I don’t wanna go home yet
I stopped working on my webcomic. I can’t even point to a specific moment where a decision has been made, but the fact it’s not going anywhere has become quite obvious to me. I used to have a bad habit of starting a story and never finishing it, and I think I kept working on Dhalmun mainly to avoid doing that again, and feeling like a failure. Part of the problem was depression, committing to a long term project published for free online takes a lot of energy from me.
But a big issue was how I approached the project from the start. I kind of started in the middle. “Age of Smoke“ didn’t get much of world-building past a certain point, because I wanted to keep the most important decisions for “Age of Steam“, which is set in an earlier period. And I do enjoy world-building. I used to read a lot of “Conan” books as a kid. and there used to be a map (like in many fantasy books, I suppose) of the lands, and I really liked that.
I like strategy games, especially ones with an interesting economic aspect. I like the part in role-playing games where you set up your character. So I’m not sure why I would intentionally sabotage the world-building part of working on my story. I think it’s mostly the pressure of time. When you’re broke and all that you worry about things. What if my computer breaks and I don’t have any money to fix it? Or maybe it’s the computer that outlives me? I worked in a rush because I felt I need to tell as much of a story as I can, before I can’t do it anymore. Which ultimately just made me more tired.
Right now, I try to focus on illustration work, and maybe, possibly figuring out a source of income.
But all those stories are still in the back of my mind. Maybe I just don’t know how to stop.
I want to do a big reboot. Start over, do proper research, design characters, cities, a planet. I want “Age of Steam” to be my “Song of Ice and Fire“, but with more of a sword and sorcery vibe, where the world may be scary, but also a place you want to explore. And understand. I like the idea of writing in a fantasy-ish setting, but with a secular perspective.
Fuck, why is it that when I have these ideas in my head everything just works, and then I always manage to fuck it up?
I’ve been thinking about trying to revive this project again through Patreon or Gumroad, but at the moment I can’t think of a practical way to do it.
But those ideas, I don’t think they’re going away.
For anyone still following.
