Although it wasn't a total surprise to me, it might come as a surprise to you that, just after stating that it was time to slow down and take baby steps, I instead sped up the process.
And then, a day after writing about a 'Eureka Moment': the realization that I should go for a book without illustrations, I changed my mind once again. I probably will use a bunch of illustrations, after all and make them black and white in the book.
Thanks for the inspiration and encouraging words @rafzat :<)
I guess this is just how I roll...
Changing my mind all the time, aiming to be as flexible as possible and following my intuition, whenever and wherever I can.
It's fair to say that I know, by now, that writing these kind of things down or talking about the ins and outs of my creative process ( hence my podcast The Life of Hypersensitivosaurus ), usually lead to much needed insights, steering me into new directions of the journey that is my creative process.
Feedback also helps a lot. So thank you! if you're on those who leave me comments and other forms of encouragement. It's much appreciated and alleviates the struggle that I often experience in life and in my creative journey.
It's much appreciated :<)
On Friday, I felt extremely motivated to work on my book. And this weekend, yesterday more than today, I pretty much managed to keep the momentum going, eventhough I was feeling it less and felt I deserved some kind of weekend too.
As talked about in yesterday's podcast episode On Editing my Book and Adding Jokes in the Endnotes, I had quite a lot of fun with adding jokes and expanding on them in my endnotes.
In a first draft of the book, back in the Summer of 2021, I had tried footnotes. My mom read that version and said they distracted too much. She had a point.
In the current version, not being proofread by my mom
as I try to keep this a secret until her birthday, as explained in Let's try to finish my next book (be)for(e) my mom's 70th Birthday
I decided to use endnotes and on Friday I sensed that I could really let myself go in the endnote section, being as much me as I can be. Activating my inner child and making poop jokes ( and other kinds of jokes.
To please your inner child, I decided to give one of those end jokes away here.
I'll start out with a fragment of the story itself, followed by the ( joke in the ) end note. The 'he' person in the text is Hypersensitivosaurus.
Here goes:
The sound of a single mosquito buzzing around, woke him up when asleep. It also kept him awake, when he felt like sleeping and he already wasn’t a great sleeper and felt like crap after a single difficult night.
In the book, I placed an endnote after the word crap ( couldn't insert it here but that won't stop me from turning this into somewhat of a shitpost ).
Here's what I wrote in the endnote department:
Similar to feeling like shit, feeling shitty. Which makes me wonder why this expression became popular. Probably because it sounds cool: “I feel like shit!”.
The next time someone says this to me, I will imagine this person as a soft, brownish, smelly substance that I don’t want to touch and I will probably start laughing and walk away. Just kidding. I’m not that harsh and will probably ask why?, while I pinch my nose and keep a safe distance.
The above is probably one of my lengthiest endnotes, certainly not the funniest, but I kind of like to let myself go in the end notes section and add the stuff that I feel I can't add in the main story of the book itself, as people would surely lose track of the plot haha!
Welcome to the mind of ( the person behind ) Hypersensitivosaurus
Tomorrow is a new week. The library will be open again and that will make it easier to focus even more on my book. I feel I can probably get very close to the finishing line in the next 5 days, which would be awesome.
I hope you enjoyed yet another insight in my creative process.
Until next time.
Much love,
Vincent Nijman aka Hypersensitivosaurus aka Cold Turkey.