Status Update on Writing and Cauliflower Wings

A photo of the books I bought at the Book Fair. Enjoy.

♫ Shine here to us, and thou art everywhere;

This bed thy center is, these walls, thy sphere. ♫

The Sun Rising, John Donne

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This newsletter 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.

2024 -- dig it.

How to keep busy when you’re busy, but you don’t need to be, but you should be, so you want to be, so you just get busy.

Yep, makes about as much sense as my brain lately. I’m leaning into all sorts of directions because none needs me 100%, but these are the times where I need to push myself so when something comes along later I’m completely ready. See: luck is opportunity meets preparation [yadda yadda].

It’s a strange time. I could just focus on the Kickstarter - and with WITHIN THE KIND RED BUILDING just a few pennies shy of fully funding, it’s a time to be alive - but it’s mostly cruising along well and I shouldn’t let it just be a distraction where I’m watching the numbers climb ever upwards and posting on socials about it and not doing anything else.

So I’m prepping two new story ideas that have come to me in the recent times. My plan is to flesh each out as a comic pitch and see what happens. Both are well on the way. One has been kicked around aplenty and now needs to sit at the back of the brain and simmer so I can come back to it later and see if it makes sense and to see what I can improve. The other, newer one is about 20 pages deep into written notes in a new notebook I’ve dedicated to it. It’s struck me hard, and it feels good on a character level, story level, thematic level, and weird little things level. But it needs refining. I need to keep polishing and grinding and handwriting my thoughts so I’ve tried to think of everything.

This stage of the process is a lot of rereading, writing questions, answering them, and then remapping the plot with these things in mind to see if it works. It’s the fun part because I get to play, but it’s also the anxiety fuelled part because the story is somewhat a house of cards and I worry if I play too roughly then the whole thing collapses.

This is also the time where you can sink two months into something - well, I can, because that’s 2 hours a morning in the office, often shared with other commitments, and over 60 days that’s 60-90 hours of pencil on paper, and I think that’s a fair time to be breaking and playtesting and re/mapping a story - and then you discover the whole thing doesn’t work and you shelve it.

It’s heartbreaking, but when you can spend the same time and more and have it not get picked up, well, you don’t go into comics not to have your heart broken. Jack Kirby’s quote might say one thing, but his lifetime spent in comics says another.

Outside of these, this year I’ve written two prose short stories [each under 2000 words] and I’ll come back to edit/redraft them later, and I’ve mapped another short pitch for a thing. These have been good little sidequests for the mind.

Beyond that, the school year is well underway and I’ve set all my classes up, and have prepped a 3 day Writing Camp for my students, and some online writing challenges, and the balance is okay…at the moment. It’s why I try to work when I can because you never know when the balance might tip.

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Resolutions trucking along.

My screentime is down to a 90 minute average per day, perhaps a touch under, and I’ve been grateful for this. Alongside it, exercise has been right on track, and I’ve added in stretching effectively to the week and can feel my ability to really stretch towards my left foot improve weekly. The exercise bike has been harder to figure in - sometimes time, sometimes just tired. I’ll be kind to myself on this one, but also try to course correct and improve moving forward.

I’m definitely bullet journaling again, and the daily focus is good, though would be better served if I did the list the previous day more consistently. Adding up what I’ve achieved at the end of each week has been a good idea.

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Some links and things you might dig.

Here are two Aussie comics you should definitely be checking out:

GREENER PASTURES #8 - check it out

This comic by local legend [and I do not use that word lightly] comic artist Tim McEwen and writer Michael Michalandos is one of the foundational pieces of modern Australian comics and it’s coming back with a vengeance - and that vengeance starts with this first Kickstarter. Get caught up, and start getting ahead right here!

DEAD CITY LULLABIES - check it out

This Aussie comic is very gorgeous, very sci fi, and very much blasting through stretch goals - like adding a vinyl soundtrack to the whole affair. In short - you gotta get in on this good thing now!

And this Aussie RPG up in ZineQuest month alongside me:

PERFORMANCE REVIEW: An Office Survival rpg - check it out

Play as a regular office worker suddenly fighting for their lives as things go a little insane. Based on the multi-award nominated short film of this year!

This is created by a good mate of mine, Big Tim Stiles, and he’s always a fantastic creative mind and hustle machine and I always look forward to what he’s cooking up.

And I’m also $17 away from fully funding on my solo rpg WITHIN THE KIND RED BUILDING

Help get us funded right now!

I’m also keen to get us to 100 backers, so only a dirty dozen to go :]

OH! And you also need to check this comic out:

WHEN THE BLOOD HAS DRIED is this awesome new fantasy comic written by an old mate of mine Gary Moloney and it’s very very damn good. And the world needs more good fantasy comics. Go tell your store about it [all details here] and ensure they’ve preordered it for you!

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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 University Intro to Creative Writing] 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

A quick photo round up of my life.

I got a package of DEER EDITOR #1 comps in and they are beautiful and I’ll be selling them at conventions soon - Goulburn Geek Markets being the nearest one for me in March!

I saw Eric Zawadzki drew this Elektra and it just blew my mind!

I went to the Lifeline Book Fair here in town. I took the kids on Friday after school and got myself a decent little haul of strange fiction. Alas, we also went back on Sunday as it’s a ‘fill a bag for $25’ day, but I guess word got around and even though we were early the place was a ghost town of quality fiction and all I could find were some cool books about writing, but no actual writing [photo of Sunday haul not included due to overwhelming sadness not allowing me to take any photos]:

I’d been looking for that Chabon book forever. But was really happy with some old pulp Leigh Brackett.

And finally, I’ve become really addicted to these cauliflower wings. We wrap them up in a tortilla with huge amounts of coleslaw and they’re just the best.

It’s a random existence - but shouldn't it be?

Even just taking in the weird assortment of words/pics that make up my life I just had a strange thought about one of these stories I’m breaking and I think it might be the kind of extra ingredient it needs.

Life. Ideas. Sparks. You never know where they’ll come from.