Spice · 1:00am Nov 27th, 2018
I mentioned not too long ago that I was rereading the story and going through it right? Well, as it turns out, I really like what I've written here. I know some people write because they have a story they want to tell, and others write to gain attention or fame, but... when I sat down to write Super, I was totally writing this for me. Based on all the things I wanted to emulate with the biggest element from my favorite thing, MLP gen 4, and then literally everything else I wanted to write. It is my world exactly the way I wanted it to be and how I wanted it to go. That said, when I go to look for details (say, Rainbow's actual height for example), I tend to get caught up reading and forget what I'm doing, and reread the whole chapter. I can honestly say that I've done that at least four times this week in an attempt to make progress, and then get nowhere because of it.
Another thing happened, and I came to the conclusion that far too much of my characters comes from me. I am such a broken person that I have learned how to emulate and project my own brokenness where ever it needs to go. Even to the point where I'm so good at recognizing it that I've learned how to hide it as soon as it pops up. I made one attempt to write a scene that opens the first part of Kaiju 4 and felt my self shivering as I was trying to write someone who was dealing with their own emotional traumas all the way to the point of physically feeling what was going on. It makes me wonder if writing is even good for me because I feel it enough to actually break down while I do it. I know I'm a broken record here, but when the chapter I've planned finally comes, I'm actually concerned that I won't be able to write it. I've been told that artists are broken people that live by reopening wounds over and over again to express feelings to others, but it wasn't until yesterday that I really understood that.
It is a simple scene, one that is there to set up a later chapter, but it was almost a memory viewed by someone else. The feeling, the shaking, the anger, the sorrow. I remember the day this happened, but the character it happens to isn't even the focus of the scene. What's worse, it's one of those scenes that I know I'll come back to, so I'll have to go through feeling like that again just to make sure it's still genuine. It's a little disgusting to know that I can make myself feel so... vulnerable just by setting up a scene, ya know? This is why I yell and lose my temper so easily, why I just let myself get overtaken by whatever emotion has me at the time, because once I've gotten a strong taste of it, I can call it back again and again and again. Whenever I need it, whenever I feel it, it all comes back just like the last time I felt it, adding yet another reference point for me to come back to.
Of course, we also have to keep in mind that I am a depressing person when I want to be, and I like sad things. So I write and draw sad things. When I first got into drawing, I never drew anybody smiling because that was me. I hated the world and everything in it, so if I had to suffer, then the subjects of my craft would suffer with me.
Really though, I'm honestly glad that I am this way. When you're young, you don't realize how useful it is to have a record of the person you were the year before because you can't understand that who you are now is not who you will be in two or five or ten years down the line. Even Super itself is a chronicle of who I was, who I am, and who I will be because it is my life over the past two and a half years now. I am so different from who I was at the beginning of the story that it finally makes sense as to why the story has evolved so much over time. It's simultaneously easier and harder to write because I'm not sure I want to reopen those wounds anymore, but I can't stop writing and drawing because it is a piece of me, and an important one. The moment I stop is the moment I lose a piece of myself and in turn I would rather feel the negative emotions over and over again instead of letting this part of me die.
This ended up way longer than I planned for it to be, so... I'm going to get back to work and leave this where it is. If you don't stop to take a step back and look at yourself every now and again, you lose sight of where you are and where you're going.
Anyways, that's all from me. Kaiju 4, or at least the first part there of, will be out next Monday, and my boss is telling me work is going to slow down in the coming weeks up to Christmas, so I'm hoping I can get a little closer to... that chapter without losing heart.
Until Next Time~
-KCZ
