Dreams of the Quill

Hey there. It’s been a long time since the last Sunday Update.

This Sunday Update, like so many before it, isn’t an actual content update but just me babbling about what’s to come. In this post, I will describe a few of my goals for the rest of 2008 and explain the state of some of DotQ’s projects and customs which may seem to have faded away. This post also refers to a handful of this year’s resolutions.

1. Art

Drawing Harvests - I said I would draw at least five things a week. This gave birth to Drawing Harvests, which pretty much died along with my computer The Southwest. I finally have a computer again, and it can’t run the version of Photoshop I have—if I ever get a version it can run, you can believe that Drawing Harvests will be back.

Gallery Pages - Since the advent of Drawing Harvests, the Art pages haven’t seen much loving. I haven’t updated any of mine in 2008, at least. A large part of this is that the (fairly cool) presentation I cooked up for these pages is a pain and a half to implement, and updating the pages with new art was always more of a chore than a joy. By comparison, dumping things into my storage space and then linking to them was much easier. I can’t let these pages collect more dust, though—I need to change the way they’re set up, and I need to update them, and I need to keep them up to date. This is something I want to do.

TheNewHorde’s Art - I’ve done TNH a disservice by not helping him with his gallery page. I will aid him in creating something more in touch with the rest of the site’s design in the near future, hopefully.

Waiting for Redesign - Any changes to gallery pages, whether they be simplifying mine or improving TNH’s, will wait for the site layout overhaul that’s due at some point in the next couple months. This is for the obvious reason that I don’t want to change everything twice.

Comics - I’m currently working on the long-overdue prize for the The Amazing Adventures of Flak Contest, which was, like so many Drawing Harvests and Tohno Michiru, not allowed to be born into this world. Like with the Drawing Harvests and unlike with Michiru the reason for this was the death of The Southwest. I’ve finally gotten some work done on the comic for Flak vs. the Geek Squad—four panels. Out of maybe thirty or so. It’s tricky because it’s a hard one to illustrate and I need to borrow someone else’s computer for tablet use. BUT. It will be finished someday and then I won’t feel bad about holding another contest.

2. Writing

Drawing My Heart - in the painful throes of a head ache today, I soothed myself with music from AIR and CLANNAD. This, combined with a handful of viewings of the Narcissu 2 OP over the last week, reminded me of something I needed to do: create power. Intense though the world of the Hunter Chronicles is, it’s simply not an emotionally riveting tale. Night Switch is just fun (and also funny if you get any of the inside jokes). Tundra of Heroes has some potential but it’s currently bogged down in editing. The Last Season was either a failure or an unknown waiting in the future. This leaves one work: Drawing My Heart. We’ve (temporarily?) lost KCG, and Black Shard’s out for a while, but I’d like to get some good work done on the project over the next few months. I’d been briefly considering trying my hand at National Novel Writing Month; instead, I should apply that determination to DMH. We shall see how that goes, I suppose.

Farewell to Gauntlet - hahahaha! Remember this? It’s another chance for power, I suppose, but a number of things need to fall into place before I complete it. Foremost amongst them is the acquisition of a version of Photoshop that works on my computer. I guess I can always finish writing the game before that…

Exposure - I need to get more people reading my stuff. I took the first step toward this goal when I registered on Web Fiction Guide but I’ve been too hesitant to actually submit any of my stuff so far. I should do that soon, I guess.

Night Switch - I’m really sorry to my three readers that I didn’t update this past Friday. I’ll give you guys a bonus chapter to make up for it, hopefully. I just… was busy with other things. Ahem. Night Switch is one of my few projects that is making the desired headway at the moment. It’s progressing nicely, I think, at a good rate with frequent updates. I’m not going to make any changes to how I’m doing things, I think…

Hunter Chronicles - Um, lol. What happened to finishing Crystals of Mana this year? I don’t know, but it’s not looking like it’ll happen what with my not writing any in months. It will happen eventually, though, as this is a story that will never be complete and never be discarded—it’s integral to my existence, and thus will always be continued, no matter the rate.

3. Web

Jobs - Most of my time these days is occupied by work. I’ve got an “as many hours as I want” web administration job for Lawrence Berkeley National Lab which in two weeks has averaged around 23 hours/week. I have a job for the Mechanics’ Institute Chess Club that’s about 3 hours/week. I’m my mother’s indentured servant for another 17 hours to pay off my new computer, and I’ll likely keep doing work for her once that time is up. I’m helping my friend Greg start a blog. I’m advising an ex-scifi author on web publishing. I’ve got a bunch of clients for websites lined up. Work is abundant and time consuming. I’m very happy, but it doesn’t leave a whole lot of time for other projects…

Redesign - DotQ needs a redesign badly, as mentioned a few times in recent weeks/months. This will happen this year for sure. Hopefully by the end of September. I’ll post some of my ideas for the redesign sometime in the next two weeks.

AAAAAAND THAT’S IT, FOLKS.

Took me an hour and a half to write this up, gathering all the links and refreshing my memory on some things. Long story short: there’s a lot needing doing, and that “needing” isn’t just “wanting” so I better get doing it. This is my semester of “freedom”—I have no school, no classes, no homework. I love the fact that I’ve got so much work to do and can make some money for the future, but it’s also important that I work on DotQ stuff.

Creation is wealth.