Sunday, December 09, 2001
Today, I wrote the first four pages of Part Two of Bast: Eternity Game. In this particular case, four pages of comic book equals eight pages of script. I've met a lot of people who are astounded to learn that someone writes comics, the assumption being that the "artist" does it all. Of course, at Vertigo, and most other places, the artist actually means the writer (who determines what is to be drawn), the penciler (who draws the basic images), the inker (who inks the pencils and has far more impact on the final product than you might think - the inker can make or break the book), the colorist/s (all done on computers these days, of course), and the letterer. So, the "artist," sensu lato, can easily refer to 5 people. It can be more (sometimes there's more than a single penciler) or less (the penciler may ink his or her own pencils), but 5 is a good ballpark number. Wait. What the hell was I talking about? Oh, yes, Bast. Four pages today, which means eight pages.
So, I spent most of the day with a nameless ghost kitten that asks too many questions and gets too few answers.
And I made some notes on Low Red Moon.
And speaking of cats . . .
A definite disadvantage of staying up till all hours working when one ought to be asleep is discovering at 3 a.m. that your elderly, incontinent cat has urinated on the bed. And being far, far too sleepy to go through the whole hour or so long routine of changing sheets and the comforter and spraying the mattress down with the stinky stuff that gets rid of the cat pee smell. Letting that dry and then having to roll what is actually an uncommonly heavy mattress. Last night, it took me ten minutes just to open a plastic garbage bag (which was needed to contain the sheets until they could be washed today). Makes you yearn for goldfish. And different sleeping patterns, because I'm certain that this sort of thing must be much less annoying at 10 p.m. than 3 a.m. Of course, it was really our fault that she peed on the bed. She never does that, unless you forget and give her tap water instead of bottled water. The chlorine in the tap water irritates her bladder and makes her incontinent.
Writers lead lives of unparalleled glamour.
Ditto insomniac writers; we just get to live more of it. Someday I will be wealthy enough that I'll have someone who gets paid to do nothing more or less than clean up cat pee at 3 a.m. Just as soon as Mr. Speilberg calls . . .
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