You know what my problem is?
I want to become a great storyteller, but I’m not reading enough. Major issue. My other problem is that I have this manic behaviour of always wanting to put my time into something that looks productive to others. Like: I draw, in 6-7 hours I will have a comic page to show. I rig, in 4 hours I must have a functional character to animate. IĀ cook, in 1 hour I will have food to share. Everything is a race!
It’s obvious that researching is part of production. It’s painfully obvious when you can’t tell a good story. However, I always grow restless when I know that “this hour could’ve been spent inking a panel”. All of this is about me being afraid of people thinking that I am a lazy pretender; that I’m doing nothing with my time. I want to show people how much I work.
A couple of good friends of mine told me that I need to accept that research is part of producing. I am dedicated, I know how to set up routines that work and I am diciplined about my work – I should not give a damn about what people think!
“Telling you that you are lazy is like telling an anorectic you’re fat!”
And that’s when it really hit me. I have an issue to work on. If I want to be able to tell a good story, I need to study more good stories. It’s a fact!
You know what I’m good at? Routines! I’m gonna use that skill in my quest to read more. Every Sunday is my reading day for now on. We’ll see how long it lasts because I usually travel on weekends but it’s been good this far! š I’m mainly gonna read comics to begin with, since that’s my medium of choice right now. The book I read yesterday, my first Sunday of reading, was Three Shadows by Cyril Pedrosa. I’ll write a review and analysis of it later! š