I have a video up on my latest belief about why amateurs are beyootiful (I just wanted to see how hard it is to make a cartoon

answer: it’s intensive)

But since I’ve come to the idealization that amateurs should be CONFIDENT amateurs, because as long as they know they love what they’re doing, they’re successful amateurs.  And the kickass part about loving what you love, is that it’s a drive that comes from within.  I’ve met driven professionals who are driven by external rewards.  Their consciousness about life and things progress – pretty pliable stuff.   I’ve met people I’ll call artists, who are bullheaded and stubborn like whoa.   Such really is the power of the internal drive.

 

Anyway,

I’m working on disjuncture because it felt right (fucking, calming activity, that) and I’ve got a new lens about people I guess.  A lot of artistic grandiosity relies on an assumption that others are in love with the same things you are.  So like, as the dreamer, I love my protagonist. Pretty much if it’s a character who’s got more than a sentence, I love him or her.
But this results in a book that part of me holds back on, and I think it’s because I didn’t shape the product in an audience friendly way.  The modern American audience I think, I THINK, doesn’t lurv to read – they love to skim, they love to know, they love to have read.  They love to confirm, they love to be excited, they LOVE to be entertained, but these things lie on a hierarchy.  It’s why we compound newsfeeds with trashy tv and sometimes two trashy tv’s at once. (IS THIS A NORMAL THING PEOPLE DO OR ARE THESE SPECIAL CASES.  SERIOUSLY, TWO VIDEOS AT ONCE, OR DOING THINGS WHILE WATCHING A MOVIE SEEMS TO BE GETTING MORE AND MORE NORMALIZED AND ITS AMAZEBALLS)

Anyway, I’ve been touching up languages, presentations, tailoring, it all feels gaddamn good man, but I realized, being a lil less love-lensed about whom I identify as the protagonist (It’s been quite a while.)  This results in a reread of his first three pages in a reaction of going “Yeah, he’s too emo.”  That’s my reaction, and I know it deep down in my fuzzy soul that it’s true.  It’ll turn off a lot of readers too, which is less important than it turns ME off tbh, cause I’m the brilliant amateur who’s job it is to love this.

Well it makes me actually feel existential.  What are we that we as entities can ascribe superlatives such as “too emo” ?   imagine telling someone they’re “too sad”  or “too opinionated” or “too hyperbolic” as if there’s an appropriate amount of hyperbolic.

I think, we’re talking about evolved preferences – I think I’m ACTUALLY talking about an applied self-awareness that….this isn’t how a compelling person presents their self.   Just as an idea, “Ok, Cyrre, I love fucked up things a, b, and c, but you are being heavy handed by applying all three and drowning the pages in them.”

My solution ofc isn’t to take away these conflicts.  That is NOT how I make this character less emo.  The same conflicts are 100% as there after my edits.  But i think now it’s a much more enjoyable read in that the presentation of these conflicts is smoother, vaguer, invites the reader in and draws them in, instead of turning into this human donkey that for three pages is whining “HOPESLESSSLYLSYSAAAAAAAD”

When you’re in love with a thing, it’s tough to be objective about figuring out how to make it more captivating because you already find it captivating.  I guess it’s like another angle of sculpting a personal reality when you got at it from different lenses.  And I seem to genuinely love doing this.  Thasshow n00blove turns into amateur.

If you’re a n00b and don’t have the love, yer just wasting your own and perhaps other people’s time.

(Oh and if anyone would try to derride you for this love, they deserve zero fucks given.)

mmkay I think that’s it for a while