I’ve been so busy with my new job and holiday events that I haven’t had much time to draw, let alone put the finishing touches on the editing for issue #2. However, I can write during my half hour lunch breaks…
For the past few weeks, I have been writing the script for the third book of The Epic of Sally. It is essentially done. I just have to find a few pages of it that I wrote a month ago, that have wandered off.
In the process of this, however, I’ve come to face an odd fear. It’s possibly one of the major reasons why I’ve struggled to share certain parts of the comic’s back story for all these 13 and a half years of working on the Harmless Free Radicals. The whole mythology that explains who Fenmere is and what it is that he’s doing.
It’s a story that I started working on with the express intent of writing an epic fantasy NOVEL. On par with Lord of the Rings or The Earth Sea trilogy. Not necessarily of the same quality of writing, but with the same depth. I don’t think I’ve reached that depth yet. I know for one thing that I’m probably not going to contrive a language for Fenmere’s native tongue, for instance. I’d like to, but I really think it may be a moot point to do so, even if I had the skill to pull it off well.
The problem is that what it means to me has changed. I’ve been working on the mythology for so long that it has become a mix of my childhood daydreams and imaginary friends, and my most intense adult philosophical thoughts about life itself. It is the closest thing to a religion I may have without being something I actually believe in as being real. And while I’ve had no trouble telling people all about it face to face, vocally, I seem to be a little afraid that crafting it into a comic is clumsy at best. Looking at my script, I worry that it’s just going to come out corny. That people will take one look at it and toss it aside.
Not that I necessarily want people to embrace the mythology as their own, to treat it as importantly as I do. But I seem to be afraid that it will be deemed as stupid. And that it will draw critique that it is not worthy of having.
It’s an interesting fear to realize after working so hard for so long to get the damn story out there! Actually, the best word for it is “weird”. Like the revelation of a supernatural truth.
In any case, I intend to keep at it. I think what I’ve written is actually good. And if not exactly good, it is definitely honest. And I hope it is gripping.
At the very least, the people to whom I’ve shown the first line of the next book have all thought it was pretty good. Hopefully, that page will hit the website before the New Year.
Playing make believe with people you can’t see or hear originally appeared on Drawing Contraption on 2013/12/13.