TWIC: first drafts, animation, cartoons, quora, yosegi

The first draft.

Of most interest: the tedium of the thing. Below, learn the .docx names, the preferred conditions, and the crucial snacks of some of our brightest contemporary authors

As a Nanowrimo participant, I know more about first drafts than any other part of writing. I am working to change that this and next year.

I didn't enjoy Go Set a Watchman but it was wonderful to see how much was changed to turn the book into To Kill A Mockingbird. The difference between (the polished) first draft that GSAW really was and the fantastic TKAM shows you how much a book can change and still clearly have the same provenance.
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Using Para-Para to make simple animations. See a shark attack here, unless I can figure out how to publish it here.

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The internet and cartoons and creativity

The typical format for a web comic was established a decade or more ago, says Zach Weiner, the writer of “Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal”, or “SMBC” (below). It has not changed much since. Most cartoonists update on a regular basis — daily, or every other day — and run in sequence. “I think that’s purely because that’s what the old newspapers used to do,” says Mr Weiner. But whereas many newspaper comics tried to appeal to as many people as possible, often with lame, fairly universal jokes, online cartoonists are free to be experimental, in both content and form. 

Ryan North uses the same drawing every day for his “Dinosaur Comics” — the joke is in the dialogue, which he writes fresh every weekday, and the absurdity of dinosaurs discussing Shakespeare and dating. “SMBC” flicks between one-panel gags and extremely long, elaborate stories. Fred Gallagher, the writer of “Megatokyo”, has created an entire soap-opera-like world, drawn in beautiful Japanese manga-style, accessible only to those who follow the sage regularly. Mr Munroe’s “XKCD” is usually a simple strip comic, but recently featured one explorable comic, entitled “Click and Drag”, which, if printed at high resolution, would be 46 feet wide. 

Perhaps thanks to the technical skills needed to succeed, web cartoonists tend to be young — few are over 30 — well-educated and extremely geeky.

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From Quora: Why is science fiction so popular in writing?

And Differences in planning a long or very long book.
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I've seen a lot of discussion of yosegi lately. It is the Japanese art of parquetry.

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