On First Drafts

Thursday, September 10th, 2009

I’ve been writing a script for a comic over the last few weeks. It is, as Anne Lamott says, the “Shitty First Draft”.

It’s bad. It’s bad in every way a piece of writing can be bad. I’m embarrassed as I write it, to say nothing of how I would feel if someone read it. I’m still going to write it, because there’s something there worth saying—A rough gem that only needs to be dug out and polished.

I don’t sit down every day hoping to bring something beautiful in to the world. I just try to write something, anything. If I’m lucky, I stumble on to a bit of plot or character I never even thought of until I’m there writing it. If not, at least I can respect myself for doing the day’s work. Waiting for inspiration only leads to disappointment and an eternally unfinished draft. I work because work breeds creativity, not the other way around.

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On Creative Work

Tuesday, August 25th, 2009

Zen Garden by <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/silverbromide/50079365/">Silver Bromide</a>

Zen Garden by Silver Bromide

I stumbled on to a talk yesterday that Merlin Mann gave on doing creative work and it hit home with me after just the first five minutes. We’re spending too much time finding the best ways to create and not enough time actually creating!

The internet has become a double edged sword in that it gives us so many choices but also gives us too many choices. We can spend days, weeks, months trying to glean that one little tip that’s going to turn us in to lean, mean, content-producing machines. The best pens, the best notebooks, the best time management systems, the best whatever that we totally need before we can be creative. The professionals tell us “Just write!” or “Just draw!” and we blow them off because “it’s more complicated than that!” but they’re absolutely right.

Merlin ends the talk by telling us that we know everything we need to know right now to get started on a creative project. We have all the resources within ourselves to make that shitty first draft (and all first drafts are going to be shitty). We’ll figure out what methods best suit our creative process as we do our work.

Now get to work!

MaxFunCon: Merlin Mann on Doing Creative Work; The Sound of Young America

Merlin Mann

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Website 5.0

Monday, August 17th, 2009

Since moving to California, I’ve been telling all the people I meet the same thing: “My work is up on my website, but all the newer stuff is on my blog.”

The blog was an easy way to throw up new work as I made it, but it also meant that that work probably wouldn’t be on the main website. I had, in effect, created two separate sites. One static and outdated, the other active but incomplete. I was getting tired of the blue cloud theme anyways, so I started making a list of things I wanted to improve for the next iteration of my site:

  1. A warmer color scheme. The monochrome blue was too cold and sterile.

  2. Automate as much of the updating as possible. Right now this just means that most of the site is made up of PHP includes so I only have to update a few files and the changes will appear on all pages. Eventually I’d like to create a back-end for uploading and organizing images through the site itself.

  3. Create an RSS feed for the site. In this age of feed readers and aggregated content, no one wants to visit a site every day just to see if it’s updated.

And so with those notes in mind, I created the new MaxLawsonArt.com.

It’s much easier to update, especially the storyboards which are my primary reason for having the site in the first place. I also dropped the Lightbox plugin for displaying images in favor of Fancybox, which is like Lightbox but…Fancy.

I also made a little avatar of myself for use in social apps (Facebook, Twitter, etc.) to add some personality and create a sort of brand for the site. I plan on updating it from time to time too, adding little features for different events.

That just leaves what to do with the blog. The new website obviates its purpose as a place for dumping new work or announcing updates. I could get rid of it entirely, but considering everybody on the planet has a blog today, why shouldn’t I have my own little soapbox on the web?

So this blog will be for just writing, about myself or other artists or whatever. You’re welcome to come and listen to my blatherings, but if you’re just here for the art, well, there’s a feed for that too now.

Best,

Max

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