I’m honestly kind of glad that I live in the world of the internet. Because if I had to write down every single idea I’ve had for a project in my life, my apartment would be flooded with paper.
A lot of the time, those quick one-off ideas don’t go anywhere. I’d jot a couple notes down in my Google Drive and then promptly forget about it, leaving the half-baked idea to gather dust. But recently, two ideas have stuck- and I can’t for the life of me decide which one to focus on. They say when you’re new to a medium, you should go for a smaller project first, but both are grand fantasy epics. They say to focus on the project you feel less passionately about so the one you love will knock it out of the park, but I love both ideas equally. So, I wind up bouncing between both projects, but when you’re working on something like a long-form comic, it could take years before your project is complete. And time spent working on one is time not spent working on the other.
You can see my dilemma. And if you could imagine, it used to be even worse.
The Three Combatants
This is Snow. You might’ve seen her in my last blog post. She was one of my very first characters, and a project I’ve been trying to get off the ground for years revolves around her. Her story takes place among multiple worlds and has gotten extremely complex over the years, with new characters and concepts being added constantly.
This is Ander. He’s a newer character, but his story is also complex. It’s a world of angels, demons, wars, lost souls, and a magical artifact that can end the world. And somehow, this shy dork winds up caught in the center of it.
This is Taylor. They’re the newest of the bunch, living in a world of people who can turn into animals. As the child of a god, they’re caught up in uncovering their family’s secrets and saving the world.
These three have been fighting for my attention for I don’t even know how long.
These are all characters and worlds and stories that mean a lot to me. I know that they’re all complex stories that would require a lot of my time. I know that I can’t work on all of them at the same time. But eventually, I came up with a solution: turning those three stories into two.
The Merger
I very recently decided to combine Snow and Ander’s stories, having them take place in the same universe. Was this because I just wanted to see them interact? Maybe, but it had the added benefit of whittling down the number of stories I needed to focus on. But there were two complications with this:
- I had to heavily rework both of these worlds so they’d make sense together.
- I still had Taylor’s story to worry about.
So I’m still stuck in the same dilemma- just with one even more massive story against another, simpler one.
This weird internal conflict is the major reason why I haven’t gotten much progress done over the years. I’d start working on one, get distracted by the other, try and focus on what I started on, get distracted by a completely different idea that had nothing to do with the others, and so on and so forth. And that’s not even getting into the long stretches of time where I just wouldn’t make anything at all, which I’ll have to dig into at another time. For some reason, I just want to do a little bit of everything, even though I know that isn’t possible.
So how do I plan to squash this indecision? I have no idea.
I know I eventually want to do both, but I know I’ll need the practice before I can make something I’m truly happy with. Maybe I’ll start with shorter strips to get a feel for the characters and how to format comics. Maybe I’ll start with the newer story so I can learn the ropes before tackling the behemoth of Ander/Snow’s project. Maybe I’ll work on the behemoth first, since it’s the most personal to me out of all of my projects.
There are so many paths ahead. But I know I need to walk down one eventually. I won’t get anywhere just standing here.
– Eliza
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