Make average your enemy
Final stretch for Aardehn
Shards (A couple thoughts I've been turning over):
Make average your enemy.
A recipe for being critical of a lot of things, but works best turned on your own work rather than others.
Did you see this? Streaming services are training creators to front-load everything. Essentially: you have to hook viewers in the first 90 seconds or lose them to the scroll. What's the writing equivalent of this idea? The only useful craft answer I can think of is from Elmore Leonard: "In late, out early." — but that might be a stretch. Any better ideas?
War with Art
Latest episode is up! This is a fun one where George, Eric, and I pull a card from the Deck of Oblique Strategies (Brian Eno's creativity toolkit) and then try to apply it.
Progress Report on Aardehn: Awakening
Eric and I have scheduled our final Aardehn: Awakening retreat for next week. In this 2-day retreat we’re putting the finishing touches on the book. All the art we think it needs will be inked. All the words we think it needs will be written.
(We’re leaning hard on 'we think' vibe here, mostly to keep the door open for the inevitable 3:00 AM epiphany)
This is coming off our last meeting with Ramon and Darcy at Raid Press where we did a beta walk-through of the layout. It was a cool process where we went page by page through the book, marking up issues, adding art and text ideas, and then just ooohing and ahhhing over Eric’s art. Thought I’d give you a look behind the curtain:
As always, thanks for reading.
SM
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