ecclesiastes 1 & 2) are complete I'll slowly post them for First Readers to scrutinize, evaluate, and critique.

8. Unless audience feedback is entirely negative I'll then revert to adding new "rough sketches" for the remainder of the book for First Reader feedback. I can produce rough drafts faster than inked/colored drafts and want the entire book to be semi public before I ink/color the finished work.

As mentioned before, the reason I'm inking/coloring pages 1-45 before re-posting them is to introduce First Readers to the alien narrators with as much visual verve as possible. I'll unveil them with fear and trembling; if they "work" I'll receive a major deposit in my enthusiasm bank. If feedback is negative it'll be a huge withdrawal and completion will be laborious.

From this vantage point I'm determined to complete this work sometime in 2013. If the feedback is lackluster I'll grit my teeth and still produce a work of art that others ignore. I'm determined to finish this graphic novel regardless of audience appreciation. Some of my biggest heroes are those who forged ahead when popular opinion was against them--Galileo, Kafka, Dickenson, Van Gogh, Col. Sanders, and Henry Dargar. My book will hardly revolutionize cosmology, existentialism, poetry, painting, chicken, or illustrated novels, but again, shoot for the moon....

I Dreamed of a Narrator for Ecclesiastes University

Once I hit the pause button to rethink the structure of this book my conscious mind went numb, "How do I integrate the helpful comments from my first readers without starting from scratch?" Thankfully, my subconscious mind did not quit working. 

I dreamed I invented a narrator, a new main character, who spoke in the first person to a therapist about his depression. He showed the therapist his “notes” which were the comic strip pages already drawn. I drew the narrator's thumb on the right side of the pages holding the comic book for his therapist to read. I also inserted snap shot drawings of the students like when someone takes a photo in a movie and the picture freezes and turns momentarily to black and white. I was freed from strict linearity and could time travel with ease. It was quite liberating, actually.

This dream was also disconcerting because I was trying to do math in my sleep…how can I add pages/panels with as little re-editing as possible? Each day lecture needs an even number of pages, and I CAN’T disassemble each Publisher Page and relocate the existing word balloons. 

Random Thoughts about Narration

Currently, there is no narrator. Readers listen in on the images/dialog that some unnamed person (the cartoonist) provides. An invisible entity chooses camera angles, what to leave out between panels, who says what, etc. I think this is what tires readers. They are borne along with little time to breathe during the journey. A narrator would (if my dream was correct) assist readers in plot.

A narrator talking to a therapist is too 1960s and Woody Allen-ish.

Who was the narrator is Metamorphosis? "As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect-like creature."

Are narrators omniscient? They must be in order to convey the plot to the audience. Wiki says, 

"The narrator may be a fictive person devised by the author as a stand-alone entity, or may even be a character. The narrator is considered participant if an actual character in the story, and nonparticipant if only an implied character, or a sort of omniscient or semi-omniscient being who does not take part in the story but only relates it to the audience."

I need a narrator who is not enveloped by Dr. Q's philosophical musings. 

Some narrator options

• a demon “taking photos” of each character rooting for skepticism, doubt, atheism, and/or nihilism to take over. 
• an angel “taking photos” rooting for faith/hope/love to take over.
• a hapless student (not me) musing about depression
• a hapless student (me) musing about depression
• God
• Fly on the wall
• Alien
• Solomon

The narrator could “reflect” at the end of each day’s lecture/riffs. If the joke was stupid he could say so. His “stance” would be objective. Unlike the students who whine about Dr. Q’s repetition and gloominess, the objective narrator could respond logically and clearly, without emotion.

Narrators narrate, but to whom is my narrator speaking? Readers, of course, but are the panels then supportive documentation for his monologue? If so, fine. But how then do I segue into the classroom pages? In other words, what is the narrator saying that would lead him to “show” students talking? 

I'm wary of adopting a Screwtape plot; Lewis gets the credit for that bit of brilliance. Plus, I don’t want to bludgeon readers with supernatural-ism, demonic or otherwise.  

Do omniscient narrators ever show emotion?

Voice-over while images zoom in from outer space into classroom (thanks, Google maps).

Given the fact that 428 Publisher pages have been set up with thousands of dialog boxes tediously put in place and filled with correct font and text, I can’t have the narrator insert his (her, its) voice into an individual page. He/she/it can only speak before and after each day. 

But this poses another huge problem….what possibly can the narrator say that would fill up an entire page? 

I could invent a new student whom the narrator watches outside of class and makes comments about….or the narrator could observe and make comments about all the students. Perhaps the narrator could comment on several of the characters between classes. I can almost visualize a second “plot” outside of the classroom.

Does the narrator have access to the character’s mind? I the cartoonist have access to the classroom lecture complete with sound and visuals. I’m enabling viewers to eavesdrop on a classroom. I do not have access into the psyche of any student (other than any conclusions we draw from attire, vocabulary, reactions, etc). Perhaps an omniscient narrator would know what students are thinking.

Does the narrator observe Dr. Q between classes? That would be fun speculation but I’m afraid I'd contaminate the pure text of Eccl with fiction.  My main characters are the students who listen and react to Dr. Q’s lecture.

A narrator could make the narrative flow more explicit. He/she/it could turn those talking heads into real persons with whom the audience could (hopefully) relate. The narrator would "model" for readers curiosity, interest, tedium, astonishment, empathy, etc.

The narrator could show the pictures and biography of each student like Base Ball Cards.

Narrator in the tone of Rod Serling: “Observe one Karenoia, plagued by OCD, and anxiety- reducing rituals. She thought her life was manageable ... until she entered Ecclesiastes University [the Twilight Zone].” 

The narrator could end each of his/her/its comments with, “Day one.” But 50 times? Yikes. Perhaps I could reduce the number of days/lectures by combining them (stretching same color over many pages).     

ALIEN DIALOG

Setting: inside space ship

Characters: two aliens, father and son

Plot: son taking dad on outing for bonding (dad agreed to let son chose the activity)

What planet are they from?

How old are they?

How’d the son know so much about earth?

How could this ever be turned into a stage play? 

Status Update

Thirty-five pages of rough draft number five have been posted on the other site for first readers to scan and comment upon. The feedback has been so helpful I've hit the pause button to rethink the whole premise of this graphic novel. 2000+ talking heads are just too boring. So what are my options?

Make the claim that the boredom is an intentional literary device to further illustrate the message of vanity, absurdity, and pointlessness. This is a bit disingenuous, like the guy who shoots his bow wildly and then draws targets around randomly shot arrows.

Scrap the whole thing and write a stage play or screen play. No more graphic novel? Ouch.

Scrap Ecclesiastes and go mow my lawn. And give up philosophical ruminations? Double ouch.

Reformat the whole thing:

• give students only 2 panels (delete the second row of 1-3 boxes) to riff on Dr. Q. This would essentially cut the book--and boredom--in half. Less is more, but that much less?
• enlarge the size of my printed hard copy thus giving me a larger drawing space in which to draw settings, props, action, etc. This would essentially render my existing 428 pages null and void...after all that work!
• put new words into Dr. Q's mouth; fictionalize him. This would make the finished product "based upon the book of Ecclesiastes" rather than "taking every word of the ancient text as is and seeing it crash against modern thinking."
• keep the format but reduce the number of characters. Theoretically I could cut the number of students in half, combining various traits into one. This would cut down the confusion of who's who but increase confusion about student motives. Currently each student represents one philosophical/emotional point of view. Blending them would make each character complex and self contradictory. Plus, I might get bored with the few students that remain. I like the variety of a huge cast of characters.
• press on hoping readers will eventually identify with the individual characters. This is risky because there is no glue currently keeping readers engaged. Even with spiffed up drawings I suspect the insipid dialog will be lethal. Death by word balloon.
• increase the wit and wisdom of student comments. When I read a really good book I hang on every word, dreading the end. I want it to keep on going. Here's where fantasy crashes against reality. I just don't have the synaptic chops to charm audiences like Steve Martin, Woody Allen, David Sedaris, Dave Barry, Mark Twain, Tina Fey, Robert Benchley, S J Pereleman, Bill Bryson, Daniel Gilbert, Soren Kierkegaard (he knocked 'em dead in Denmark), or (insert name here). 
• press on and hope to find readers with low expectations. Surely in a planet of 7 billion somebody, somewhere likes bad puns, angst overkill, and talking heads.
• abandon audience approval entirely and write the book I wish I had in college. In a later post I'll reproduce some cartoons I drew while at UW '79-'81.
• gamble my reputation on good drawings justifying boring text. This is a huge gamble and I'm notorious for losing gambles. Want proof? My closets are full of manuscripts, wheels, drawings and self published books that failed to garner audience interest. I killed a small forest trying to get traction as a purveyor of peace making comics, sapiential psychology, and mixed metaphors. 
• change my audience. Instead of modern college students perhaps I should aim to connect with fundamentalists. Ecclesiastes is in their book and my graphic novel would call attention to and validate its message. This, however, may prove the hardest sell of all because fundamentalists are disinclined to grapple with randomness, failed theodicies, and the puncturing of tidy systematic theology. Nobody likes to be told the king has no clothes or that Pollyanna providence is a myth. 

I have to leave for work soon so must end this problem solving musing. My inner optimist believes that there is an answer to this somewhere, I just haven't found it yet. I'll mull over these options and see which sticks. 

Adjusted Time Line

Just finished editing page 201 (Draft Four of EU13).

Heavy black line indicates linked panels.

Connecting word balloons, blocking panels, and making seating arrangements is more time consuming than originally planned.

How I place students on the stage affects the positions of word balloons.

I wonder what makes one so optimistic (unrealistic, grandiose) prior to a project? The notion of biting off more than one can chew is so common it's got it's own metaphor. Poor planning? Unthinking?

Here's what I think is a more realistic time line. But don't bet on it. I've been wrong this whole process.

July 15. Finish Draft Four editing and printing hard copy (ready for pencil sketches).
August 31: Finish 20 character designs complete with names, clothing, ages, gender, hair, etc.
September 1: Begin pencil sketches. Upon completion of each section (52 of them) send digital copies to selected readers.
December 31: Finish sending all 52 sections and incorporating suggestions from readers.
January 1, 2013: Begin final ink drawing (print on card stock, pencil lightly, black ink line drawing, erase pencil lines, color with pencils OR water color).
December 31, 2013. Whole book finished. Digital copies on line.
January 1, 2014. Look for publisher.


Someone once said we over estimate what we can get done in a day and under estimate what we can get done in a year. I am so bad at estimating I focus more on the immediate tasks at hand than making hard and fast predictions. This time line is a psychological ploy to keep me motivated. By extending the dead lines I feel less pressure. By missing deadlines I drive myself crazy.

Back row, L-R: Draft One, Draft Two (waiting to be visually checked), Draft Three (waiting to be visually checked).
Front Row, L-R: Draft Three (checked), Draft Four (finished, waiting for pencil sketches), Draft Two (checked).

I Am My Own Experiment

Part of the attraction of Ecclesiastes is my fascination with the attempt Dr. Q made to be his own science experiment. He looked for the scheme of things and studied his reactions as he searched.

This blog is the summary of my lab experiment. I have undertaken a creative task and am keeping a record of the nuts and bolts of creating a graphic novel. But the meta-study is larger in scope; I'm studying the creative process itself. One of the curious phenomena I experience as a creative guy is flagging interest. I've often wondered what gives me energy to sustain projects? And more importantly, what causes me to lose that energy?

Last week I embarked on a new series of tasks for Draft Four, namely, making panel shapes and blocking characters. I got to page 86 and tedium set in. I, the subject in this psychological science experiment, want to think about tedium and its negative affect on creativity. Here's what happened.

1.  Repetitious actions bore me. The act of spiffing up the word balloons two weeks ago (Draft Three)  just about did me in but I soldiered on breaking up the tedium by marking my daily progress.

2.  To add to the visual impact of each page I've been connecting panels and word balloons (Draft Four), figuring out who sits where, and how to create a coherent novel without characters showing up in odd places at odd times. But it was repetitious work.

3. With my interest lagging in panel arrangement an idea resurrected itself which I've had in the back of my mind for ages. I took the bait and have been working on it now for four days. It's related to Ecclesiastes so I took a tiny detour guilt free.

4.  My best analogy: while engaged in creative writing and plot development I had no need for new ideas. Dopamine jolts kept me going. But when the repetitive panel-linking-actions took over the dopamine dried up. Like a drug addict needing his fix, my mind wandered to a new project that requires a ton of concentration. I was a sitting duck, vulnerable shell-less clam, and patsy for the old bait and switch con. (My journey to the Nobel Prize for Mixed Metaphors continues).

5.  For the last four days I've worked on this new project (details below) somewhat anxiously, knowing panel connecting must be done. But I ignored my inner nag; I was getting high on this new project. I rationalized: "I'll get back to panel connecting soon, this new project is cool, it'll give me a bone to throw to family and friends who've seen nothing of this graphic novel, I'm learning more about Ecclesiastes, I crave the buzz this new task affords," on and on.  


6.  After four days I completed ground work for the new project and was just about ready to embark on phase two of the new project when it occurred to me, "Whoa. This is bigger than I thought. I can't continue postponing panel connecting. I will stop this new venture."


7.  While that inner debate raged I took comfort there are no subscribers to this blog waiting impatiently as I putz around with some tangential project. My inner team of rivals got noisy; that should have tipped me off I was getting off track. I think rationalizations trip the dopamine trigger, too.

8.  But I am now exercising self discipline once again and, fully chastened by this slight detour, am committed to the boring but necessary task of linking panels.

The details of that side project

I read Peter Enn's entire commentary on Ecclesiastes again (226 pages) and took pages and pages of notes: key words, key phrases, and key interpretations by me. I entered those into a Word doc table.

Collected 122 of 'em! I arranged them alphabetically, honing the text to be as brief as possible. (Even as I type the dopamine courses through my veins again; this is one awesome project). I then divided those 122 quotes into six categories (to aid in the presentation of masses of data on an adjustable round chart).
I then designed the top wheel of a volvelle and planned to enter all 122 text boxes (488 total) into a new file.

When I realized that entering all that data, creating all those tiny boxes, creating the template for 60 key words per side, arranging 60 guide lines spaced six degrees apart, I lost interest.

I have now returned to Ecclesiastes University with my tail between my legs. Wheels will have to wait.

Doing It Wrong

Since a new threshold has been crossed (finished Draft Two) work on Draft Three reminds me how many mistakes I've made already. Let me count the ways....

1.  I should have written the whole script in WORD (as a stage or screen play) and once finished dumped it into Publisher. Instead, plot development has been encumbered since day one by images, page layout, fonts, balloons, characters, etc. I wonder how the creative writing process would have been smoother had I not been juggling so many tangential details. On the bright side, keeping all these details in mind has left little room for grieving.

2.  I should have gotten a better handle on the perplexities of Ecclesiastes before launching this project. Instead, I've been plodding through verse by verse supplementing my musings with commentaries galore. I'm not sure why I think creativity should be linear. In my case it's anything but.

3. I shouldn't have used that bad font. It took ten unpleasant days to replace it.

4. I should have bought stock in Dunder Mifflin Paper Co. As you can see in the previous post's video, I'm going through a lot of paper. Draft Three initially was to be the hard copy on which I drew pencil sketches. As it turns out, I'm honing Draft Three by combining all the ideas I've collected in Drafts One and Two as well as inserting random words, phrases, ideas which I've collected in a separate file. It's now becoming a mass of corrections and therefore unsuited for drawing. This means Draft Four will be the one on which I start pencil drawings. Good night, another 428 pages to be printed. Trees shudder at the sound of my name.

5.  I should have been more thorough in project management. My task list is helter-skelter. Once Draft Four has been roughly drawn I will then scan it and combine pages creating 214 digital pages. That doc will then be offered to several persons for proof reading. The subject of proof readers requires a blog post of its own so I'll come back to this. Once proof readers have made suggestions I'll incorporate them into Draft Five which will be printed on card stock, penciled, inked, colored, and once again scanned for final unveiling to the public. I have no road map on how to create a graphic novel so I'm sure I'm wasting lots of time.

6.

What They (whoever they are) Don't Tell You about Creativity

Creativity isn't all bolts of insight. There are hours of tedium. I've spent the weekend changing fonts and font sizes. There has been lots of mouse clicking.

Once the font is correct I rearrange the text boxes in each panel. I'm finicky that the boxes be uniform, aligned 3/16s of an inch from the top of the panel, and centered.  There has been lots of mouse rolling around.

Between hours of tedium I tried in vain (apropos of Ecclesiastes) trying to download audio books from the library and then from iTunes. I also spent three hours trying to figure out if Publisher allows me to link text boxes and change them all at once. I'm actually pretty sure it can be done but I failed to crack the code. It has to do with Font Schemes and Style and Formatting. Failing these techy tasks I return to the tedium of tweaking thousands of boxes. I'm up to page 168 (there are 428 pages).

I want to maximize the drawing space in each panel so this means shrinking the text boxes as much as possible. I thus edit like crazy. One line is best, two better, three = max. Text boxes with four or more lines are the exception. 

Consumers of this project will never know (unless they read this blog) what goes on behind the scenes. I'm making mental notes for where breaks occur, what the panel arrangements will be, and what the characters look like. Because character coherence isn't on the top of my to do list at present I store that (and 100 other) tasks in my brain along with other random questions:

1. Will readers think the author (me) was angry? I don't feel angry.
2. Is this graphic novel a subconscious reaction to living alone? I don't feel lonely.
3. Is it true when Ecclesiastes says envy motivates all toil? I don't feel envious. 
4. Are students' reactions to Dr. Q legitimately funny or just snarky on my part? I don't feel snarky. 
5. After editing a joke five times it loses it's edge. I imagine future readers laughing. But I don't feel funny. 
6. Where can I put this quote, "Ecclesiastes University sardonically skewers the Dostoevskian sense of despair and anxiety that faith in a scientific world creates."

God, Disease, and Glibness

When I was a Calvinist pastor (23 years) I could glibly site all the Bible passages that made God responsible for sickness: Exodus 4:11, Who gave man his mouth? Who makes him deaf or mute? Who gives him sight or makes him blind? Is it not I, the Lord? Deuteronomy 32:39, There is no God besides me. I put to death and I bring to life, I have wounded and I will heal, and no one can deliver out of my hand. Ecclesiastes 7:14, When times are bad, consider: God has made the one as well as the other. Not to mention a hundred other proof texts for the sovereignty of God concerning plagues, disease, calamity, destruction, trials, tribulation, and all manner of abysmal conditions.

Now that my wife is terminally ill I'm not so glib. Times are bad. Unlike Job's wife I'm not inclined to curse God and die. Atheism would certainly solve the theodicy problem but theism is in my DNA, not to mention creating a host of new problems (namely, the problem of good, beauty, and meaning). For existential reasons I choose faith despite this apparent reason not to believe.

But neither am I, in true evangelical fashion, able to say with glib confidence that her Alzheimer's is to teach character, bring glory to God, the result of sin, or the consequence of the fall of Adam. I'm a child of Adam and I don't have this disease. There is a category of illness in the Bible called, "sickness unto death" but that still doesn't answer the "Why her?" question. I try not to dwell on this too much; I have trained myself rather to ask the, "What do I do next?" question.

Yet I can't avoid asking the why questions. I'm pounded every day with a clash between a God I want to love/trust and visits to see Vicki. I'm not enamored of the One who put my young wife in a nursing home. (If you want to know what I see there, read Ecclesiastes 12:1-7. Or wait about a year until my illustrated version comes out).

Which brings me to the impetus for spending five months (with more to come) creating a graphic novel based on the book of Ecclesiastes. Qoheleth touches something deep within me. Despite his glowing endorsement as a wise man of God by the editor in chapter 12:9-14, I doubt that his brand of doubt would garner him any ministry positions in a modern evangelical church. Certitude (glibness?) seems to be a litmus test for orthodoxy. Yet here's a Bible writer wracked with anxiety due to the clash between his theology and the evil he saw all around him.

I can understand why Ecclesiastes isn't popular. It's gloomy! And I also see why when Ecclesiastes does get air time Qoheleth's tensions are sanitized by glib dismissal, relegating his words to the trash bin of secular humanism, and thus easily ignored.

But the guy wasn't a secular humanist. He was a sage puzzled by the problem of evil. Ecclesiastes University is my attempt to come to grips with this very personal issue.

First Full Pages

I've been creating this graphic novel on Microsoft Publisher. Each phrase from Ecclesiastes is printed in the word balloon of the first of six panels on an 8.5" x 11" (landscape) page. My plan from the beginning was to clip and paste two landscape pages on top of each other in the Paint program. Having just reached page number 250 I thought I'd combine two landscape pages for the very first time.

Disclaimer: the faces are provisional, the word balloons need a new font (Comic Sans is over used) in all caps (as seems to be the industry standard) and they lack the tail thingy that lets readers know who is speaking. The coloring is haphazard, the pagination is convoluted (250 Publisher landscape pages = 125 Paint pages; not sure how to number them yet). My point in this exercise is to check the readability of the word balloons and to see if the background color makes them more legible. The text is in its second draft so further editing is in store.

Background. There are four characters in this thought unit, Mr Q (speaking the words of Ecclesiastes), the evangelical Christian girl who is sweet on the militaristic vet, both of whom are chided by the feminist with big hair.

Here are the results.

Addendum: Now that I see what a completed page looks like on screen I see I've got much more work to do to make it legible. I'd planned on posting the finished pages on this blog but I think I'll need my own domain name. That means more expense but after all the work I'm putting into this thing (30-40 hours a week) I want to show case the work in a quality way. Setting up web sites is relatively easy these days but I'm not yet ready to launch something new.

"The Story Dictates the Cast," so says...

crime mystery writer, Janet Evanovich.

I agree. I cooked up a story and am creating characters to act in and carry forward that story.

However, in my case, pre-written dialogue dictates the story. I am not starting with a blank page but 400 or so pages each of which begins with another's quote. It's not the easiest way to create a novel, especially when those opening quotes are obtuse, contradictory, and mostly depressing.

What I am adding--humor, cartoons, philosophical and theological reflections--will hopefully make Ecclesiastes accessible to modern readers. I say "accessible," and not "understood." I'm not sure I understand it. I hope to empathize with and validate readers who puzzle over this strange book. Or who puzzle over the meaning of life. Or who are depressed or suffering or experiencing existential angst. I want to give persons of faith permission to raise questions of justice, science, meaning, sin, wisdom, death, suffering, and food.

I'm worried that I'm 100% irrelevant to my intended audience, university students. My dialog is loaded with boomer friendly illustrations so I'll lose 90% of twenty-somethings. Of the 10% that remain, I lose 7% for being too theological and 2% for being too philosophical. Of the remaining 1% .5% don't read, .4% gave up comic books at age 12, and the remaining .1% look like fans at a Bassnectar concert.

Fans of Bassnectar; not one graphic novel in the mix

So why do I keep going? Ecclesiastes U is therapy for sadness. I didn't expect to end up visiting my wife in a nursing home at our young age, struggling to understand her words, or watching the glimmer in her eyes fade away.

In fiction story dictates cast; in real life stories crash upon, squish like a bug, and rattle the cast to their bones. This cast member, anyway. There's high probability that, once finished, this massive project will languish on a digital shelf, a fitting end to illustrating an absurd book inspired by an absurd disease informing an absurd life.

Words, Pictures, Talent, and Creating People

Since beginning this graphic novel last December I continue to puzzle over several questions: am I creating a book with pictures or adding pictures to words? Do I have the time (not to mention talent) to pull this off? How does one create cartoon characters with subtlety, complexity, and depth?

Here are my musings about these questions so far (in order).

Scott McCloud and Wil Eisner have probably described the significance of words influencing drawings, drawings influencing words, and the interplay between them. Rather than read other's opinions on this subject, however, I'm learning by doing. Currently my words are only slightly influenced by my sketchy thumbnails, doodles, and drawings. Someday soon I hope my finished words will be improved as I add pictures.

Jodi Bergsma said in my last post (and I misquote), "I'm too busy writing to read books about writing." If I were 20 I'd make the time. But I'm in a race against the clock and am relying on 60 years of reading and drawing to carry the day. I read recently, "A picture is worth a thousand words, but try saying that in a picture."

In How We Decide author Jonah Leher made an interesting observation. The chess computer that beat Gary Kasporov was a terrible back gammon player, and the computer that beat the world's leading back gammon player would lose at chess. Leher's point? Unlike computers that can do one thing very well, the human brain can do lots and lots of things reasonably well. I take comfort in this. I can't write, cast, act, direct, design, philosophize, do theology or psychology, draw, or tell jokes like pros, but I can do each of those things somewhat. The combination of these tasks is what'll make this graphic novel unique.

Finally, isn't "complex cartoon characters" an oxymoron? As I create the actors in this fictional drama I must choose how many layers of personality to give each one. Currently I've divided the cast into many, many uni-(not di- or tri-) mensional characters. One character loves money, one loves jokes, one loves sex, and one loves Jesus. One loves social justice and one loves scientific materialism. One is a feminist and one is a gun toting vet. One is an aging hippy enthralled with conspiracies and drugs; another is pre-law. On and on the list goes. I'm showing no restraint in creating characters. It's actually quite easy. God used dust, I use ink.

My problem from a literary point of view: how many characters is too many? This is a graphic, not Russian, novel. I want readers to care about a few likable characters rather than feeling overwhelmed by dozens of them. The cast of FRIENDS had six main characters with dozens of secondaries. Can I do the same? As is, I've got hundreds of secondary but no main characters. Combining several disparate traits into one person adds complexity and realism; we've all got sub-personalities. But can those characters come to life with all their multiplicity, layers and conflicting desires in a comic book?

We'll just have to wait and see. The process is sheer bliss.