Just One More Bite

Have you ever been so full at the end of dinner that you thought you were going to explode, but then they gave you the dessert menu and you realized they had tiramisu? And I mean the good tiramisu, with properly soaked ladyfingers that ooze espresso into your mouth?

That was me signing my Lychgate contracts, ambitiously fitting my new novel series into a work schedule that was already filled to the brim.

I was going to do it. I was determined to do it! Yes, I was already full, but I would eat every last ladyfinger, I would enjoy every bite, and I would not puke in the car on the way home.

Well, deadlines are nearing. Art of Death is done and approaching release, Bonds of Death is in edits, Reins of Death is approaching manuscript completion, and no vomit in sight.

Can I do it all? Yes!

Am I scared to death? Yes!

This has been a big week. First, Art of Death (Lychgate Book 1) paperback preorders went live. Second, I finished the draft for Reins of Death (Lychgate Book 3).

Or was it the other way around? Draft 1 of Reins of Death was definitely completed over the weekend, but I could barely manage more than a brief “woohoo!” across my scant selection of social media platforms before returning to my previous state of floating aimlessly throughout the universe with no clue where I was. Only today can I put together a few coherent thoughts on the matter.

When I draw, I stay connected. I sketch a few panels, then hop onto the internet to check my email, poke around at the professional groups I’m a part of, and maybe drop by Tumblr to see how many more people are mad at me for dreaming that I laughed at a dog in a snowsuit. But when I write, I fall off the face of the earth. You won’t see or hear from me for days. That’s just the way my brain works.

I am one of those cursed beings who does multiple things instead of specializing in one. You know, the one your parents warned you not to become for fear that you’d never attain greatness in your field. “Don’t spread yourself too thin,” they’d say, and it wasn’t bad advice. But when we love multiple things enough, we often find a way to give just enough of ourselves to all of those things. We might go light on one and heavy on another. We might have on and off seasons for some of them. In the end, we might not become champions at all or any of them, but we touch each of them in the way that means something to us, and hopefully to the people who consume the fruits of our labor.

I’m a writer and an artist. The “artist” designation can be broken down into further categories: indie webcomic creator and freelancer. I can’t turn my back on any of these things. I feel like I can’t fully live without touching each of them. But only one of these things transports me to another universe, and that’s writing.

I wish I could say that the final weeks of plugging away at my Reins of Death draft was fueled purely by inspiration, but the truth is I often get a good chunk of my inspiration from a cold, hard deadline. Without that, there’s always more freelance to take, always more extras to post on Patreon, always more emojis to add to my webcomic‘s Discord server. The more enjoyable and self-indulgent a task feels, the more likely I am to postpone it unless a deadline is staking it firmly in its place.

Writing is just such a task for me. I always want to do it; I can’t always give myself permission.

For the past five and a half years, Merritt’s Story, the prose companion novel to my webcomic, has been my vice. After a grueling stretch of thumbnailing, drawing, inking, shading, and detailing a webcomic page that only tells a paragraph’s worth of story at a time, writing prose almost feels like cheating to me. With prose, I can whip out an epic battle scene in a day if I’m inspired enough. Not so with a webcomic, where a single shot featuring multiple characters can take me a quarter of a day.

This year, the thing I couldn’t give myself permission to do became a thing I had to do. And that’s not a complaint. The Lychgate series was contracted, and as a result, my writing time is no longer negotiable.

I’m writing. I’m loving it.

But man, I’m scared. Scared and stuffed.

Cross your fingers for me. And maybe throw me an antacid.