The lyf so short

Will I ever catch up? Probably not! But I will try.

First off, though, Happy extremely belated birthdays, dawn_felagund and lindahoyland!
I hope both of you had wonderful days and continue to have a wonderful year. Congrats on the new kitten, lindahoyland, Reuben is adorable!

Now, on to real-life matters. A lot of things going on, so I'll start with the explanation for the cryptic "Smeagol is free!" post. As it happens, Smeagol is not in fact wholly free, but everybody hopes that the situation can be resolved without anyone jumping into a volcano.
It concerned (concerns) the job situation with the "lovely" regional magazine.

(The magazine actually is lovely. Working there was lovely, until I realised that it's predominantly a means to further bossman's ambitions of being famous, admired and influential. Bossman himself may, as yet, be the most horrible human being I have personally encountered. But I'm getting ahead of myself.)

You may recall that back in June, I was looking at the question of whether I would continue working at the magazine, or would they dump me because it had transpired that I would not be able to put in 20+ hours of office work (and about the same time in home office or attending events). At the time, boss-colleague had just been fired (unfairly, but to his great relief) and I was torn between the desire to do the job (which I enjoyed) and to get away from bossman's schemes (which I was beginning to see through and detest). As it happened, bossman seemed to realise that for the time being, the existence of the magazine depended on someone stupid enough to continue doing my job, because finding someone to replace boss-colleague turned out to be a lot harder than he thought. So the suggestion was to come to the office once a week (6-8 hours) and do everything that could be done from home from home (another 16 hours). And I figured that hey, even if bossman is an absolute asshole, some form of part-time job security might be nice. So I officially got out of the traineeship, but immediately got into a new position as an editorial assistant. There was a brief period of psychological games, in which bossman tried to make me feel guilty to accept lower pay. I should have packed up and gone right then, but I didn't. I thought it was enough that I had understood that it was just a psychological game, and figured that I could try to play one of my own, in which I'd continue to be indispensable to the magazine until the kids were old enough for me to officially become the boss-colleague. Because bossman is almost 70, it would only be a matter of time until he would (have to?) retire, and then I'd sort of slip into the position of bosswoman. It was not a terribly well-thought out plan, but I didn't have any more exciting perspective at the time (short of Finally Finishing One Of My Book Projects And Getting Them Published), so it was worth a shot. Besides, I didn't want to let the two ad ladies down. As for the pay, bossman claimed that he couldn't offer me more than 600 bucks for the abovementioned 22-24 hours of weekly work because there was a new boss-colleague about to start who had loads of work experience and wouldn't do the job for as little as J., the old boss-colleague. I said in that case, I'd do significantly less home office work in order to approximate minimum wage at least.

Okay. I hate bragging or anything that vaguely sounds like it, but let's be absolutely blunt here: The magazine is still existing only thanks to that move, because I kept the editorial side of things from slipping into absolute chaos (although it continued to be chaos), managed to find topics to fill the pages, kept the homepage up to date and actually, like, read the effing flood of e-mails that arrived in bossman's inbox every day that he never got read because he has the attention span of a particularly ill-tempered cat. Two editions of the magazine have only appeared because I have been keeping things running in the background, even though I only wrote just two contributions to one edition (I actually wrote four, but only two ended up in the magazine; maybe the other two will appear in the next, which was due last week but hasn't yet?). I drove around to do interviews and fed the ever-hungry events calendar. The one thing I didn't do was feed Facebook, which ended up being the new trainee's job, and take care of the ads, which was the job of the ad ladies.

At the same time, the refugee newspaper took up much of bossman's time. The Syrian guys had wanted to publish it in time for Ramadan, which didn't work out. They had wanted to publish is immediately after Ramadan, which didn't work out. I don't know whose fault this was but it meant that some articles that had been prepared could no longer be used, that the events calendar had to be reworked three times, and that the list of markets that the old boss colleague and I were asked to assemble on his last day in the office (one week before the normal magazine was due, I might add). Anyway, bossman was completely swamped with that. If you asked him about anything else (or even about anything related to the refugee newspaper), he would yell that he didn't want to be disturbed, and then continued to rage for half an hour about how he can't even do one single thing without someone asking stupid questions. I was supposed to point out relevant e-mails and events to him on my one office day, which got pushed off until after lunch, next hour, next week; and next week, half of them were over. "Why didn't you tell me about that?" I tried. "Someone should have gone there!" Then you should have authorised that. "You don't need me to authorise that, you have to make that decision on your own!" Okay.
This will be relevant later.

The normal edition of the magazine was finished just before I left for Drachenfest (meaning that I wouldn't be there to proofread it, but never mind, he had a freelancing proofreader for that). The proofreader was fuming when I came back because apparently, bossman had changed things around after she had finished the job, using the old (un-proofed and error-ridden) versions of the articles. But never mind: The magazine was out once again, and it was time for a breather... OR WAS IT?
As it happened, the first edition of the refugee newspaper had also finally been printed and put into the shops (unlike the normal magazine, it was sold - at a low price, but at a price - and not given out for free. A totally sensible way of doing things). In celebration of this, our "resident cook" (actually a friend of the refugee newspaper's official editor-in-chief; he contributed one recipe to the newspaper) was asked to prepare a little Syrian feast at bossman's home. He did this splendidly, and we feasted together and toasted the future of the magazine and I was lulled into a sense of look, bossman actually can be nice when he isn't swamped.

UNTIL. Two things happened in the days after the feast. The day immediately after, one of the ad ladies called me to ask whether I could drive with the new trainee to do two interviews in GM (one hour's drive away on a good day). That was a Thursday, the one day when I have absolutely nobody to watch the kids at any time of the day, so I said sorry, I really can't, but nonetheless asked what this was about: To the best of my knowledge, bossman had meant to do that interview. (He had planned to take the new trainee along so she could learn journalism. The new trainee was absolutely lovely and willing to put up with a lot of shit and extremely diligent, but she was not exactly a natural as a writer.)
Yeah, ad lady #1 said, that's a bit difficult. He told the trainee yesterday evening that he can't actually come along, as was planning on doing a test ride.
A test ride? asks I, naïvely. Oh, for the "motor" section of the magazine?
Not that I know of, says ad lady, who would know because she's the one who negotiates the deals with the car dealers. I don't know anything about this, ad lady reiterates, so I'm a bit desperate and a bit angry.
Well, I'm really sorry, but I honestly can't help today.
That's OK, it's not my fault, says ad lady. She's going to send an angry text message to bossman so he gets his butt out of whatever car he wants to test ride and into a car to GM.
Okay.

The next day, I get a call from the trainee. She's really sorry but could I do two interviews in GM? She rescheduled yesterday's appointments after bossman didn't appear and couldn't be reached, but apparently he's been hospitalised so he can't go today, either.
What, I ask, alarmed, did he have an accident?
Nobody knows, says the trainee.
What about yesterday's test ride, did he shed any light on that?
He says there was no test ride, I must have misheard that, says the trainee.
Misheard, my ass, I think, but I say out loud, then why was he hospitalised?
He was talking about sciatic pain, says the trainee. Can you go to GM?
Actually, if she'd called an hour earlier (or told me the day before), I could have gone; but as it was, I just told the mother-in-law that she's free to do whatever she wants because I only have computer work to do. So I can't. Besides, I'm envisioning bossman being hit by lumbago while trying to get into (or out of) a Lamborghini, which would certainly reconcile the combination of "test ride" and "sudden unbearable sciatic pain". I don't really feel like picking up the pieces (again) because bossman went on an ego trip. I don't tell the trainee that; she's young and naïve, but she's also a good friend of bossman's daughter.
OK, says the trainee, I guess I'll just reschedule it again then. Acts of Nature, that sort of thing.
That evening, very strangely, the very same bossman who is supposedly in too much pain to be driven to GM (the trainee may not have too much skill as a journalist, but she's got both a driver's licence and a car) can be seen on the local news, walking around the office, subtly showing off the print of Nelson Mandela and the wood sculpture by a local sculptor and humbly answering questions about the awesomeness of the refugee magazine, into which he put a lot of money of his own but it's all gonna pay off. And these local news clips are prepared on the same day on which they're aired. Honi soit qui mal y pense. Of course, his new prestige project is more important than anything.

Bits of news trickle down the wire over the course of the next week. Bossman was hospitalised with lumbago. No, there never was a test ride or anything of the sort, he just couldn't get up in the morning. He had to be taken to the hospital straight from his bed. No, actually it wasn't lumbago. The sciatic nerve is inflamed. No, actually that's not it, either, it's a herniated disc. No, actually nobody knows what it is, because the hospital bossman wanted to go to because he knows all the important people there doesn't have its own MRI specialist. There is one coming in from Cologne, but he only comes once a week and he hasn't been in yet.
I try to bite back my thoughts on "knowing all the important people" (something bossman always insisted I needed to do), but something may slip out in my eyes or voice. Ad lady #2 gives me a knowing smile and says "It's all extremely nebulous, I know, and I'm fed up. Also, in two weeks, we need to send the special edition to the printer."
The special edition appears twice a year and is all about young people in more or less interesting occupational training jobs, helping companies to find the next generation of trainees and graduates to find traineeships. How interesting these jobs are depends on where the ad ladies secure the ads that finance the special edition. To be fair, some of them are honestly interesting, and others are made interesting by the happy faces of the young trainees as they talk about how they've found their dream job, unexpectedly or expectedly. I've done a couple of these interviews and, aside from giving me a hard reality check on my own age, they've generally been good fun. The hardest part is cutting the interviews down to 1500-character snippets, and producing photos of the kids at their workplace that aren't just "somebody staring at a computer screen" or "somebody fixing a loose screw". This used to be the old prestige project, and now that the first edition of the new prestige project (which is not a success; it meets with much admiration, but over half of the 30.000 copies continue to sit in the office. Syrian editor-in-chief expected as much and suggested that 5.000 copies would be enough for a first attempt and it might be better to hand them out for free, but bossman "knew better") is done, it has once more become the most important thing in the world.

"Yeah, about that," I say, "I don't think I can schedule any more interviews than the five I already have going on this week."
She sighs. "I had hoped that you had already scheduled a few more that weren't on the list."
"If I had scheduled more, they would be on the list. I always update that list. So you know what you don't have to worry about anymore."
"Yeah, that's good. But the list isn't reliable because bossman keeps checking it from home and he never saves the most recent version somehow. Anyway, we still need to get 20 additional interviews done and I'd really hoped you could help us with that. Bossman has already yelled at me for selling so many ads but what can I do? Last week he yelled at me for not having sold enough."
I know how it is. I agree to additionally do the interviews that the trainee had to reschedule twice, but that's all I can do.

Bossman manages to find a freelancer who does the missing interviews. Actually, the freelancer is going to be a fixed part of the editorial team. Actually, the freelancer is going to become the new boss colleague. I don't like him that much but some of that may be misplaced loyalty with the old boss colleague. At any rate, he gets some of the job done. He also has two small kids, twins, who are Felix' age. So he isn't going to take any shit about random additional work hours out of the usual. I sometimes overhear him talking to his wife on the phone, and although he always tries to be smart and ironic and totally cool, I get the impression that he loves his wife and his son and daughter deeply and is not going to give them up in order to Breathe The Magazine, as bossman expects. So I sense difficult times ahead for him, but also have some hope that bossman may be forced to show that his expectations just can't be reconciled with reality in spite of "But the OLD editor-in-chief did it all!" (Yes, and the old editor-in-chief had neither significant other nor children and STILL resigned into unemployment because he just couldn't take the shit any longer.) Because if the same problem keeps on reappearing, maybe you're part of the problem? It's probably too much to ask, but hey, either way, it's nice to have someone else sharing in the load, even if he's a bit too smart and ironic for my tastes. (But his twin children are named Luke and Leia. I SHIT YOU NOT.)

Meanwhile, bossman is still in the hospital and nobody exactly knows what he's suffering from or what's getting done. But when his painkillers work, he's well enough to remote control all the office macs, search for stuff that's exactly where it should be, moving things around and messing up whatever vestige of order everyone has established on their computer because it doesn't fit his idea of how things should be. (He often does that, remote-controlling the office macs. I have regularly found articles posted online under my name, or e-mails sent with my signature, because he couldn't bother to switch accounts after having filed through something on the main computer, which is currently the one I use.)
Other than that, he is blessedly absent, and thus, we get the special edition pretty much prepared. The one problem is that bossman wants to change the layout a bit. This is a problem because the old designer resigned even before the editor-in-chief (old OLD boss colleague) did, the new designer was put on unpaid leave after a couple of weeks, and the Syrian designer is suddenly no longer good enough because bossman has to explain what he wants in English, which takes too long. (After bossman first insisted that the Syrian designer could do it all because he was, like, the best designer in all of Aleppo and we were so lucky to have him here. I later learn that the Syrian designer has also been put on supposedly unpaid leave - ad lady #2, who also happens to be HR lady, had to fight like a lioness to make bossman pay him the money he owed - and left swearing that he'd never do a single favour to this man again.) So bossman will do it himself.
From hospital. On his iPad. Whenever the painkillers work. And then he'll feed all the content we've produced into it, don't you worry.

I worry, and I worry rightly, because after he has changed the layout, suddenly the interview snippets only get to be 1250 characters long. I've carefully pruned them to be 1500 characters, the old length, and that already meant cutting about half of what I originally wrote. OH WELL. With the new boss colleague - let's call him Skywalker - in office, I also loose my privileges on the main mac and never get them assigned on the other computer, so I can't actually access the server (either to look up or to save things) but have to do it all via e-mail. Oh well.
Also, bossman rewrites some of the interviews that he doesn't find interesting enough (only one of mine, incidentally, and eleven of Skywalker's. SORRY, BUT THAT'S HOW IT IS.) "Those kids don't know what to talk about, so you have to put interesting things in their mouths." After that, the layouted interviews are sent to the companies - who, technically, have paid for these interviews by the ads they publish in the magazine, so they get a say in how their trainees present them in the magazine. The nicer ones also show them to the trainees who thus get a chance to say "I never said that" or "that's not what I meant". To everybody's total surprise, most of the interviews that bossman rewrote come back with requests for change because "XY says he never said that". NO WAI.
To nobody's surprise, this is completely the fault of me, the freelancers, and Skywalker.
Oh well.

Somehow, the special edition gets assembled anyway. Somehow, bossman also gets out of hospital. One of my office days, I come in and he sits in his place. His long flowing artist's mane has been replaced by a short stubble. Do they shave your head when they fix something on your sciatic nerve? Isn't that, like, on the other end? LOOK IT'S NOT MY PLACE TO SPECULATE BUT THINGS JUST DON'T ADD UP HERE. Anyway, bossman is furious that I am here. "I sent you an e-mail yesterday afternoon that there's no computer for you today. The proofreader is coming in an hour. You need to go away."
(Which, btw, is bullshit, because the designer mac is no longer used after the Syrian designer was sacked, and the proofreader is going to use the trainee's desk because it's got the faster computer and the trainee is in trade school all day. So there are, in fact, two empty desks. But never mind.)
I affect cheerfulness. "That's fine, I've got an appointment in an hour, too."
"What sort of appointment?" he asks sharply. So I explain about the invitation the magazine got, for a rebuilding scheme in a run-down quarter of the next town over. They're planning to build lots of modern housing units with cheap flats for the socially disadvantaged. It's the kind of topic that bossman normally loves, because he wants to be seen as the great benefactor and voice of social justice. In the light of his utter social ineptitude, this is rather a joke, but there it is.
"That's boring," he decides, "where's the story there?" Well, relocating the folk who currently live in that quarter, how do they feel about that? tearing down the old houses, how do other locals feel about that? bringing in new people from various "disadvantaged" background, is there a danger of ghettoisation? I'm sure there's some kind of story here. "Well, OK." he says. And then he turns back to feeding in the edited interviews for the special edition.
Half an hour later - the proofreader has just arrived - he runs after me as I want to leave for the appointment. "Actually, you don't have to go there. Who authorised that, anyway?"
Nobody did. The invitation has been put into my inbox by ad lady #1, who assumed that it might be relevant because Houses and Building is one of the chief topics for the next normal edition. Bossman told me two months ago not to wait for authorisation, but to make decisions myself. I made a decision, backed up by ad lady #1.
"No, you can't just do that without authorisation."
OK, then I won't.
"Besides, you shouldn't be here. I sent you an e-mail yesterday morning that you won't be needed today."
That's fine, I'll go home. But I never got that e-mail, and I worked on the computer until 6 PM last night. Incidentally, he said he'd sent it yesterday afternoon just an hour ago.
"I sent it sometime yesterday, and you should have read it."
(Even as a freelancer, I actually don't have to read work-related e-mails outside of "normal office hours".)
Whatever.

On my way home, I remember that I have another appointment looming on Saturday. I actually did ask for authorisation on that in June, and bossman said that it should be done, but only after the special edition had come out. Which will be this week, so I made the appointment for the weekend. But with bossman horrible at remembering agreements, I figure it's better to ask for authorisation again. So I do that once I'm back home.
No reply.
I do my usual home office work, and also ask again what to do about the appointment on Saturday.
On Friday, he finally replies to ask what sort of appointment it is. (I actually explained all about that in my first e-mail, but reading comprehension is clearly not everyone's cuppa.) So I explain it all again.
No reply.
Friday night, as I come back from a birthday party, I find a message on my phone. "We don't need that." That's all.
I should be glad - it's the weekend of the grand fair in town, and the kids are eager to spend as much time there as possible - but I am pissed off that he first authorised this, now knows nothing about it, and then wants to call it off at the last minute. So I text him back: "You really want me to cancel this on such short notice?"
No reply until Saturday noon - two hours before the appointment! "Yes, cancel it. I'd need a sports photographer for this and I don't have one. Besides, we're scrapping the sports series."
This is news to me, and I try to politely point out that the people I'm going to interviews are providing the photos - the sporting events they attend take place all over Germany and, in fact, Europe, so bossman wouldn't pay a photographer to go there, anyway. I mentioned this in my previous explanatory e-mails but, you know.
Then I go and do the interview. For one, I would have found it too impolite to cancel the appointment with only two hours warning; for two, I know that bossman often changes his mind about things and then he's going to want me to interview these people after all, so I may as well get it done now.
And it's fun. Partly, I have to admit, because it feels like open rebellion and that's kind of satisfying, but also because the topic turns out to be really fascinating. I'm not a fan of motorised sports but these people sell their sport (sidecar motorbike trials) well, and it's more about reading the terrain and dexterity than speed, and after the interview is done, I get to attempt it myself. I am probably doing a really poor job and my muscles cramp something fierce afterwards, but it's FUN, like a rollercoaster that you get to steer yourself. If I were ten years younger (or twenty years older) and had no other obligations, I'd totally take it up myself. I may not get paid for this interview, but I don't honestly care because it was just fun.
And afterwards, Jörg and I take the kids to the fair. My parents also come along and pay for all the rides, long after what we would have granted, so the kids enjoy it immensely. Felix has come to enjoy speed and racing relatively recently; Julian has loved it pretty much from the start. He'd greatly enjoy sidecar motorbike trial runs, too, I suspect. He'll probably take up training with the folks I have just interviews in a couple of years' time (their own daughter rode her first motorbike when she was five), and my poor nerves will never get a moment's rest. Because our town is taking part in a free w-lan scheme, I can read my e-mails on my phone, and so I can immediately read a surprisingly long mail from the bossman. Basically, I'm free to do the interview at my own peril - oh really - and can try to sell the article - "which he expects I will write really well, as usual" - why thanks - to the magazine afterwards. But it all depends on the quality of the photos. The old editor-in-chief photographed everything himself and he did so splendidly, but neither the old boss-colleague nor the new boss-colleague nor I can match him, which is why bossman wants to scrap the sports series in the first place. Besides, he feels that I am lacking in the communications department (look who's talking) and too stubborn (yes, I can be that) and prone to insubordination (that actually depends on the person in charge; towards him, I absolutely am), so he'd prefer if in the future, I only write articles and he only pays me for those. From now on, I am released from all other duties like office time, the events calendar and e-mail hell. Would I please send him a list of my work hours this month so he doesn't pay me too much.

It is a beautiful sunny day, the kids are having the time of their life, and I smile and pocket my smart phone.
We eat at the fair. I take care of the garden. It's the end of August, summer has finally arrived, and I am free.

The next Tuesday, I get a distraught call from ad lady #1. "The distributor for your town has resigned, and the distributor for the next town over is in hospital. We've already scheduled you for your town on your office day tomorrow, but could you maybe also do the next town over? Or the other one that also is no longer covered?"
...
...
...
I ask whether bossman didn't tell her that he "released me from all duties", including office time (not to mention that distributing the printed magazines was never one of my duties in the first place). She is completely flabberghasted. "He said you were still in tomorrow, because it's the last day of August," she says. "He paid you until the end of the month, he said."
I wonder if this is true - bossman normally never pays on time - and tell her that bossman sent me an e-mail that definitely says "from now on", meaning Saturday, the Xth of August, 4:12 PM.
She swears and announces her intentions of kicking bossman's ass.
I say that I'm in a real conundrum: I'd love to help her and the team, who are - once more - in a difficult situation; I will absolutely not help bossman, who brought the situation about.
"No, I wouldn't, either," she says tiredly. "But we're gonna miss you."
I talk to the other ad lady later, because she's also HR lady. "He can't actually fire you on such short notice," she says, "but of course he can put you on leave, as he did in his e-mail." Not unpaid leave, though, so I don't actually have to list all the time I spent working for the magazine. (It is only slightly less than would amount to my usual € 600 if minimum wage is applied, and would have been more if I hadn't stopped last Saturday. Actually, if the interviews I did for the special edition, it would have been a lot more. I tell her that.) "List it, then," ad lady suggests. "Bossman always claims he's paying people too much so he can use some setting straight."
Bossman also calls, later on. "OF COURSE you were supposed to come in tomorrow! I would never fire anyone without proper notice!"
I know. You can't. But you did put me on leave.
"I meant after the month is over! Obviously! I didn't need to state that because that's how it's done!"
I don't fall for his 'that's how it's done' shit. "You explicitly said 'from now on'. That's last Saturday in the afternoon."
Silence. He probably checks his e-mail and realises that oh shit, that's what he wrote. He hates writing e-mails. He loves making unwritten agreements and later forgetting what he said, or what the other side said. Not necessarily on purpose, just because it "works better for him". Of course it does. But now, he put it into writing.
"Hmpf. What about the interviews?"
"Oh, that went really well. It's quite an exciting story. They're multiple German and European champions, so they really know what they're doing. If they win another race in October, they'll hold the title for seven years in a row."
"Hmpf."
"The photos are also pretty nice, as far as I can judge that."
"Well, it's not just about the quality, it's also about whether we have the photographer's permission" - which we do - "and about whether they've been published before, where, in what media and so on."
These would normally be legitimate concerns, but it's the first time since I've been working at the magazine that he suddenly worries about that sort of thing, so I understand he's doing his usual games again.
"I am sure they will give me that information. No problem," I say cheerfully. And because I can be mean, I also say, "I suspect a spectacular motorbike pic might be nice material for the cover, even. After the homely covers for the last two editions..."
This is a sore spot, I know, because the ad ladies have complained about the homely covers already. Their customers think that they looked like something for "The Modern Housewife" or "Town and Country" or somesuch, not the hip, smart image they - and bossman - normally pursue.
And indeed, it works. "You can send me a couple of photos," he says, "and I'll see what we can use."
Sure. I'll send him downsized previews of the photos to give him a first impression. The real photos, of course, will only come after he has bought the article.
"Yeah, about payment," he says. "I've already paid you for August but I guess you can just send back the amount that is too much."
"Actually, there isn't anything to send back," I say. "I have listed my hours and if we go by minimal wage, that's 575 bucks. But you haven't paid my travel expenses for the past three months yet, so in fact, you still owe me money."
"We never agreed on minimal wage!"
"We never agreed on any hourly rate."
"We agreed that you'd do 22 hours per week, and I'd pay you 600 € per month!"
"We agreed that I'd do home office, and you'd pay me 600 € per month. I told you that I'd do less than 22 hours in order not to sell myself short."
"This is getting too complicated. Bye." He hangs up.

A couple of passive aggressive e-mails follow the next couple of days. The photos can't be used, are too small (YES, THEY ARE DOWNSIZED PREVIEWS), show the wrong things, the perspective is boring, he wants something different. I probably totally shock him by NOT begging him to take the photos or the article. If he doesn't want them, too bad, so sad. Maybe I'll ask the folks' permission to offer the article to other magazines or the local paper. Or I'll just let them know that the series was scrapped, very sorry. I can't currently bring myself to care.
More bullshit follows, and I still haven't seen the ~ 200 bucks he still owes me, so, yeah. This may not be over yet.
But for the time being, I'm just glad to have my freedom back. Even though I only worked at the office once per week, the home office ate up pretty much all my computer time (and some spare time that I would otherwise have used differently), and thinking about organisational issues and articles and topics consumed much of my mind even when I was doing other things. I actually still catch myself thinking THAT WOULD BE MATERIAL FOR -- OH WAIT when I see notices for events or hear about interesting people/projects/issues going on. (I also have discovered that there appears to be a direct competitor to the magazine. It's even doing the same special edition. It's doing less well because it's meant to be sold, and people don't wanna pay, and also, it's not the same level of journalism, which was what initially attracted me with the other magazine. Even though it's supposed to be not predominantly financed by ads, the commercial aspects are a lot more obvious in the content. But who knows? I might apply there. Maybe that'll raise the level of writing, hah, hah.)

In theory, bossman wants me to continue writing articles for his magazine every now and then. "You do awesome writing, you're just a bad team player". I don't yet know whether he plans to send me suggestions for topics and ask me to write on them, or whether I am supposed to write stuff and send it in "for his consideration". I am not going to do the latter, at least not now, while the anger is fresh (and probably not later, because the husband will remind me of the anger -- he's a bit smug that he was right all along, which is really too cheap and too simple, but there's no point in arguing the point). I just have no effs left to give for this matter. (I used more chopsticks than I really have for finally writing this entry. I have no clue whether it's readable, but I can't even bring myself to re-read it. If we didn't have guests tonight, I'd spend the rest of the day slouching in front of the computer, re-reading Another Man's Cage until my eyes cross and I accidentally address Felix as Feanor, not that this has ever happened before or anything.)

Oh well. (Yet again!) Maybe you can make sense of it anyway. If not, oh well. I am trying to save all my effs for November. Does the above look like material for a 50K novel to you? It does to me. If I change the names and fictionalise the region...? It would be my first non-Fantasy or Travel NaNo. :P

... my NaNo rebellion, that is. Because I'm done.

Well, not in the traditional NaNo way of writing a story of 50,000 words. But in the way I'd planned to use this NaNoWriMo. To recap, the plan was to produce the illustrations for two children's picture books I had in my mind. Each piece of lineart would count as 1000 words (because one picture is worth a thousand words). The words of the storyboard for both books also counted towards the final score. But, after 45 illustrations (and about 1500 words of storyboard)... the stories were told. At which point I was personally ready to consider myself a winner, but the number is still 50,000, not "about 46500".

So I went and wrote the next chapter of Golden Days, which clocked in at 4000 words. Problem solved. NaNo won. Just not, as I said, in the traditional way. So you may consider me a cheat. (I don't.)

It's been an intriguing experience. I've taken part in Nano often enough to have several three-quarter novels on my harddrive (some of them longer than 50K words, some of them shorter), and then there's my usual fanficcing where I have also produced shocking amounts of literature, so I'm quite familiar to the process of creative writing. But this year was completely different. Since the birth of my sons, writing has taken a bit of a back seat, so NaNo used to be a welcome excuse to prioritise it for a month's time. This year, it was a welcome excuse to take up a pencil again. Having to produce art on a daily basis after months (practically years) of abstinence was strange and fun. Having to follow a storyline was even more strange. Aside from my attempt to produce a webcomic a few years ago, I've never done anything like that.
It went astonishingly well.

I used to draw relatively often, and I always had the problem that the picture I was visualising didn't match the result, making me more or less unhappy with my art. I expected that the inner critic would be a huge problem this month, and was surprised that it actually wasn't. It's not that I've suddenly become a great artist, or become less critical. But it appears that under the premise of "telling a story through pictures" and "telling a story for children", my focus is different. (This shouldn't be surprising, but it's a new experience to draw stuff that I doesn't make me want to weep at my shortcomings!) Does the picture tell the part of the story it's meant to tell? That's good enough.

With these lowered expectations - and also with the expectation that I'd find translating the story into lineart really hard - I'm actually really proud of a few of my pictures. Well, I'm proud of all of them in that I managed to illustrate two whole stories (however short). But some are very basic. Others are more elaborate. Among those, I have a some that I really love.
I deliberately took some shortcuts, especially when it came to backgrounds. I think it works. I know it's fashionable to put a lot of stuff in children's books' illustrations. I didn't do that. I wanted to tell the story, period. At the moment, it seems to be popular to mix Wimmelbilder with linear storytelling. I'm not sold on that. I didn't want to do that. So I mostly didn't bother with background or just used washes. I like the result. It seems to be a style that works well for me.

In "normal" drawing (that is, in fanart), I find it hard to depict people satisfyingly, especially if I have to convey motion. I thought this would be an issue here, but it really wasn't. Motion, dynamics, even gestures came surprisingly easy for this project. Initially, I thought it was because I simply wasn't too bothered about realism. TATER TROLL ANATOMY IS DIFFERENT. But my tater trolls turned out surprisingly human in their movements. And my pictures, which could have been static for all I cared, turned out surprisingly dynamic. So it's not just that I had different expectations than usual; it's also that I accidentally succeeded at things that I normally find hard.

Why? No clue. Perhaps because even though I haven't drawn in ages, I've kept observing how other artists solved the problems that stumped me, so my subconscious had a bag of solutions ready. Or perhaps because I didn't put myself under so much pressure this time. Or something else entirely. Whatever it was, it worked! Will I be able to apply any of this to future attempts at drawing - fanart or otherwise? No clue, either. It's nice to think so, though.

What I hope I will take away from this is that I still can draw - that it doesn't actually take as long to produce lineart. (And 20 pictures are already coloured, too!). I don't think I'll manage to draw daily anytime soon (even after Christmas). I was a little burned out in the end - the last five pictures were a chore - but then I really enjoyed writing again. The trick's in the mixture, I guess. At any rate, I can't neglect the dishes, the floors and the approaching holidays forever. But I'll definitely attempt to produce a little art or a little creative writing per week. (Unless it's good gardening weather, of course! ;))

Because - and that's the most important part, I guess - I felt like I had found a missing part of myself again. That is, I hadn't missed anything, per se, or pined for creative work. But it made me happy on a deep and personal level to produce stories again. And it'd be nice to tap into that source of happiness more often. Maybe I'll manage to illustrate some of my fanfic. Maybe I'll even tackle the graphic novel adaptation of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight that I'm dreaming of?

I'm also happy on a less deep and personal level - on a base money-making level, so to say. I actually think I'm good at producing children's picture books. I have enough faith in these little things that I'm already thinking about researching tax regulations for freelancing illustrators and everything! (And you know how much I hate thinking about practical regulations!) Once I'm done colouring all the lineart and putting it together with the text - work I'll do during the "Now What" months if I don't manage to do it at once, I hope I'll find a publishing company that likes these books as much as I do. Cross your fingers?
(I first typed "Cross your gingers". Now that's a mental image...)

[My test audience reacted favourably, anyway! Whenever I sat down with my drawing pad and pencil, Felix got all excited. "Are you painting tater trolls again?" "Is this another picture of Mister Milchstraße? What is he doing this time?" Eeeee!]