The next steps on Haru's journey

Publishing details and processes, as things come together.

I started making comics out of my own impatience, many years ago. I did them for me, I shared them online and friends seemed to like them, so I did more, and realized it was a way to have a voice that felt like wearing a comfy jumper to me. It helped me to express and explore feelings and thoughts I couldn’t find the words for any other way. It’s always been for me, yet it’s connected me to people in ways I never expected. Now the first Haru Graphic Novel is currently being Copy-written (I think this is like proofreading for typos and grammar), and is being checked by a Sensitivity Reader as well. This is amazing; the fact that a publisher believes in me, and respects my work enough for all these other professionals to be involved too. It’s really incredibly humbling, and my Editor is lovely, it’s been a joy working with them. I hope it continues like this.

I’m still learning a lot about the publishing process as I go, which includes making lessons on my own artistic process so far too. I wasn’t sure how long anything would take after I submitted the art, but at times it’s felt a little slow, which I’ve actually been tremendously thankful for as it gave me the space to step back from what I had done and see it with fresh eyes. That lead to me recolouring a number of pages, and drawing 4 new pages for the end of the book. It also gave me time to notice smaller blemishes and lines on the inked artwork that I had missed, and allowed me to go back and tidy them up too. For the next book I’ll be printing my guidelines and roughs much fainter so that it’s easier to remove them once inked and scanned. I thought I had this down already but something must’ve slipped slightly.

Subsequently I have also been writing the Second Haru Graphic Novel, which is also now nearly completely written. The next step will be editing and typing it up, then drawing the thumbnails and sending it to my Editor.

This puts me in a slight panic because it means the time to pitch my next book is approaching, not that the panic is warranted as I have a lot of things started and hungry for my time, it’s just a mental hurdle to deal with. Stop whinging, Joe.

Off topic now, but I saw this tweet last night:

It’s a pretty gross tweet if you ask me, and so many of the replies are people referring to ‘their following’, like it’s a cult, and it got me thinking; I don’t think I have ‘a following’ on Twitter as such, I feel like I have friends there, which I think is way more important. People who will have my back when I’m falling. I’m at a stage of my life where I don’t really have many friends around anymore, and even fewer who I see regularly, and even fewer who I see privately and would be able to confide in, so having people who I know are my friends on there gives me another lifeline. That’s pretty grandiose I know, but then I just thought about what I’d say in response to that tweet, I’d say “Trying to do something you love, while being an actual decent normal human being in a public place.” Because Twitter is a public place, though I didn’t post a reply on there at all because I don’t want to be antagonistic to those that find that original tweet sincere or helpful in some way.

I also often come back to this phrase I once heard, though I can’t remember where… “Never do anything you can’t live with for the rest of your life.” I don’t know, it just feels like a nudge sometimes if your internal compass is wavering.

I don’t think having an insanely large following on Twitter really helps anyone either (other than those selling their products that way, ugh capitalism consumes us all), and I think seeing people talk about their millions or hundreds of thousands of followers as if they just collected loose change on the street, really just serves to make other people feel like crap. So let’s try to do something we love, while being actual decent normal human beings in public spaces.