25: New Year, New... Me?
Not really, but trying new things!
Production Induction
Goals Goals Goals
MoonRise… from the Dead?
Pitch Around
Boy! Or girrrrrl (or otherwise, I don’t discriminate), it’s been a long time since I fired one of these off. So long, in fact, that I can’t even remember what day I used to send alerts on, so I’m just internet-mailing this one out now because, hey… why not?
The last Exner Alert went out on August 30th, 2024! It contained an announcement about the MoonRise fan art contest (long since wrapped) and the last updates of Season 1 of the MoonRise webtoon itself. Which have been the actual last updates to date.
Before that alert, the last one I’d sent was around mid-April of 2024. So I’m a bit behind in my musings to you, o’ alert ones. And I apologize for that, if you’re into that kind of thing.
What kept me from sending one of these out for so long, you ask? I really couldn’t say. I took something of an involuntary hiatus from writing for the better part of a year, and try as I might I couldn’t get myself back on the horse. Don’t get me wrong, I finished a few scripts and drummed up the beginnings of a few pitches I was more or less satisfied with during that time, but I could never seem to keep the momentum going on anything for very long.
I really only picked things back up around the beginning of this year. I’ve actually said this to a scant few, and depending on what’s left of my subscriber base I may still only be saying it to a few of you, but I’ve written more in the past three months and change than I wrote through the end of 2024 and all of 2025.
Which, as I think about it, is a little discouraging and encouraging all at once.
What it boils down to, I suppose, is a hard reset. I decided to set some goals for myself that I’m now busy trying to achieve. And while that isn’t necessarily all that new for me, the way I’m dealing with my expectations is. Because this time around, if I meet my mark then I’m pretty pleased about it. But if I don’t, I’m trying to avoid beating myself up too badly about it, because I’ve come to realize that that part, the beating upon myself for failing at what I’d planned, was the main thing that had been holding me back.
Or… keeping me in its grip, I guess? Because mostly what happened is I’d set some time to do a task, say, write a script, as an example, and instead of doing that maybe instead I’d browse the internet, or play the odd game on my phone. Then the time to write would pass, I’d feel like absolute crap for having wasted said time, and then to make myself feel better I’d, you guessed it, browse the internet or play the odd game on my phone.
Wash, rinse, repeat.
A vicious (would’ve sworn there was an ‘s’ in there) cycle, to be sure. And I’m still a bit terrified that I’m going to fall back into it at the barest hint of turbulence. In fact, the only reason I haven’t written an alert before now is that I was concerned doing so might derail my efforts to finish scripting Season 2 of MoonRise. How’s that for paranoia?
My saving grace/guiding light is what I’m calling my regimen, which by definition is a prescribed course for the promotion or restoration of health, so I’m hoping I’m on the right track.
Said course entails slotting out time to write, twice a day. If I don’t actually write during those times, that’s okay, but I can’t do anything else. No playing games, no browsing the internet, not even for the sake of research into what I might be writing. The writing time is for writing and nothing else.
And to this point it’s been working. So much so that I’ve shifted my process to other aspects of my life as well. Exercising time is for exercising, and nothing else, as one example. In short, when it’s time to be productive, be productive if you can, but don’t be counterproductive because the synonyms for that word are not flattering. Look it up if you don’t believe me.
And I’m not saying there’s no place for relaxation or turning your brain off for a while. I still play games. I still browse the internet. Watch wrestling, or a movie, or scroll through my instagram feed to look at the work of comic artists I admire. But there’s a time for that, and it’s not during production time.
It feels a little insane that it’s taken me 40+ years of life to reach a place where I feel mostly all right if I don’t meet a goal. That it’s okay to just try to do better next time. I’m not saying I’ve got it all figured out, and to be honest it still feels a little tentative to me. But it also feels kinda sustainable too. So I’m gonna keep at it, and hopefully I can keep some of you interested as I go.
Anybody remember the Motley Crue song? I sometimes sing it to myself, but replace the words ‘girls’ with ‘goals. Weird, right? I’m fine with it.
Goals, I’ve made a few. As far as the comics-related ones, it’s one goal, really, it’s one goal at the moment. Finish Season 2 of MoonRise.
Progress (not to mention production!) is coming along nicely. I’m completing 3 to 4 scripts a month which is frankly fantastic considering where I was before. Can I keep up my productivity while dabbling back into the realm of newsletter-writing, pitching and the like? We’ll soon see.
Sort of does feel like raising the dead working on MoonRise from time to time, but we’re rapidly approaching that Frankenstein feeling.
Like everything else I’m doing, I’m hoping against hope that I can sustain it, and for the most part it feels like I can. It does help, to some degree, that I’ve done this once before. Can’t have a Season 2 without a Season 1, right? Unless that’s something that has been done and I’m just unaware, which would be pretty neat, actually, while also being very fly in the ointment energy.
At any rate! You probably already know this by now, but we announced the winners of the first ever MoonRise Fanart Contest!
Click that link above and you can check out every piece of artwork that was submitted, including our Top 3 selections. Overall we received over 25 submissions by over 20 individual artists, which, is really kind of amazing when I pause to think about it.
Our overall winner, Krypty Empty, submitted an absolutely stunning piece of artwork I’m happy to share with you here.
Having won the grand prize, which, along with a chunk of change, also included the opportunity (should they choose) to draw a mini-episode of MoonRise to be used as a recap of Season 1 that’ll appear along with the launch of Season 2, Krypty not only seized the opportunity but absolutely crushed it. I actually can’t wait for it to drop, and now that production on Season 2 of MoonRise is in full swing it should be sooner rather than later.
As a quick added bonus, my youngest son also tried his hand at drawing fanart for the contest, and while we couldn’t officially accept the entry due to what would have been a clear conflict of interest for one of the judges (who shall go unnamed), we did display his artwork on the contest results page with the other entrants and I’m gonna display it here because it still brings a little twinge to my withered heart.
Pitches Get Stitches
I’m not actively pitching yet. Season 2 of MoonRise takes precedence and I think I still need to prove to myself that I can close that deal before I focus on anything else.
But that’s not stopping me from thinking about it a whole heck of a lot! There’s at least two projects I can just make out sitting on the horizon. I’ve got to squint to see ‘em, but they’re there. And I’m pretty jacked about them both. Once MoonRise nears completion I’ll likely talk about them in more detail, so long as the artists I was working with still want to dance with me.
Humorously, a post made back in JUNE of 2024 by a comics creator I admire, Matthew Rosenberg (definitely worth the subscribe), who is a fair bit more productive and successful than I, still resonates quite strongly with me today, and is another aspect of the shift in mindset I’ve been adhering to.
The post, titled “Sneak Peeks, Turtles and Wild Swings” was well-written and entertaining, and while the sneak peeks and information concerning teenaged turtles of the mutated ninja variety were nice, what most caught my eye was the part about “wild swings”.
In it, Matthew wrote about the movie Pulp Fiction co-written and directed by Quentin Tarantino and a 40 year-old issue of Daredevil by Frank Miller and David Mazzucchelli. How in both cases, the creators of each piece of media took wild swings with their stories, causing them to veer dangerously into bizarre, uncharted waters, and how both were made all the better for it.
Ultimately Matthew isn’t sure the lesson, if it even is one, applies to every creator out there. That maybe it only really applies when the talent involved allows its application. But as Matt puts it “-there is beauty in taking the big, weird swings and finding out where it takes me.”
That’s just the sort of storytelling I want to push towards, o’ alert ones. Please do let me know if I’m hitting the mark.