Finding a voice sucks. Blog writing is hard. I imagine this is the case for a lot of people, but I end up trashing most of my posts in a fit of “who really cares what I have to say?”
If this blog is a kind of signposting of my experience, then I’ve forgotten to take pictures of the whole first half of the trip. To be fair, it’s mostly the same — a lot of worldbuilding on the wiki, and then refining and tuning the storyline. I have some broad strokes written out already, and depending on what platforms end up getting chosen for the second half — production — I think we’ll only be able to do maybe an episode a month, including all materials. And by episode I’m not yet sure if I mean primarily an animatic, or primarily a radio-play style podcast.
There’s a conference in October I’m aiming for. I’ve got an idea that was spurred by a friend of mine (hi, Irene!); she asked a very salient question about how polyphonic composition operates in a narrative in which the audience is a direct participant: in other words, a first-person RPG. The resulting thought process is the abstract I’ll be submitting. It’s due on the 20th, so once that’s done and it doesn’t violate any publication rules (I’m still pretty new to all these things) I’ll post the thoughts I’ve had on that topic.
If anyone’s interested, it’s Rethinking Intermediality in the Digital Age, in Cluj-Napoca. I had to look that up. Turns out it’s in Transylvania. Honest. Too cool.
In personal news, I just turned 37 last week. I’ve been thinking it was 38. Got to see They Might Be Giants, which is a huge achievement. I lived in New York for 14 years, and every time I tried to see them something happened to keep me from going. Now, on the other side of the world, I’ve finally seen them in concert. They played the whole of Flood, from back to front. Outstanding.
By the end of May I’m looking to have detailed treatments of the first five chapters done. Already the first chapter has blown out a bit; I originally had only the main character and the captain of the ship she stows away on as primary operators in the story. Except that might not be polyphonic (I think there can be arguments made for a polar story; Crime and Punishment might qualify, but I haven’t read it since high school), so now I’m thinking about the crew and how they interrelate with each other, and how their dynamics change with the arrival of the main character.