Here Be Dragons - The 2023 Shake Up
The newsletter splits into 3, and I try to wrangle some new year goals.
♫ I applied for a rescue dog,
But if I get you dog,
You're rescuing me ♫
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Okay, so things are going to change around here a little bit in 2023. Here’s the new newsletter plan. Instead of one fortnightly beast to wade through of everything in my head, I’m going to experiment with 3 smaller drops throughout a fortnight, that will divide things up a little.
HERE BE DRAGONS - fortnightly, this is going to be my braindump and sitrep. If you want to know how my writing is going, and my general thoughts on my state of play, this is the drop for you. But it won’t have any of the other bells and whistles, this is an RKL-centric one all about writing comics, and balancing life.
GRIST FOR THE MILL - this will be short summaries and thoughts of things I’ve been reading, watching, and enjoying as fuel for being a better guy, or an improved writer.
PERHAPS YOU’D CARE TO SAMPLE - this is the link round up. Promoting stuff I see and dig, sending you to stuff you might dig, and going on any tangents that stuff sends my brain into. Thinking it could use a better name, but I don’t want to use the word ‘link/s’ - eh, I should not spend so much time on these little things.
Okay! Why am I doing this shake up? Well, I use the Substack app a lot now - it’s my first phone distraction, and one that allows me to read chunky words of merit, not empty, pithy thoughts [though my whole newsletter is just sticky taped together empty and pithy thoughts, so make of that what you will].
On the ‘stack app, it tells you how long each newsletter entry will be to read. I know I really dig that 5-8 minute sweet spot - long enough to have to chew, not so large you’ll choke. I know my newsletters sometimes run beyond what I would want to read, so always in the interest of doing something that I’d want to engage with as a consumer, I am breaking this up. Hopefully each drop is a decent mouthful to imbibe. Hopefully you can better skip the stuff you don’t want/need/dig, and really focus on the stuff you want every single fortnight.
I’ll also be interested to see if open numbers change all that much? Will one of my sections drop by hundreds of opens, but another suddenly goes up? Only time will tell, and I’ll see if people appreciate this 2023 switch up.
Also: I reserve the right to just go back to the way it was, and to also skip certain sections whenever I want - I can already see that Link post sometimes only being once a month as sometimes I’m in the thick of marking and do not read much online. Let’s walk into 2023 together, hand in hand, and figure out how this will go :]
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This fortnightly drop goes through what I’ve been up to in my writing - I have to account for myself and what I have to show for my efforts recently. Have I been productive, or not…? A map of my brain, so to speak, and here be dragons.
2023 -- better.
DEER EDITOR…editing.
I’ve been deep in the 3 scripts for our old friend Bucky this new year. Rereading the old issues, rereading the scripts, tweaking lines, thinking about the whole thing as one 3 issue story, as opposed to making it on Kickstarter way back when and not knowing if we’d even go past one.
There aren’t a lot of changes, but it’s nice to be able to smooth some things out. I must admit that time rarely helps my stories in my mind. Even before they see print, I start to tell myself my script sucks, the story doesn’t work, no one will like it. This is common for every single comic I’ve ever written, though usually when I check them out again [in script or finished comic form] I tend to like how they’ve come together more than my memory ever sees them. I’ve worked hard on ignoring that voice that comes when I’ve finished because it’s usually just the gravelly tones of Imposter Syndrome. Though I don’t ignore it *while* I’m scripting, as usually if there’s something grating on me, rather than be lazy and ignore it or hope others won’t see it, I know it’s something worth addressing and to the best of my ability fixing.
The aim is to have all of these 3 scripts done before I return to work. This seems both responsible and reasonable. The editor I’m working with on this has some awesome notes and is a pleasure to work with - which is pretty much just about the best thing you can ask for.
Alongside this, I’m also considering new Bucky stories. I’ve always made notes on such ideas, and there are two in particular that interest me, but without any kind of options to make these happen I have just never really committed full brain power to them. Sami and I could not afford to do more through Kickstarter, but now with a possible option ahead of us, I want to take a swing.
If there is any story in my catalogue I have ever wanted to return to, it is Deer Editor. No other story of mine has ever given me vibes for a sequel as hard as this has. My stories end, salt the earth, and leave you thinking, not waiting. Even ETERNAL is one I’d like to do more ‘companion projects’ with - other OGNs with Eric Zawadzki - but really only SHE is the one I have planned out as a trilogy [which we can hopefully get to].
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Resolutions, in a way.
I don’t actually and acutely know what I want from the year ahead. I’m usually pretty good at setting a resolution, and sometimes even sticking to it.
2022 didn’t see any major resolutions stick - I honestly can’t even remember what they were. But it was the best year I’ve had in a long time. There are many things I currently do that I just want to keep doing.
I get up at 4am and write every morning - though I guess I could streamline my entry into the office so I have more focus. I stopped Bullet Journalling a few months ago, and have got back into a short list each day, but I know I could do better and use my time with more purpose.
I exercise 4 days a week - I didn’t hit my 200 goal for 2022, but that was mostly because Covid cost me a whole month of being able to manage it. I forget just how tired I was for so long after Covid. Even when I did start exercising again, it was at like a half load capacity for a few weeks, going up to two thirds, then 75%, and it was probably a whole month again before I felt like I was back to normal exercise conditions. I’m glad I didn’t let missing the 200 sink me in the slightest mentally. I was just glad I got back to it, and have continued into 2023 well.
I have added a little January Boot Camp to my exercise. I usually just watch a movie inside while I exercise, but for this month I’m going to do that and then also get in the backyard and do some other stuff. We have monkeybars, and I’m experimenting with a work out hammer, and it’s definitely giving me some more intense cardio. I know when work returns, this would be hard to carve out time for, so I’m just aiming for this month while I’m off work.
I read a fair bit - I can remember years ago, I was so busy that I stopped reading novels all together, and was barely keeping up with my comics, so I set myself a daily goal of 10 pages and one comic issue. This doesn’t feel like as much of an issue anymore because I don’t go to bed at midnight anymore so I can read in bed at a normal time. I also still think it’s really important to model reading as leisure in front of the kids.
I try to help maintain the garden, and compost - no extras needed for this one, I water when I can, harvest when I can, and compost enough to manage 3 different bins for it. It’s all good mental energy spent - and thankfully my wife is a mastermind in planning, seeding, and maintaining the garden to the high quality it is, so I just do the grunt work of moving stuff, or picking stuff, or watering stuff.
My phone use is way down - no more idly scrolling, and honestly, may I never return [until sales on my next comic sink, or something, and I panic]. I definitely want to keep twitter away for January and build that habit. Then it’s just email, Substack/Pocket reads, and probably checking the stats on our house’s new solar panels or adding films to my Letterboxd. I would like to continue not feeling like my phone awaits me at every turn.
Donating Plasma - I donated 3 times last year. I guess I could try to make it 4 this year…though a ceiling of 6 donations would be even better!
The writing - I’ve seen some people set goals for amounts of writing, and every year I know I can’t do it. Hell, last year i wrote a 4 issue miniseries, and now that probably won’t ever see the light of day, so I never know exactly how to set about looking at my writing for a new year - maybe I don’t get anything picked up, so I just spend 12 months generating a tonne of pitches, who knows?
All I know is, I have a bunch of projects I’m keen on, and will push myself to get what I can get done when it gets done. If the day job takes over in some weeks, then that’s okay, and if something takes a while, well, I want it to be good, so I’ll take that time.
I do know I want to write a little more prose this year. Maybe some more bullet journaling, or task lists, will help with that. Aim for 1,000 words of prose a week, or something? I dunno, my brain never seems to work that way. If I’m writing prose, I want to just set aside whatever block of time it needs and get it done in one mindset.
I think about Tom King writing his maxiseries in one chunk, all 12 issues, without writing other stuff alongside, in between, throughout it, and it’s the way my brain works, too [just maybe not quite as well as Tom King, though]. But writing between two projects at the same time rarely seems to help me - I certainly didn’t enjoy writing SPEED REPUBLIC and BLACK BEACON at the same time, switching worlds, switching voices. I’d rather bunker down and just smash something out.
So, 2023 goals…?
Keep writing, and exercising, and gardening.
Keep the phone away - replace it with a paperback at hand, or something.
Donate plasma 6 times.
Write some prose, ya bum.
Make better lists - be accountable, but also celebrate ongoing success.
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Be one of the good guys, because there's way too many of the bad.
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Who is Ryan K Lindsay?
I’m an award-winning Australian comic writer. I’ve been published by Black Mask, Dark Horse, ComixTribe, Mad Cave, IDW, Heavy Metal, Vertigo, and a few more. Kickstarter has been a home for many short comics. I often get to collaborate with great mates, and this brings me joy.
I write about balancing this creative game alongside a full teaching load [currently College English] and a lovely family load and the forever melting brain that is modern man. I think about a lot of stuff, I still don’t know if it’s the right stuff. ymmv.
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POST CREDITS SEQUENCE
I just spent half a day building a spreadsheet that can calculate our average electricity and gas bills based on the rates different companies offer.
Stuff like this is tricky because the information power companies give you is rarely scalable. They might slice the Per Day cost in half [a whopping 50c saving], but that cost is only applied 90 times in a billing quarter, but then their per kWh price might only be 4 cents higher, and that cost gets applied over one thousand times per billing quarter. So you need to know which changes actually matter, and which are just smoke and mirrors.
It’s honestly enough to do you head in - and while companies will give you some roughly estimated cost, it really does depend on how much your house uses.
Anyway, a new dawn rises and now I can use the spreadsheet to call companies and actually road test their offers of 24c a kWh [and the rest of the blah-de-blah that doesn’t make sense to be in any day-to-day way] and actually see if their deal will help me or not. There’s nothing worse than being beholden to the jargon of a company and system where they can use that to pull the wool over your eyes.
These are the parts of being an adult no one ever really shows you and you seem to have to figure out on your own. I’m sure I’ll be that parent to try and foist this spreadsheet upon my kids when they are older and they probably just won’t want it, ha. I have one for mortgage repayments, too.
Though the best spreadsheet I ever saw was Simon Robins plotting out the colours for SKYSCRAPER in one - jeez, what a glorious sight it was to behold.
Looking forward to the new format! I definitely struggle with the longer reads at the moment so keen to see if the smaller bites help my readership and engagement!
I'm impressed by your gas comparison spreadsheet! I just use https://www.energymadeeasy.gov.au/ to switch our gas to Globird but even that sometimes doesn't feel super understandable. I'm just hoping it got us in the ballpark of best deal. I'd be curious to know if you used that site how it compared to your research!