March/April

Thank you all so much for your pledges, support, feedback and contributions this past month! <3 *group hug*

I had hoped I would be even more active here on Patreon with more regular posts and content and streams and updates and whatnot. But you know, living is tedious work too ;) and novel writing isn't a smooth and easy thing to do. But it's still going steadily forward, even rapidly forward if I may be so bold.

I am currently in the process of outlining.
Now, this may sound as if I've barely gotten started since outlining is typically something one would do in the earliest stage of writing a novel, basically brainstorming the entire idea one has for the story they want to write.
I have long since come to terms with how I am very untraditional - or just weird - in the way I work on my novel. So outlining is more like the final stage before everything is written into chapters - which will then continue until the whole freakin' novel is completed. So this is actually pretty huge.
I outline with post-its, which is something I learned of recently and decided to give a go, and it beats the heck out of what I did before with trying to string together a timeline using index cards.
I also wanna give a quick shoutout to Jenna Moreci - whose videos I discovered like, a couple of months ago? But I am so happy I did! Her videos are both educational and motivating, and it was her recent video on outlining that inspired me to try it out with post-its and all.
It's made me realise two things:
One - outlining by writing key scenes and plot points on post-its gives a very clear overview of the story, does indeed make it easier to see what works and what doesn't, and is in all ways just so helpful it's darn near magical <3
Two - I need a bigger wall.

( if you're a writer too, or you wanna start writing something, check out Jenna's videos :) https://www.patreon.com/jennamoreci  )

I also have some exciting news for you when it comes to the Graphic Novel version of SPIKE.. :)

As some of you might know, SPIKE was originally intended to be a graphic novel. The written novel was just my attempt to write a script for the comic to help me remember all the scenes and stuff, but having no idea how to write a script I started writing it as chapters of a novel.
And that is still kind of what I am doing, to be honest. I am writing a novel version of SPIKE, which I plan to turn into a graphic novel afterwards.

The exciting news here is that the Graphic Novel version might be put into production much earlier than I had first thought.
A lot is still uncertain though, but what I can tell you is that I have been in touch with a publishers and plans are already being made to strengthen the chances of SPIKE the Graphic Novel becoming a reality.
But neither of us will know for sure until probably around this winter - which is still very early :D
I am to continue my schedule with the written novel as planned, so the deadline I set for it is still November this year AND it is still my main priority. But I will also have to add room for the graphic novel as it will be beneficial of me to produce some comic pages of it this summer.

So this sadly leaves me with even less time for Patreon activity. But I do not want to be inactive here either. Your support and feedback mean a whole lot to me, and I already worry that devoting so little time to Patreon makes me seem ungrateful. I have so much material but so little of it that I can show you, and that kind of sucks. I want to make more time to draw, and in a way I actually have to make more time to draw anyways because I need to practice again so that I can produce decent looking comic pages over the summer. I figure that if I draw comic pages of the chapters that have already been posted to deviantart, then I could share them with you guys too :) As patrons you'd get an exclusive first view, as usual ^_^

But - although I know most of you already get this and have told me not to worry - I feel I have to apologise in advance for how updates have been and might continue to be rather slow.
If you want and are interested, I wouldn't mind writing quick updates on how the novel process is going :) might not be very detailed, but sort of like "wrote another scene/plot point/chapter today", "sketched a new comic page layout", "novel outlining almost complete", "got to know a character better today" or whatever.. just little snippets of the progress. Posting visual content as often as I can spare them, you know.
Would that have been interesting, or too scarce?

What would you guys like the Patreon posts to be like? :)

(Still trying to come up with what the next Patreon milestone goal could be. I am thinking it could be related to the Graphic Novel somehow..? OuO )

Thanks again for all your support <3
Lots of love to you all <3 *hug* <3