Just Make a List

I think all (or most) of us are prone, on some level, to a bit of procrastination. Some more than others, me definitely included - most of my life has been about how long I can wait to get something done. This usually had to do with school assignments, where I'd, more often than not, wait until the very day they were due. I'm probably not the first to tell you this, but old habits die hard, and despite my efforts, I'm still procrastinating to this day. 

However, with artists, procrastination can be a deadly virus that takes root in one work of yours and spreads out to everything else. This is true for all types of artists, but especially for writers. The amount of tweets I see poking fun about how "writers can't do anything without their coffee" (not true - I don't drink coffee) and "writers put off the editing phase as long as they can" (true - and it hurts to acknowledge) is humongous. This is because it's relatable, and there's something to be said about relatable things. They tend to be true. 

So why is it a deadly virus? Think about it. You think of something new, something you're super hyped to have ever conceived. You start making that something, however it is that you make it (I outline my stories, some writers don't, like the fantastic Stephen King). You follow through with every twist and turn of the paintbrush, every little trim and cut of the scenes you filmed, all the breathtaking monologues and plot twists of your manuscript. 

Then you hit a rough spot. 

It starts to dawn on you how hard it's gonna be to fix the problem, you realize that the color you chose is off, the scene you filmed is missing that [insert important plot detail] you needed to establish, and that no, your beta readers weren't wrong, your character was a massive bitch from the start. 

When you step back and see some of these problems, whatever they may be, it can be hard to continue. You may keep telling yourself that it's not worth it to try, or that you don't have time. 

Don't fall into these traps. 

If the poison can infect one work, it can easily spread. You start something new, and fall into another trap. Then something else, and another, and another - and the cycle repeats itself. We've all been there, we all understand. To this day I still tell myself these things, and procrastinate... but an artist's job is to create art. If we ever want that art to see the light of day, it needs to be finished. 

So I've devised a trick that keeps me accountable for everything I want to get done in a day. It's simple, and probably a no-brainer when it really comes down to it, but if you actually do it, then you may see how much it helps. I keep a list, with check-off boxes. Every day, I'll write everything in this list that I want to get done, be it responsibilities, and luxuries alike. The system is simple - when you finish something, just check it off the list. 

Done. 

This gives you a visual representation of the projects and responsibilities you needed to get done in the day, certain goals that you need to meet that wouldn't have been met otherwise. To some, that may sound intimidating because you'll now have a whole page of stuff to look at and point to when you say, "but I really don't have time! Just look at all the stuff I need to do!" 

I urge you to stop doing that, and just do what's on the list. When I was writing my first book, I didn't think I'd be able to make it in time for the deadline (I believe I had three months, it was my eighth grade project). But, I had a number of words I needed to hit every day, and I wouldn't let myself do anything else until I hit it. Long story short, I made it, and finished my book. Then, a few years later, I started a real manuscript in May of 2016, and finished it in February of 2017. Now, because I can look back at how much I've done and how far I've come, digging through my time to make new stuff doesn't seem like so much of a challenge. I started another manuscript this month (Jan 8th, 2018) - at the time of this blog post, it's the 24th, and I already have 22,000 words (nearly 70 pages) done!  Whenever I minimize the document and look at just how much there is, I say to myself, "If I've already done this much, I can finish it as well."

The same theory applies to your list - just get one thing done, and check off the box. Notice how there's one less box? Well, get another thing done, and check off that box. Now there's two less boxes! Magic, right? In my opinion, the real magic here is mixing your personal goals with your responsibilities. In my lists, I have things like "Finish Math Homework" and "Read one chapter of [insert book here]" together. This way, I can hop around what I want to do and what I need to do while still getting both of them done. I've found that having your artistic objectives in the list works as well! 

This type of structure may not work for everyone, but I figured I'd share a little bit of my personal organization with my blog. That's what it's for, right? 

Until next time, keep watching, keep writing, and most importantly, keep reading.

Small Promises

Finally I have somewhere to put thoughts like this!

Long story short, I'm a weeb. I mean, not really... but that's the word that gets attached to people who enjoy anime and manga, so I'd say we're just meant to embrace it at this point. In any case, it's no secret.

I've been collecting and reading manga for a long time now (a good eight years, I'd say) and I still can't seem to stop. Nothing else published in the west is quite like it - each one seems to have its own individual style of art, and the experience of finding a great story, getting new content for that story (content that you hold in your hands and can place on a shelf), and following the story until its conclusion, years later... it's cathartic. I yearn for this experience in many other mediums, but alas, I find it a fruitless endeavor. As pulpy as manga is, I can't ever seem to shake my interest. 

Naturally, because of this, I'm always on the hunt for new titles. The folks at my local Barnes and Noble practically know me by name at this point (not really), and I can usually be found sniffing out the Sci-Fi/Fantasy aisle, Stephen King's little nook in "Literary Fiction," and of course, the manga section.

The American side of the industry has gotten really good at bringing in new IP's in recent years, but there's still a lag. When VIZ licenses a Shonen Jump title that's popular and publishing weekly in Japan, we tend to get the first volume anywhere from six months to two years after the original debut. This frustrates me to no end - obviously translating is more art than science, and doing so consistently is not an easy feat, nor a quick one. But I want my Japanese comics, goddammit!  But when you have to wait for so long, you either start to lose interest, or you're biting your nails in anticipation for the next volume, sometimes for months on end.

Luckily, with the new (or, well, new here) Shonen Jump title; The Promised Neverland, I can thankfully say I don't think I'll lose interest. To give you a short rundown, The Promised Neverland
follows the characters Emma, Norman, and Ray, three children who live in an orphanage of an undisclosed location, surrounded by a vast forest, a tall fence, and a looming, fort-like gate. Other children live here, too - children of ages 1 to 11. They routinely take an electronic test of equations, facts, and problem solving - afterward, they can laugh and play. About every two months or so, one of these children is adopted and shipped off to their new homes in the night.

One night, Emma and Norman discover that a little girl, Conny, has left her stuffed rabbit behind on her way to her new parents. When they decide to break out of the house and take it to her, they discover her body in the back of a shipping van, and learn that they are raised in captivity to feed giant demons that live outside the gate.

All of this happens in chapter one, so I hardly consider it a spoiler, but not knowing anything about the story really did wonders for how much this sucked me in. I've said before that manga is pulpy, and I'm not lying. Like everything else, most of it is just bad. However, The Promised Neverland has potential above most anything else I've read in the medium.

While I flipped pages like a madman, I couldn't get over how baffled I was that The Promised Neverland was published in Weekly Shonen Jump; the magazine that gave us Naruto, Bleach, One Piece, and Dragonball (amongst other notable works). The magazine has gone out of its comfort zone before, with things like Death Note and Bakuman (both of them penned by the same two people, no less), but this is a different type of manga entirely. I presume there's a possibility of battles and powers in the future, but as of volume one, it's a game of survival and wit between three kids and their cunning caretaker. Will they survive and escape? Or feed the demons beyond the gate?

I'm pretty hyped to follow this series. We're six volumes behind Japan, but that's a small price to pay for something so promising.

(I'm beginning to figure out why they named it that way...)

Until next time. Keep watching, keep writing, and most importantly, keep reading.