This was a heavy week. I had quite a few late-nights trying to tackle my unexpectedly heavy workload at both of my day jobs. On top of that the news this week and subsequent rallying and discourse took a lot of my attention and time. In short: I didn’t get anything drawn this week.
I barely got anything written and even now trying to type out this blog feels like a fight against my mental load. But weeks like this are inevitable. When weeks like this happen I know I just need to switch gears.
Reality is Bleaker than Fiction
I haven’t talked much about the main project I’m working on, as I don’t want to set the copy in stone until I have more to show for it. Suffice to say that it’s relentlessly heavy. The overarching theme of the project is history repeating, constant wars and the struggles of average people against various tyrannies with little hope for success.
The way I get most of my writing done is while redirecting from a dissociative state (thanks therapy!). This is fine when I’m dwelling on my own personal problems, but it doesn’t work as well if I’m hopping from a bleak reality to a bleak fantasy. Reading the news about those tyrannies in real life makes it too depressing to then spend hours building a world with those same atrocities in mirror image.
It’s not the first time I’ve felt this way (See: BLM protests, Arab Spring, etc). With the way American imperialism works, I’ll continue to feel this way for a long time to come.
So to cope, I write fluff.
Backup Projects
For those less chronically online: fluff is a fandom term for stories with no consequence. In original works it may be referred to as slice-of-life or similar, but slice-of-life does not have the key constraint of being angst-free.
The story I’m currently using as my fluff-bucket is Wonda’s diner (more info to come). The entire purpose of this story is to be comforting and explore southern Tex-Creole culture. No historical pedagogy, no big thoughts on the black condition, just fun times making etouffee with the family.
Between you and me I think that’s a niche that is underexplored… but I digress.
This isn’t my only backup story, others are more one-shots or light-novels but the benefit is the same. Mentally I get to spend some time in a fluffy and comforting place, even if it’s totally fake. I get some great ideas while I’m there for both the fluff project and very often for my main works.
I also get a lot of ideas while out running with my sentient tar line.
It was a rough week, I didn’t get a lot done. But I didn’t get nothing at all done. And that’s progress in my book.
fatcr0w is a hobbyist artist with a passion for comics and illustration. They take on too many projects and don’t know when to shut up. It is with great optimism that they believe one day this blurb will be more interesting.
fatcr0w 