An Artist Choice

Our life is in each choice that we make. Is this a fact that empowers you or overwhelms you? It tends to overwhelm me as someone who has always struggled to get by. Accepting what they could. The power can be both life-affirming and catastrophic.

But forget personal lives. Let’s look at how your choices affect your art. Because ultimately artists are freed to live as. many lives as they’d like within their mediums.

Where there’s a choice to be made

When it comes to writing a book the first choice to make is what genre your book belongs to. But if you’re someone like me. Someone who has never written something to share. You completely skip this step. And that’s precisely what I’ve done and I discourage you to follow in my footsteps. I was led by the visions and ideas that have been harassing me for years. Giving the story a relentless amount of freedom. But freedom without structure or form is just chaos. So now it’s time to get back to the writing stages.

I wrote something and I sent it to my editor. My number one piece of feedback was to choose what my final format will be. Is my book a novella, short story, comic book, or graphic novel? Then is it magical realism or science fiction or something else? My immediate reaction was… I thought the book would figure it out for itself. Maybe because it was my first time trying to be disciplined within this art form I focused on the wrong things. Hoping that these questions would realize themselves. Well, I was wrong.

I had no idea where to start, trying not to feel paralyzed by this Sophie choice moment. As a naive writer, I feel like any choice would kill off what could be the most successful version of my story. So the first thing I decided to do was step away. I need a moment to forget what just happened. Being asked to make a choice is not an attack it’s a door waiting to be open. And don’t get me wrong I did not feel attacked by my editor’s feedback. On the contrary, it makes me trust them that much more because they’ve asked me to reveal more parts of my story and in turn myself. But like any first date I need to walk around the block and gather my confidence. 

Making the first choice

Once I was ready to take a step back into my book the first thing I did was chat with a trusted friend. That one friend who read everything and would be able to listen and not impose their opinions on me. It’s very difficult to find a friend like this. People are so eager to tell you what you’ve done wrong when you’re trying to figure things out for yourself.

So we got together I told her everything. She asked me what I thought my book should be. I said a novella would be a lot of work but easier than all the illustrations I would have to make. But my story came from pictures so it should be a graphic novel. I just want to be lazy and not think of two things I have to do: write a story, and draw a story. Her response was yes I feel the same it’s a graphic novel.

Where does that leave me? Confronting my imposter syndrome. The book needs to be done and I have to figure it out and go for it.

Second Choice

Ok, a decision has been made. Now the question is how do I bring this story back into my life? Since I submitted the book to my editor, I’ve drafted and started writing a new story. Isn’t that funny? I went from I just need to get this story over with so I can continue my life to ok let’s start writing this next story. And to be honest I still don’t see myself as wanting or needing to be an author or illustrator. I genuinely just need to get this story told and I’m trying to figure out the best way to do that.

So here’s where the second choice needs to be made – what will my life look like now? Recently I’ve been only writing on the weekends. My job takes a lot out of me and in my free time, I like to give up on life and pursue anything of interest just so I can feel bad for myself and the things I put myself through. Wow, that is not empowering or motivating at all. But it’s the truth. Day jobs drain you and trying to build something for yourself in your free time takes some herculean energy.

Even this blog the number of times I’ve wanted to quit it – I’ve lost count. I didn’t even want to write this but I thought this is a muscle. A writing muscle. A promise I made to myself. To write one new blog post a week and I haven’t stopped since the beginning of the year. Sure topics have changed but I haven’t stopped. So it’s time to become disciplined about my priorities again.

Third Choice

Now that I’ve decided not to give up on myself and to prioritize my time and energy again it’s time that I start managing my time. My days look like this: wake up, do yoga, get ready for work, work, come home, have dinner, walk the dog, and get ready for bed. Now I need to start adding pockets of time again where I will spend dedicated time on my blog, my book, and my fitness.

I hate to say it but it’s true. Working out gives you the energy you need to make it through the day. So although I’ll be adding more to my plate, my plate only gets bigger if I factor everything in.

Fourth Choice

Once it’s time to sit down and write or draw, where do I begin? One thing I honestly haven’t done yet is read through the manuscript with all of the notes. I’ve honestly been kind of scared too. But I promise I’ll do it today. Then it’s time to re-outline everything. Not just the story but the story and the storyboard of the art.

I need to make sure all the notes I received make sense to me and I need a plan of action on how to tackle them. That plan would most likely look like a to-do list that I get to as I reach different portions of my stories.

Fifth Choice

Ok, I know exactly what to do, so what’s the next choice? Giving myself a deadline. When do I want all of this outlining and rewriting to be done? This is important because I need to schedule my next editing service ahead of time. That will most likely be another manuscript critique but I’ll know for sure once I’ve read through the manuscript critique I just received.

In Conclusion

Although I’ve made decisions given the choices I’ve made there’s always a level of flexibility that’s needed in life. My original goal was to submit my manuscript and make edits given the feedback I received. Where I found myself now is with an opportunity to do everything better. To get clearer and fall in love with my story harder.

I knew that writing a book was going to be hard but I had no idea how much leading and power I had over the work. It just goes to show if you really want to be a vessel for your art you can’t be scared of it. Otherwise, you would not be doing it any justice.

I hope this post inspires anyone on a similar journey to keep their chin up and keep chipping away. I wish I could look into the future and see what my final graphic novels look like. But there is something magical about knowing that I can read this post one day in the future and know exactly what’s going to happen next.