Project Update

 

Project Update

 

Having recently finished the first section of my graphic novel (a massive 14 pages) I thought now would be a good time to reflect on the project as a whole. A few years ago I was going through some of my old Peace Corps journals and found an outline for a story with a few fragments from 2003 that bears some resemblance to the story I’m writing now. So in a sense I’ve been working on this story for almost 20 years. After finishing my Peace Corps service in 2005 I enrolled in a graduate program in English literature. I still drew and painted, but did not do any fiction writing. I would not start writing this story until shortly before moving to Boston in 2012. 

 

What I began to write was a memoir of my time in the Peace Corps. From the get go the memoir was intended to be merely a jumping off point for the kind of story I wanted to write, which I envisioned as an allegorical medieval manuscript. I had been admiring Walter Crane’s illustrations for the Faerie Queene, William Morris’s illustrations for Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, and Aubrey Beardsley illustrations for Le Morte d’Arthur and hoped to do something in that spirit. 

I originally considered making a sonnet sequence. 14 sonnets in two groups of 7. Each sonnet with an illustration and probably some ornate borders as well. I did the 14 illustrations and finished about 7 or so poems. I ended up not writing more than two sonnets and a few verse fragments. I even took a poetry class around this time in Cambridge. I wanted the story to use images from my Peace Corps experiences, but to be structured around a fictional wedding. The first 7 poems told of a character meeting an artist friend with whom he would spend the day painting by a river, waiting for the wedding party to begin. The second 7 poems would be at night during the wedding. I wasn’t entirely happy with my poetry and realized it wasn’t the write medium for the kind of story I wanted to tell. I reverted to prose and began again. This was around 2013. For the next few years I would be working on this story, which I called The Marriage Engine. I finished a draft version of around 50 pages in 2015.

 

In the fall of 2016 I set up a FB page to showcase my art work. This was a big step for me, up until this time my drawings were an entirely private affair. In the fall of 2017 I had an art show. For 2018 I occupied myself with putting together an art book that I could pass out at the Massachusetts Independent Comic Expo (MICE). 

In 2019 I set out once again to produce a book. From past experience I knew that I must have a clear idea of how long I wanted the book to be. Many of my past projects never materialized because I could never finish them. I told myself that the book would not be longer than approximately 40 pages. I decided to begin the project with an experiment. I would try to draw a page a day for about a month. I did this for the month of January. That same month I also wrote an essay on Percy Bysshe Shelley that I had published in my old classmates’ journal, Jesus the Imagination. I made an accompanying illustration for the essay.

 

The short comic was the story of a family on a pilgrimage to an island where there was an abandoned temple deep in a labyrinthine cave. This image of a temple and a labyrinth goes back to a story I wrote in high school, around 1995-1997. I later found the same image in Angus Fletcher’s study of the fifth book of Spenser’s Faerie Queene, The Prophetic Moment. The book remains one of my favorite works of literary criticism. In my story the father travels to the temple to study murals on the temple walls and write a commentary on them. I had done a series of four illustrations on Northrop Frye’s essay on Blake, “The Keys to the Gates.” These illustrations were to be the basis of the murals in the temple. I liked the idea of having layered texts and images. There would be the murals, the story itself, the father’s commentary, and perhaps a further layer—that of the person who compiled this material in its present form. The commentary was to be a kind of encyclopedia. It would include basic ideas that served as the building blocks for all other ideas. I called this person the red man. He came to the island by boat with his own tribe with the mission of establishing a civilization on the island. The temple was a power he wished to use to create this civilization. My problem, as I saw it, was to figure out how to integrate these various strands in a satisfying way. As I began to sketch out this story it quickly exceeded the planned 40 page limit. One outline I made ran over 100 pages. Another was as long as 600 pages. I decided to scrap this idea and start over. 

 

For my second attempt I returned to my original story for inspiration. That story was to be 14 chapters, in two groups of 7. The idea there was, in part, the 7 days of creation. Except I would have 7 days and 7 nights, as the kabbalists have. Another subtext of that story was Harold Bloom’s 6 revisionary ratios, also modeled on the days of creation. For my new story I was attracted to Spenser’s Shepherd’s Calendar. Using the Shepherd’s Calendar as a basis for my story would fulfill my most important needs. It would restrict the story to a set length (now 24 pages, 2 pages per month). It would also allow for the kind of encyclopedic scope I wanted. In Spenser’s poem each month touches on important themes such as youth and old age, rural and urban life, poetry, art, politics, philosophy, etc. So would mine.

 

I set myself to adapting my original story to the 12 month structure. This would mean it was cyclical. It would still concern a family, the red man, but now the multiple layers would have to be confined to within the calendar. 

 

I came up with the idea that the son was an orphan, that he had been transported into this other world and after being transported he lost the ability to speak. I eventual stumbled on the idea that he would speak through images. The son, using images, would be able to undo the charm the red man had over the city. The tenth month would be a descent into the cave. I considered including the four murals at this point. The son would descend after the red man, find the murals, and have some kind of confrontation and apotheosis or disintegration, I wasn’t sure which. His step sister would play an important role. She had been the only one to truly understand him, his friend and companion. I considered having her abandon him in the caves, as he realizes that she was merely a projection of himself, a projection he could not maintain. The eleventh and twelfth months would be the resolution and setup for the cycle to repeat. 

 

I drew the first two months and sketched out the first 8. I was getting ready to ink and color the first two months, but thought it best to practice various techniques before moving forward and so around October I began another short comic, Simon on the Shores of Ruin. It was a wordless story, 6 pages, that I penciled, inked, and colored. It took the rest of the year to finish.

 

While working on this story I began to once again rethink my project. I struggled on deciding how to make the boy speak in images. Should I show little symbols over his head. The frames were already small and cramped. There was no room for text, let alone symbols. I thought about making large cards, each 7x7 inches, one card per story panel, 12 cards per page. This would total 288 cards. Once again the story was spirally out of control. I only drew a couple cards before discarding that idea, but it was a worthwhile experiment, because I would use the idea of cards for something else. I then considered making this a wordless story like Simon on the Shores of Ruin. Now not only does the boy not speak, no one does. The boy leaves the world at the end and shares his story, through images, with our world. The story then would have two sections, one of our world and one of the story itself. The our world section could be in prose and the story in wordless images. I wrote out much of the text for the prose section and began to  rethink and redraw the calendar section to fit these new ideas. I ultimately decided that I would have the prose section as a standard comic, but I would do it in monochrome to contrast it with the wordless section. I saw that, once again, the book was growing beyond my original intended scope. How long would the prose section be? If it was the same length as the wordless section that would put the comic at 48 pages. But the prose section I had sketched out would need to be much longer than that. Once again it was becoming untenable. I considered having the book comprised of four parts, each part covering 3 months. I even considered including my old Marriage Engine story within this story.  The structure would look like this:

 

PART 1

Prose      Wordless   Prose      Wordless  Prose     Wordless   Prose

6 pgs. à 2 pgs. à   6 pgs.à   2 pgs.à   6 pgs.à  2 pgs.à    6 pgs.

 

PART 2

Prose      Wordless   Prose      Wordless  Prose     Wordless   Prose

6 pgs. à 2 pgs. à   6 pgs.à   2 pgs.à   6 pgs.à  2 pgs.à    6 pgs.

 

INTERLUDE

The Marriage Engine

 

PART 3

Prose      Wordless   Prose      Wordless  Prose     Wordless   Prose

6 pgs. à 2 pgs. à   6 pgs.à   2 pgs.à   6 pgs.à  2 pgs.à    6 pgs.

 

PART 4

Prose      Wordless   Prose      Wordless  Prose     Wordless   Prose

6 pgs. à 2 pgs. à   6 pgs.à   2 pgs.à   6 pgs.à  2 pgs.à    6 pgs.

 

 

Each section would be 30 pages. I planned to finish the first part and if I was happy with it continue on with the rest. The scope was becoming overwhelming though and I told myself that if I did finish part 1 I would take a year vacation before going forward. 

 

It so happened that around this time I was given a new job opportunity, one that would require me traveling to Washington state for a sixth months for job training. I brought my drawing materials to Washington, but the new job proved to be more demanding than I expected and I was not able to make any progress on my story for the next few months. In October I renegotiated with my boss to only do half of the work load (the “half” I took was actually more like 25%, although it was still half the pay). I now once again had time to draw. For a few years I had wanted to participate in the online group, Inktober, so instead of working on the comic, I did a separate Inktober comic to unwind. I drew a picture a day for 31 days. It was another short wordless comic marginally related to my project. 

 

Before coming out to Washington I had bought IA Richards’ How to Read a Page. The book informed some ideas in my comic, Simon on the Shores of Ruin. I had been reworking these ideas in the Inktober comic, the idea of a kind of gameboard, with each square representing one of Richard’s 100 most important words. The Richards book I found to be profoundly moving and eloquent. It solved a problem I had, how to structure the encyclopedic component to the story. Here, in such a simple fashion, was a way to include a great breadth of knowledge simply and elegantly. I began working out symbols and images to represent 81 (a 9x9 grid) of Richards’ 100 words. I had begun to do this in early 2020. 

 

The story of characters who speak in images now had a new component, here was their language. A language that could be played like a game. But how could this game be played? This is a challenge I am still working out.

 

I believe it was shortly after returning to Boston in late 2020 that I had an important revelation. I would not make my story in four parts. I would stick to my original plan of having a short story of approximately 40 pages. So, I would have all twelve months in this story. The structure would now look like this: 

 

Prose      Wordless   Prose      Wordless  Prose     Wordless   Prose

6 pgs. à 8 pgs. à   6 pgs.à   8 pgs.à   6 pgs.à  8 pgs.à    6 pgs.

 

It would be 48 pages. Still doable. It was a relief to decide on this. I wanted to finish this story, I did not want it hanging over my head for years. I should add, that I am considering changing the structure again a bit, the second and third prose sections will have 12 pages. I’ve found that I can write and draw these sections much faster than the wordless sections (surprisingly). Mostly because I reuse the same backgrounds and have a simpler coloring scheme. That would put the page count up to 60. 

 

The year is almost halfway over, do I still expect to finish the book this year? I am concerned. But, I have solved most of the problems, I see the path ahead as mostly putting down on paper what I’ve already worked out in my head and sketchpad. I’ve divided the book into three sections and a coda. Having finished the first section I’ve also figured out a method for quickly coloring. I believe the next two sections should go much faster. Certainly I should be able to finish section two and at least start on section three. 

 

Another reason for hope is that I lost 8 weeks of work on the comic earlier this year to a comic art class I took from late January to late March. During this time I didn’t do much work on the comic. I also spent quite a bit of time working out the card game. If I focus entirely on part 2 I should be able to finish it by October, God willing. 

 

Of course, even as I say this the doubts flood in. I am a bit unhappy with the watercolors on the wordless section. They are too muddy for my liking. I think I may be able to touch them up in photoshop, but I still want to make them look better on paper. For section two I plan on doing a few things differently. First, I will use a higher quality paper. Second, I will make my base layer much lighter. I also am not entirely happy with my line work. The markers I’m using on the prose section compensate for problems with the lines, but the watercolors tend to highlight those problems. This is something I need to work out. But I’ve resigned myself to continue moving forward regardless. Not that I haven’t been tempted to rework all of the watercolor pages, but no, I will charge forward and finish this book. After it is scanned, edited, and printed then maybe I will go return to it for a revised second edition. 

 

In conclusion, while I want to focus on the work at hand, I can’t help but say a few words about what I want to do next. The card game in this story will not be fully worked out, it is only intended to be suggestive. But I would like to continue to develop the game and maybe do something with it later. I’ve always wanted to make a video game and have been seriously thinking about converting this story into a game. That will be a massive undertaking. The game would be similar in scope to Toby Fox’s Undertale. Simple graphics, modest length. While I think it will be a challenge, I don’t think it will be impossible. Lastly, I’d like to start a new story. This is another story I’ve been thinking about and messing around with for a long time. It is the story of a world-wide train network. It’s also the history of America. Once again, it is many stories that I’d like to tell as one story. I have a few ideas about how I might do this. One idea is to tell of an underground network of knights/samurai poets. In this story Shelley never dies, but travels to America (as in Elinor Wylie’s novel, The Orphan Angel (which I haven’t read). In my story Shelley meets Emerson. Shelley’s spirit, it is shown, is an old spirit that has been around since the dawn of human culture. It is the spirit of poetry. The story will chart this spirit. The spirit has an architectural quality and trains, as a vehicle of freedom of movement are one of its manifestations. The story will explore the relationship of movement, freedom, and poetry. “I will go on until I am stopped and I am never stopped.”

 

Final note, I had an idea, long ago, that I would write three books. The book I’m working on now, Living Words, is the first. The book about trains, which I have the working title of America: Pasts and Futures, is the second. The third would be The Marriage Engine. I hope to write all three. I’d also like to write a book of criticism, Thinking in Images.