I’d like to attract attention and earn a profit. The new model for The Sun Elves is an experiment. My current audience may like the art in Book 1, but unfortunately for them, there are not enough of them to keep me drawing full pages in color twice a week. The things I’m introducing into the business model are a) a larger volume of updates, and b) humor. If I can be successful at these elements, maybe I can attract a larger, more profitable readership.

I might not be very good at these things yet, but that’s how skills work. In order to get good at something, you have to practice it. I’ve never been able to keep from coloring a comic after I’ve drawn it, so I’ve never been able to learn an appealing black-and-white style. And I have been practicing my humor to a certain extent, but this is the first time I’ve really devoted myself to working on it. And if the constant improvement of my artistic skills is any indication, I’m going to learn quickly once I’m working on it regularly.

Volume is not a problem at the moment. I’m producing strips at an impressive rate. The reason I’m only releasing 3 strips and 1 art piece a week is that I’m not sure if I can keep up the pace. I think I can, but there’s the issue of the move.

I’m probably going to be moving and getting a job and performing various other real-life tasks this winter. Once I’ve settled into a new routine, I’ll consider scheduling updates more often. But until I know how things are going to play out, I’ll stick to 4 updates a week and my tremendous buffer. I haven’t had a job in years and I don’t know how it’s going to affect my art schedule, especially at first.

Dragon’s Fall is more of a long-term investment. It’s a long complicated story and honestly, it’s not much to read right now. It’s going to be amazing when it’s all finished. But for now the art has to be the main draw. It’s the project that pushes me to try new things and really explore the comics page and what I can do with it artistically.

The slow and steady once-a-week update schedule for Dragon’s Fall is not likely to change any time soon. Both my co-author and I are passionate about this story and determined to continue it, but we’ve been working on it since, let’s see, 2002? And it’s a masterpiece that will continue to take time. We can barely keep up with the once-weekly schedule as it is.

I’ve had plenty of time to be creative so far this winter, and I’m ahead on both comics at the moment with time to spare. There’s not much writing I can do for Dragon’s Fall at the moment. and I’ve written Sun Elves so far ahead it’s ridiculous. I don’t want to increase my schedule with Sun Elves yet, for the preceding reasons, and also it’s getting to the point where I need a break from the story. So when I’ve been in a writing mood recently, I’ve been working on a novel.

There’s something about working on a novel that makes it seem more…within reach. I’ve never finished a novel, but I feel like I could. The problem with me and novels is it’s hard for me to come up with an idea for a story on my own. And the problem with working on someone else’s story is that they expect different things out of it than you do. I can usually deal with it, but I tend to flatten my co-writers in the process.

The novel I’m working on now is based on the first half of a book my sister wrote and then discarded. It already has a well-defined plot, a distinct feel and a lot of material. All it needs is to be fleshed out, and for the moment, I’ve got the inspiration to do so. My sister and I have only had one major fight about it, and we have prevailed. We’ve agreed on the main elements of the story, and, most importantly, she’s agreed to let me mess with it as much as I want if I feel that it’s necessary. That’s an attitude I can work with.

I am a destructive force of art and I refuse to apologize.

Anyway, that’s one of my active projects right now, and if I finish that, I’m going to try to sell it to some publishing companies, but if that doesn’t work, I’ll probably just put it on the Internet. I don’t know whether I’ll charge for it or not. Does that work? Because I’d love to make some income off one of my creative projects.

I have a huge buffer for The Elves of Linden Hold, and at this point, the major reason for holding off the launch until January is that for the last few months I’ve been telling everyone that that’s when it will start.

Originally I had the idea that if I held off the launch I would give myself space to work on Dragon’s Fall and maybe build up a buffer before I started in on a new project. There may still be some truth to this, if only because for the next three weeks I will be anxious to work on The Elves of Linden Hold but the delay will remind me that I’m supposed to be working on Dragon’s Fall. But the reason that has really fallen off the map is that I was worried about working on two comics at once, because the first time I tried it I crashed and burned. But that doesn’t seem to be a factor any more. I’ve been switching between DF and LH pretty seamlessly.

In any case it is winter again, my most productive season. I expect to get a lot of comics drawn in the months ahead. The thing that I’m most worried about getting in the way of this is the fact that I’m finally thinking seriously about moving out. Probably in January or February, right in the middle of my most productive season and the launch of my new comic strip. So that should be interesting.

Especially since the aspect of drawing I’m always behind on is the digital work which requires my full work station. It’s not that hard to set up in a new place – all I really need is an electrical outlet – but it’s something that I need to take into consideration.

I’m not very worried about getting a job. I’ve held down a job and worked on a comic before. I wasn’t very good at updating my comic back then, but I did always get home and work on something creative, and now I’m much better at consistently channeling my creative energy into comics.

OK, maybe I am a little worried about actually getting a job. But not too worried. And I shouldn’t need to find one for a while, if it proves difficult.

Anyway, The Elves of Linden Hold is the first comic I’ve started with no main story arc in mind – in other words, it is an open-ended comic which might go on, theoretically, forever. It’s also got a formula which seems more geared to be popular with the casual comics reader. If I can make it profitable at all, it will give me a big warm fuzzy feeling, and help me get my life together again both in practical and emotional ways.

The Elves of Linden Hold may not, in fact, go on forever, but The Sun Elves might. I have a lot of future events planned out, and there is a theoretical Book 3, as well as some much later events, such as might go into an epilogue if I ever finish everything that goes before it and can’t think of things to go after it. But both of those seem unlikely. I can always think of more things to happen at any point in the timeline, and there are hundreds of years in there to fill. Wherever I end up getting to, I should have enough material that I can draw Sun Elves comics for the rest of my life.

The key ingredient here is the chia seeds. They have the sticking power that is the hardest element to replace in any wheat-free baking. They need to be soaked to release their gooey potential. Then they can be mixed with the other ingredients.

My two favorite flavors are the mint chocolate and the root beer. They’re sweeter because I can put stevia in them. Stevia has a bitter menthol-y tang that only goes with a few flavors, but with these, you can’t taste anything but sweet.

All right, here are the recipes!

Mint Chocolate Cookie Sticks

1/4 cup chia seeds

1/2 cup water

1 tablespoon SweetLeaf stevia & inulin blend

2 tablespoons agave nectar

3/4 cup almond meal

2 tablespoons dutch cocoa

3 drops peppermint flavoring

Root Beer Cookie Sticks

1/4 cup chia seeds

1/2 cup water

1 tablespoon SweetLeaf stevia & inulin blend

2 tablespoons agave nectar

3/4 cup almond meal

1 teaspoon root beer flavor (Faerie’s Finest)

Chocolate Orange Cookie Sticks

1/4 cup chia seeds

1/2 cup overbrewed sweet spicy tea

2 tablespoons agave nectar

3/4 cup almond meal

1 teaspoon orange zest

4 teaspoons dutch cocoa

Gingerbread Cookie Sticks

1/4 cup chia seeds

1/2 cup overbrewed sweet spicy tea

2 tablespoons agave nectar

3/4 cup almond meal

1 teaspoon ground ginger

1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract

1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1/4 teaspoon ground cloves

1/4 teaspoon orange zest

Preparation

The cooking temperature will be 350 F.

First add the secondary sweetener to the water. If it’s stevia, mix it in and let it dissolve. If it’s tea, prepare the tea, cover it and let it steep at least 5 minutes. I used Celestial Seasonings Bengal Spice, but you can also use Good Earth Original or Tazo Wild Sweet Orange. The point is to get some sweetness into the water so it can infuse the chia seeds.

Next put the chia seeds in the water. Wait a couple of minutes, then stir until all the water has been absorbed.

Add the liquid flavorings and the agave nectar. The nectar is the primary sweetener for the chocolate orange and gingerbread flavors, but when stevia is in play it’s there to round out the flavor and make it taste more natural. You can play with the amount depending on your tastes and dietary needs, or even use honey if you’re more concerned about total carbs than blood sugar spikes.

Mix the powdered flavorings into the nut meal and then fold together the nut meal and the chia goop until they’re evenly mixed. This can take some serious strength with a spoon. Sometimes it’s easier just to pick it up and squish it around.

Pick up a small spoonful and roll it into a log, then lay it on the greased cookie sheet or parchment paper. The log shape is the best for even cooking without burnt edges. It should be about 1/2 inch in diameter. You can place logs quite close to each other if you need to. They won’t spread. They actually shrink a little.

Cook them for 20 to 25 minutes. The lighter colored ones should begin to brown, and their texture when pressed with a finger should be leathery, but not quite hard. It’s nice if you can get them crispy, but it’s a short window before they start to burn.

I like to let them cool before eating them. A lot of moisture steams out of them while they cool, and the crunch of the almonds becomes more dominant. Their chewy texture when fresh can be a little strange.

I hope you like my cookies as much as I do! And eat lots of them! They’re good for you!

Before I could not finish one page of Dragon’s Fall and two pages of LleuGarnock a week. That was too much art. Part of the problem was my attitude to DF being too perfectionist and not enough methodical. I believe I’ve got that sorted out. I stress a lot less over DF pages now.

Another problem was that too much of my process was digital. I was having to spend all my time sitting in front of my computer, and I get really sick of being hunched over the Cintiq. Every LG page got scanned in as a rough sketch, and DF sometimes not even that. Everything you could still see in the final work represented time spent on the computer.

Now I’m sketching DF all the way to a super-refined sketch. It means I have to do a lot less thinking in front of my computer. The more mechanical the digital work is, the faster it gets done. And I’m doing barely any digital work on my Linden Hold strips. They get inked on paper and remain black-and-white, so all I have to do is a little adjustment, touch-up and sizing.

The main problem was that it really was too much art. But the simplification in style I’m using in Linden Hold helps a lot with that. I’m doing 3 or 6 small panels, emphasizing the figures and faces, taking up a lot of the remaining space with word balloons and not sweating the backgrounds if they seem unnecessary. The art may not be as finished as what I’ve been doing towards the end of LleuGarnock, but I’m hoping to earn that freedom with my scripts.

I’m trying to learn how to be funny. It’s a process I started at the beginning of LG, and was making progress on before the story got all gloomy. But since the main goal of LG was to stay on schedule and finish the story, funny got left by the wayside for a while.

The priority of LH is going to be humor.

It’s still not something I’m great at, and I’m tripping up a lot in these first few mini-arcs. I try to set up a joke and suddenly everything’s all serious again and I can’t think of a punchline. I could justify this by saying that there needs to be a smooth transition between the drama of LG and the humor of LH, but really I just have a lot to learn about how to write funny stories.

Anyway, I’m putting a lot more effort into scripting LH than I am into drawing it, which really helps balance me out, because DF is really art intensive. Although I am co-writer for Dragon’s Fall, I’m not all that great at writing the main character and the main plot. In fact, I’m mainly responsible for all the multitude of side characters and branching plots it’s sprouted, and there are enough of those. So I haven’t been doing a lot of writing on that project.

I have half-finished novels I could be working on, but it’s good to be writing something I know people will get to see soonish. The wonderful thing about comic updates is there is a lot of motivation to finish in the short term, not just in the long term. The scripts I’m writing right now may not see the Internet until April or May, but that is a lot more concrete-feeling to me than a possible publication date years from now.

Yes, I am building a months-long buffer of LH. Of course I am. Experience has taught me that I will get stuck, or I will have to spend some serious time working on DF pages. I have to work on what I can work on while I can work on it, and right now that is LH.

I think I might get up to 6 months’ worth of buffer before I actually launch, which is a nice number. Any more than that and I might have to increase my update schedule. 6 months is a long time to wait for your latest comic strip to go live, even for me.

This is all set up so when I do receive more DF scripts, I will have the time and artistic patience to get the pages done efficiently. It’s hard to get really absorbed in a project when your other comic urgently needs updates drawn for it. I’m hoping to keep both comics generously buffered, but I won’t always be able to control my DF work schedule. So I’m hoping that with Linden Hold I’ve formulated a project that will always be a respite from whatever craziness Dragon’s Fall throws at me, and so will always have a buffer that can take the erratic schedule.

Since the beginning of college I’ve had the happiest, most socially busy times of my life, and during that time I’ve had two major projects. A story about a loner who has to endure many hardships to fulfill some great destiny, and a story with a lot of war and death and cultural tensions. Even though I’ve thought that I wanted to make them more upbeat at times, it just hasn’t worked that way.

So here I am negotiating a divorce and, what opportune timing, The Elves of LleuGarnock is ending and its sequel will soon begin. I am suddenly all over the romantic comedy aspect of the story, laughing at the cute and goofy hijinks my characters are getting up to.

It almost gives credence to the “tortured artist” model. This is the kind of story I’ve always wanted to write but haven’t been able to. Possibly because I haven’t had this sort of longing to have it in my life.

Perhaps it’s like the examination of negative space. In order to see the shape of something you have to be able to see where it isn’t. Or a case of perspective – stepping back allows you to see something in a more comprehensive way. Whatever it is, not having cute romantic moments in my life has allowed me to see those moments in a new light and given me a desire to recreate them.

This new story still has its moments of drama. I’ve tried to limit them but I’m not very good at keeping it light yet. Besides, there would be a sort of discontinuity if this world and these characters suddenly started being silly at every moment.

I’m not sure about the rest of my life, but I really like the place I’m in creatively right now. I’m pushing my limits as a writer, not just as an artist, and I’m doing work that I like more than anything I’ve done before. It may not be as profound as my favorite Dragon’s Fall scenes or as beautifully pulled together as my favorite elements of the LleuGarnock plot, but it is fun, and that’s something I have been trying to accomplish for a long time. And something that I hope will have a broader appeal than anything I’ve done before.

Maybe the word bothers me a little bit, and maybe I am having some trouble with the finality of the term. But mostly it’s because divorce is what he wants. I don’t want to say it first because it has never been my desire for myself. And until someone makes it more concrete, it won’t seem quite real to me.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s quite clear to me that there is no longer a romantic relationship between us. I’m not saying that our marriage still works, or even that divorce is the wrong choice. But with the lack of information I’m working with here, I can’t say that it’s the right one either. I wish James could talk to me about how he’s feeling. But if he could, maybe all our problems would be solved.

I hope I don’t seem cold. Reading over this, it all sounds very calculated and thought-out, which it is, of course. That’s how I am when I write. That’s why I write, on some level. It helps me realize all the little thoughts I’m having and put them into some sort of context. It helps me process things, and work through the feelings.

….

I’m not doing too badly.

I feel bad for not feeling worse. I’ve told a lot of people recently and I keep being reminded by their reactions that breakups destroy people. If I’m doing all right, does that mean that my love somehow wasn’t real enough or deep enough? But love is not a destructive force. There are a lot of things that come with it that can be destructive. It’s not in my nature to be angry, jealous, vengeful, or depressed, and I see no reason to cultivate these things in myself. If all I have in me is love, why shouldn’t I be happy?

Of course I am also bewildered and sad. But what is life without sadness? For me, sadness has always had a certain aesthetic appeal. It’s beautiful. I’ve spent so much of my life absorbed in one fiction or another that it’s given me the ability to step back from my own life when I need to, and it is as if it is no more than a well-loved book that always makes me cry. This doesn’t worry me. As I said before, what would worry me is if I didn’t cry at all. As I see it, all this step back does is give me a chance to gain perspective without the intervening time most people require.

Another thing that would worry me is if I withdrew from my other social relationships. If anything I’m putting more effort into them. Of course, as a recovering Aspie, I’m not generally the one who initiates contact in any case. But I’ve been talking to my sister when she’s around, participating in board game night, and accepting the invitations I get. I connected with a lot of people at the reunion this past weekeknd. I’ve even called a couple of people! This is indeed an unusual amount of effort for me. I’ve never gotten over my fear of telephones. There just isn’t enough information about the other person’s state of mind for me to have any confidence in my conversational skills.

It’s really important to me that people feel like they can still talk to me, either as if nothing’s happened or to indulge their curiosity and bombard me with questions. Any kind of conversation is going to help reassure me that I haven’t failed at being a good human. Also, we’re not dividing up our friends at all. Our friends are too important to both of us. There is a pretty minimal level of wierdness, at least on my part, about being together in a social context, so definitely invite us both to things.

….

I don’t like the idea of owning people. I don’t like forcing people to do things they don’t want to do. When people talk about James being mine and the possibility of him being stolen, it makes me quite uncomfortable because he is not a thing. And the moment he stopped wanting to be mine he stopped being mine. In my worldview there is no other way to see it. A one-sided relationship is a totally meaningless illusion.

I don’t want responsibility for somebody else’s happiness. Because in truth I have no control over it. All I can do is be kind to people, and take the opportunities I see to facilitate their happiness. I take responsibility for my own happiness, and that is how I like it, because that at least I have some control over.

The thing I really dislike about my relationship with James is that he took responsibility for my happiness on himself. He could not bring himself to do the things he needed to do for the sake of his happiness, instead prioritizing mine. In the process, he withheld any information that would have helped me to make him happy.

A relationship is not supposed to be such a heavy responsibility. I’m happy to facilitate anyone’s happiness if they let me know how I can do that, and all I want is someone who will do the same for me, when they’re not busy taking care of themselves. I want someone who understands that I have two feet and I am not afraid to use them when necessary.

I don’t mean to discount the Swedenborgian ideals of loving something outside oneself, or a married couple ultimately becoming one angel. But I guess it seems to me that people forget that becoming an angel is just as important as, maybe more important than becoming one. If we don’t get the things we need and learn to be happy, we will never be angelic. And if we can’t communicate our experiences and needs to each other, we can never function as one. Trying to function as one beyond our capacity to do so will only lead to tragedy.

(Yes, I was raised in a strange little religion. It’s similar to other forms of Christianity, only it encourages reasoning, questioning your faith and falling in love as essential elements of life. Also everyone has a chance of getting into heaven. I think it’s generally pretty great.)

Anyway, the point is, it’s not bad to try to grow beyond your imperfections, but just about the worst thing you can do is conceal those imperfections, especially from yourself and anyone you want to be truly close to.

And yes, James is going to date other people and it will make me feel jealous. But that doesn’t mean that they’ve done anything wrong. In fact, if they can successfully facilitate James’s happiness, that is wonderful. I wish he could have been happy with me, but he was not. I hope somebody has more luck because I have no idea how to go about it.
….

Well, I didn’t set out to get all religious on this blog, but some events inevitably lead to a consideration of one’s moral beliefs and the influences thereupon. I was raised Swedenborgian, and will usually identify as such, although I also relate to Buddhist, Agnostic, and Baha’i. One of the greatest things about Swedenborgianism is it recognizes the merits and validity of other religions. Most of them contain the necessary tools for getting to heaven, so when I don’t find the tool I’m looking for in the Bible or Swedenborg’s writings, I feel quite comfortable going and looking in someone else’s toolbox. As long as I’m not using those tools to justify doing something I believe in my own heart and mind to be wrong, it’s cool.

I hesitate to call myself Buddhist when I don’t believe in the concept of physical rebirth, but I do believe in a cyclical journey which approaches perfection. I eat meat, but I believe in reducing the harm one does to other beings. I’ve agonized over this at times, when I consider how useful the tools of Buddhism have been in my life. But I genuinely believe that my eating meat increases my well-being and my usefulness to those around me more than it contributes to suffering. This is a position I have put a lot of thought and experimentation into. I feed my body what makes it healthy. It is a delicate balance which has taken decades to achieve and which I don’t care to change too significantly. And although some practices used in the production of meat are less than exemplary, it is a more complex issue with too many factors to count. For example, one cannot discount the suffering caused by GMO soybeans and the associated corporate pressures. No food is truly victimless.

I believe in most of the Swedenborgian teachings, but there are things in those books that I question too. Mostly they are in the area of romantic relationships. Swedenborg provides a blueprint for the perfect marriage, and suggestions on how to go about getting one sort of like it. But this too is a more complex issue in an imperfect world. Sometimes we have to trade the ideal for something that works better on a practical level. It may not allow us to feel self-righteous about following the rules, but it makes life better for everyone. And to me that means it is the right choice.

Ultimately all of us are just doing the best we can, in a world that is a sea of answers, but no certain answers.

James and I broke up.

The only reason it’s more complicated than that is we’ve been married for four and a half years. So I guess we have to do lots of complicated legal stuff now.

It might be a cliché, but clichés exist for a reason – because they’re true a lot of the time – so here it is: we’re different people now than when we got married. We’ve both learned a lot about how we want to live our lives and how we each interact with people. And maybe we’ve been slow about it but we’ve finally realized we’re not right for each other.

So here I am in a place where I never thought I’d be. When I said my vows I meant them. But I guess all I can say now is that we’re human. Don’t judge unless you’ve been there. The straight and narrow path only works if you’re actually standing on it. Sometimes you have to backtrack a little to find it again.

Sometimes I think “it’s scary how well I’m handling this.” But I don’t think I have anything to worry about because other times I am bawling my eyes out. Of course I’m sad. But I’m trying my best to take to heart all those little things I’ve heard. Your happiness does not have to depend on another person. People just fall out of love sometimes and it’s not your fault.

The hardest part, honestly, has been facing the world. Culture and religion have been telling us all our lives that it’s very bad to get divorced and that you should keep working at your relationship even if it seems futile and makes you miserable. Well, I believed that until last month. Now it’s just an oppressive cloud that’s keeping us from telling our friends and family what’s happening to us because we don’t want to disappoint them. No one in this situation should have to feel more alone than they already do.

Now, more than ever, I appreciate the comparative religion class I had in college, and the Buddhist phase that resulted. I believe a lot of things from a lot of sacred books but right now what’s giving me comfort and the ability to endure is the stuff I learned from Buddhism. One of the things I love about it is the acceptance of life as it is, of beings as they are. Buddhism doesn’t teach you how to make your life better. It teaches you how to deal with the life that you have. Which is great, because sometimes life just sucks.

Despite all this acceptance stuff, which I do believe, I still feel the need to make it clear that this was not my idea. In my mind this is a clear cut case of “if you love him then you have to let him go.” It isn’t love to force him to stay with me. It would be for my own comfort and for our reputation, neither of which mean anything to me if he is miserable. He’s seemed much happier since we made the decision, which is the ultimate piece of evidence. I can’t deny him what makes him happy.

I was caught in a cycle for a while. When I’m in a good mood I think “This is going pretty smoothly actually.” That leads to “It’s not like we don’t get along.” Then comes “Maybe we could work things out.” After that, “I should be fighting harder. Isn’t this something worth fighting for?” But I don’t know how to fight this, so then I’m miserable. I have to remind myself that this is all in my head. I believe James when he says that he doesn’t want to be in a relationship with me and there is nothing I can do about it. And no one is going to benefit from me being a bitch about it. So I try to keep my spirits up and make things go smoothly. And the cycle resets.

A lot of people are going to want to know what went wrong. Well, I don’t know, and I don’t have much interest in exploring the issue if it isn’t going to do me any good. I am convinced that this is the case. I’ve asked James “Are you sure?” enough times, and at some point you just have to stop asking and get on with life.

We’re still going to be housemates for a while. Neither of us is anxious to live alone, and with my sister here, it’s just a house full of friends. I don’t see that changing until one of us starts dating someone else. I like my life here. I like having people to cook for and parties with mutual friends. For me, getting on with life means getting back to being happy and doing the things I love, and for that, there is no reason to move.

But within me lurks a beast.

The Writing Beast.

It is judgmental, nitpicky, egomaniacal and downright vampiric. It likes to nom on my friends’ heads and suck out their ideas and then use them for its own twisted amusement. I try to keep it in check but there is a problem.

I actually really like the things it writes.

Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t nom on anyone’s head to write The Elves of LleuGarnock, and it’s OK, I guess. But it isn’t brilliant.

When I write Dragon’s Fall it is brilliant. It’s full of the scrumptious juices the Writing Beast has sucked out of William’s head. I am getting thirsty just thinking about it.

Because the Writing Beast is me, just as much as the social “me” is me. They are both representations of what I wish to give to the world. As a friend I try to be the best friend I can be, and I like to think the world is a little better because of that. But the Writing Beast wants just as much to spread its exquisite word nuggets so that people can enjoy them as much as I do.

Where the problem comes in is that the Writing Beast is a manipulative bitch.

When I’m dealing with non-friends, I will pick apart your fiction, chew it up to release the juices, and spit out the fibrous husk. I will steal your precious life force. I have no boundaries.

But the Writing Beast can only truly thrive on fresh blood. I love it when they fight back. When someone fights for their idea, when they explain their intention and why their words and ideas are precious, that adds so much flavor. It gives the work so much more life and depth.

But who will allow me to suck out their precious head juices? Only my friends.

I used to have only one of these two personalities dominant at one time. The Writing Beast took the lead every time when I first met William. There was no conflict because to me he was only a source of ideas. And, hey, he stuck around, so maybe that wasn’t so bad. But then one day I found he had been sucked dry.

The Writing Beast struggled with this. It fought, and screamed, and threw things. But eventually, without sustenance, it went to sleep.

The Hufflepuff in me woke up gradually over approximately the same period. Without an ulterior motive for spending time with them, I learned to appreciate my friends as people. I learned to stop living in my brain and start living in my heart. After a few years, I began to believe that I had simply become the Hufflepuff.

So when William invited me to be part of Dragon’s Fall again, I thought I could handle it. As an artist I could keep the Writing Beast from waking up fully. But then the Writing Beast’s dream ended. I was done writing The Elves of LleuGarnock. It needed something else to occupy it.

I asked William several times if he was sure. I knew by then that the Writing Beast was lurking, and if I gave it another taste of Dragon’s Fall it would try to take over again. But he said I could be a writer on the project again.

It’s fully awake now, and as manipulative as ever. The only real defense the Hufflepuff has against it is that the Hufflepuff claims to be able to keep the Writing Beast from sucking the resource dry.

So they coexist, but very unhappily. They argue constantly over the wording of my emails. The Writing Beast sabotages and manipulates the Hufflepuff, and the Hufflepuff tries to put the Writing Beast back to sleep.

This is a very confusing time for me.

At least I still have the Hufflepuff as the dominant personality when I’m not writing. Writing Beast doesn’t actually do anything except write. Hufflepuff seems to be a relatively competent human being. So when I’m busy dealing with life and friends, Writing Beast has no defense against Hufflepuff at all. I like to think that’s a sign that Hufflepuff is stronger. She’s much happier, all around.

But there’s nothing like the feeling when the wind blows across the tower where the Writing Beast dwells and whistles in the chinks between the stones and everything comes into harmony. Everything sings.

I’ve been thinking of The Elves of LleuGarnock as being finished, even though there are still 6 pages that need character inks and colors and 2 that need backgrounds. It doesn’t seem like it’s going to be a problem. My creative vibes aren’t intersecting with each other because LleuGarnock inks and colors can be done pretty much automatically when I’ve got no ideas left in my head.

I needed to continue Dragon’s Fall or some other project because I found myself with nothing to write or thumbnail. There was no real channel for my creativity. I almost started a silly shonen manga-style comic called Tigermen, but then Will gave me the go-ahead for some new Dragon’s Fall pages.

It’s odd, because when I was working on both comics at once, I needed separate standards for the two comics. So LG was “just a comic,” and every DF page was “real art.” This kind of messed me up because I didn’t know what I was doing with DF and when I had to get a page done before I had figured out how to draw it it kind of crushed me. That’s what real art is like – you could continue working on it for ever and only when it approaches perfection would you consider stopping. At least that’s how I and other semi-insane artists think of it.

Now that I’m only working creatively on Dragon’s Fall, it’s somehow found its way into the “just a comic” spot. This is a much more comfortable place for it. I have a realistic expectation of the quality, and I stop when I reach that expectation instead of driving myself towards perfection. I feel like I could actually sustain this pace.

And the great thing is, this is all still true even though the standards for Dragon’s Fall are at the same level as they were before. I just approach it in a more systematic, familiar way. And I’m much better at the same steps than I was then.

It’s surprising how much it helps to just follow the familiar steps. Even switching to doing sketches on paper the way I did for LG has improved the process a lot. There’s something about drawing on physical paper that leads me to be content with what I already have and just improve it as much as I can, whereas in a digital context I might change a picture radically, scrap it, or put off refining the sketch until the rest of the page is nearly done. These all make the process much more complicated and stressful.

Also, having a clean black-and-white ink layer always saves more time and energy than it takes to draw. I knew that, but comments from people close to me were throwing me off.

There’s never been one way that I did shading in LleuGarnock that I was really happy with or that I could do on autopilot like inking or flat color. I needed to figure one out that would be consistent enough to use without too much sapping of my decision juice, but would also be consistent with the standards of Dragon’s Fall. I think I’ve found that. Right now it does take a lot to shade a page, but I’m pretty sure that once I learn the technique better, it will be a smooth step in the process too.

So all things considered I’m really happy with how the art of Dragon’s Fall is going. All of the real issues we’ve had since the hiatus have been script issues. I’m still trying to focus on the art and just giving the scripts a once-over check for quality, but it hasn’t turned out to be that simple. Well, I’m sure we’ll work out the issues in time to update. I have a backup plan.

Also, for those of you interested in the continued future of the Sun Elves universe, I already have a few scripts for Book 2. I don’t have a specific date in mind for updates to begin, but it will obviously be after the end of LG, and probably not until at least the beginning of 2012.

I don’t have anything to sketch. So when I’m doing the things I usually do at the same time as sketching, like watching TV, or playing board games with people, I don’t have anything left to sketch except random bits of forest and other assorted backgrounds. So I’ve been doing that at those times.

The only other thing I have to do is ink my characters, and I don’t feel like doing that. So when I’m at my art computer, I’ve been inking and coloring backgrounds.

It’s cool, because I’m not feeling inspired to draw. But backgrounds are one thing that don’t require inspiration, or at least not a lot of it. I think that’s why I usually don’t like drawing them. I think of an idea, but before I draw enough of it to do it justice, I get inspired again by something else and wander off. And when I’m not feeling inspired I usually do some basic thing like lettering or panel borders. But all that stuff is done now, for the whole comic. So I’ve moved on to doing every last little thing on every page that doesn’t require much thought. Which is mostly backgrounds.

I don’t want to draw faces without being inspired. I’m afraid they’ll turn out looking like they’re made of wood, just like the walls behind them. I inked a panel with just hands in it, though. It helped that the sketch was precise and inspired.

I’ve been working my way back to a state of creativity by drawing all this stuff, but I still haven’t reached a place where I want to be inking characters. At this point it’s less about inspiration in general and more about being stuck on one page. During my last inking marathon, I actually had to skip it, and I went on to finish the two pages after it. But I am afraid of leaving it until too late, and I’d like to finish that page before I finish any others. So I’m working up to it little by little and figuring it out.

I kind of wish I’d managed to do more of this in the earlier chapters. I mean, I always do what I believe is necessary in terms of establishing scenes, but it’s the boring part of inking a page that I have to get through so I can ink more characters. So a lot of them are like side notes, and mostly they don’t continue behind the characters, so I can’t reuse them in later parts of the scene. So then I end up spending just as much time drawing backgrounds as I would have if I made them more well-thought-out. It’s another one of those things – you can know it’s efficient, but you still need prodding, and a lot of buffer, to really put it into practice. Only then do you realize how much more efficient it really is.

There’s a lot of little things like that I’ve learned from having the luxury to do the things in the comic when I feel like doing them. I’ve been inking my panel borders before I ink the stuff inside them, which I probably should have thought of before. But I’ve always just left that to the end, because if the update needs to be done tomorrow, you just do things the way you’ve always done them to avoid thinking too much. Thinking leads to delays in the short term, and efficiency in the long term.

So anyway, I’ll probably finish all the backgrounds soon, and then get to inking the characters. So the comic should be done before I fall into the lake of inaction which is summer. Updates will continue to run twice a week until around mid-December.

Meanwhile I’ll be working on this novel I’ve been writing with my sister, and possibly creating some new Dragon’s Fall updates. I have some vague plans for starting The Sun Elves, Book Two, but it will not be a priority the way LleuGarnock has been. I hope to get back into Dragon’s Fall as my primary webcomic. I know some of you are looking forward to that.