LucyBellwood

Seacritters Snapshot #5

Added 2022-12-02 05:44:04 +0000 UTC

Real important question to lead off this week's Seacritters update:

HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO DO ANYTHING ELSE WHEN I'M THIS CLOSE TO BEING DONE WITH THE BOOK?

I've been well into the climactic final action sequence for the past week, which is torture because I've had to add a lot of pages to accurately convey what's happening in the script and so that finish line just keeeeeps getting farther away. However! I managed a whopping seven today, and have successfully guided our intrepid heroes out of their perilous predicament and into THE LAST BIT (which contains far less complex action). All that stands between me and the words "The End" (or I guess "to be continued" given that we're trilogy-ing here) is about 12 pages of talky talky stuff.

I am unhinged.

If you take a poke around the Detailed Log tab in the beloved spreadsheet you'll see a new colored tracker for how many pages I got done each month, because I thought that would be fun. The Page Expansion tab is no longer serving its purpose because we're close enough to the end that speculation about how much will get added in the long haul is no longer necessary (hooray!), but I'll dig into that data down the line and see if we can use it to help with future books.

I'd intended to have the book done by Thanksgiving so I could take a semi-proper holiday for the last six weeks of the year, but life got in the way as it is wont to do, so here I am rushing to finish as quick as I can and still take most of December for myself.

The Art

I'll be honest, I was really dreading this final chapter. Every time I thought more than two panels ahead I'd quake in my boots. "I can't draw that," I'd say, trying and failing to picture the appropriate angles and layouts needed to convey a dramatic chase scene in cramped quarters featuring five equally important cast members.

But the biggest thing I've learned from working on this book is that thinking about the pages I have to draw never helps me draw them. Sitting down and just seeing where things go is the only way I've gotten anything done. And I'm actively PROUD of how this sequence is turning out! I'm always lusting after artists who have a strong sense of movement in their work, and the most common feedback I'm getting on these pages when I show them to my nearest and dearest is about that very quality! I'm thrilled!

I won't spoil it here, but I even got to do a gimmicky double-page spread thing I'd been wanting to try and I thiiiiink it works? Might still need some tweaking.

SPEAKING OF TWEAKING:

What I really want to do is finish the draft, print the entire book out, stick it in a binder, stick that binder in a drawer, walk away for a month, and then take another couple weeks to make edits and tweaks and refinements before handing things in to the publisher. But I don't...actually think that's what I'm going to do? It would be nice, but I've never gone through this process before and I want to get a sense of what my editor will want to change and what won't actually merit attention. I also want, y'know, a holiday. Even during the fallow periods when I haven't been able to work on the book, it's always looming over me. I have a hunch I'm going to feel so much calmer once I have The Whole Thing printed out to stare at.