A ticking clock

Five days to go, if not less, to get the comic contest submission in. In fact I could stretch it and still submit it Saturday morning AU time, given that will still be Friday in the US.. but I’d really rather not cut it that close.

It’s been a rocky road so far. Work has been hell, which just sucks the creative life out of me but hopefully is getting better. Unfortunately my father ended up in hospital Saturday morning, which has understandably made life that little more complex too (diagnosis is all good but its still a family scare). So whereas I was hoping to devote all weekend to writing, outside events conspired against me.

That said, some progress was still made. Starting with four concepts, I’m down to one concept with about fourteen pages of notes. I think it’s relatively solid now. Characters are sorted. The rules of the ‘universe’ it is set in are documented. A first issue plot is done. An overreaching plot is also sorted (ie. there’s an ending now) and the bad guys are locked in. Now the challenge is to take all the individual pieces and turn them into a single coherent pitch.

The hard part this time has definitely been the conceptual phase, working a lot quicker than I would probably do so normally. I’m hopeful at this point the actually writing (a 5 page concept and a 5 page script) will just be the ‘grunt’ work of the exercise. The concept document should be easy, the script will still be a challenge. So five nights (including the Friday) to write things up is still reasonable, assuming life doesn’t throw any more curveballs.