Lots of news and some example content (#birthdayposting)
Can’t realistically say I’ve been keeping up the blog schedule, but this time there’s some news to share.
Devil’s Garden (Own work, gouache, 2023).
Two big things came from meeting with coaches: expanding the project and accepting there won’t be a ready-to-publish prototype in July.
Basically, it’s much better for the school setting and the nature of the project, as well as it being my first of this kind, to take care of the process and not obsess about the end product. This essentially means that I’m working full power on writing, layout, graphic design, illustrations, and everything else the work entails; but without having the expectation of having a physical book at the end of the school year. Whew, long sentence! It’s kind of liberating to be honest, I’m just developing the thing at my own pace and we’ll see how far it gets by the summer.
This also ties in to the other news I want to share, my main coach was like oh you’re sitting here by yourself, trying to do everything on your own and it doesn’t have to be like that. And then she encouraged me to take the game more seriously and look for funding. At first I was hesitant and didn’t have an idea of what I could use the funds for, but it ended up making me very motivated to continue working! Actually I intend to involve help in all of these parts I listed above (writing, layout, graphic design, illustrations, and some translation).
There you see, big news!
I also want to share a snippet of content that I consider finished. It has gone through a couple iterations, there is a small introductory paragraph that I’m not going to include, and the reason I’m sharing it here is that people got excited for it last time.
It’s something that happens to me a lot - I take my skills and results for granted, I see them somehow as very obvious results of natural processes and only sharing and talking about them gives me perspective. Anyway this is the table of names. In the first version, it had first and last names which made it quite unwieldy. I edited this out in due time, went in and chose names more deliberately to be friendly to the English-speaking mouth. Embarrassingly, not all Balkan nations were represented on the list. This was finally fixed last week, and the table was alphabetized so now the names aren’t grouped per nation! Still, I cannot say this is the 1000% final official version, but close to it.
Have a look below and see if you can imagine a character to go with any of these.
I’m attached and a little proud of this content because it is a small victory for me, one where I managed to untangle and unravel the questions posed by the work, solve its equation, and ended up with something presentable and inclusive that I can stand behind.
It’s a step away from the literal word of the source material, which was never meant to be written down without possibility for further change, but it’s a step towards a work that anyone can identify with, which still represents the Balkans, its people, culture, and history. Thanks for tuning in and until next time, stay safe!
