Little amount of time

Work is still standing, it is going down, but as I suppose is normal with university, it goes from one thing and straight into another. Which is leaving me with very little time to write anything for personal projects.

The good news is that because Kathryn and I have been developing this for two years, I really genuinely believe that the final version of Heartstone Odyssey scripts will be finished this summer.

So until the summer, I bid you adieu, as I have so much work, I actually can’t write or have anything to say about this project!

There’s no much point in blogging about nothing very week now is there?

See you soon!

Lucy

Quieter Days

I keep meaning to do more work on Heartstones, but with a university work load it’s a little bit difficult to find the time to go through my beloved script!

So things may be a little bit quiet for the moment.

And there’s nothing wrong with that!

Bear with us! More news will arise from somewhere soon enough.

Lucy

Halt!

I’m afraid this week Heartstone Odyssey has come to a bit of a halt. I’m back at uni you see! At least with the script side of things. 0_O

I have however managed to work out a way to get comics up on wordpress. Last night I was playing around in the software Comic Life, and well…this evolved.

I really liked the way it was set out on my own website/blog, so I thought it’d be quite useful for when we get the comic going. Smackjeeves has been a great host for the comic so far, but there are problems that Kathryn and I don’t like. So at some point, I think we may well be moving everything over onto this site. You never know, we may even buy our own little url if we’re lucky and we’re going to use it properly! (or I may!)

But that’ll have to come at a time when Kathryn and I haven’t got billions of university work to contend with.

Lucy

Books

Next week I’m starting a comic book module (all about the writing of course) so I’m quite excited about it. But in my preparation for this comic book module (at least my own obsessive kind) I’ve read the following, and parts of the following which I found very useful for Heartstones!

- Maus by Art Spigleman (which to anyone who hasn’t read it, I say go out and get yourself a copy! It’s heartbreaking, but just fantastic and gripping. I literally didn’t put it down for two days.)

- Writing and Illustrating the Graphic Novel by Mike Chinn.

I actually wish I’d read Writing and Illustrating the Graphic Novel before I started Heartstones. It’s got some great tips about writing and the pacing of the storyline which I think could have been useful at the time. Although it’s helped me think about the pacing of the final volume.

I visited York last weekend. And other than writing a very small scene in my notebook with these characters, and the odd annotation on the V2 script, I haven’t done anything else.

Life’s getting busy again.

Lucy

A very short update

Sometimes it’s really hard to show what I’ve been doing on this project, when this week has consisted of hardly anything. Kathryn has done some new drawings I think, but not being anywhere near Kathryn’s computer means I can’t upload them.

This week, as last week, Kathryn and I were writing and drawing away. We have both become quite obsessed with Tangled, which annoyingly isn’t out until 28th in the UK! 0_O

I would show you some of the writing I’ve done in my notebook. But I’m worried it may spoil the ending.

A very short blog I know, but hopefully, next week I’ll have more news!

Lucy

Plans, ever heard of them? NOPE!

I have to say this first, because I think it’s the funniest thing that’s happened to me this morning.

I posted this in the wrong blog!

Last week, Kathryn and I planned and planned all over again. These things have needed to be planned for quite a while, partly because half of it we’ve forgotten, and because this story appears to be so complicated we just needed a good talk about it so that it would somehow make sense.

A few years ago I’d have sat down in front of my laptop and typed out a story, not caring or even wondering whether it made any sense to anyone else. I’m sure I’ve talked about this many times before, but I think it straightens things out in my head if I have something written down telling me what to write.

Problem with our planning was that we decided to draw all of these ideas down on a piece of paper. Which at the time, made complete sense to the both of us as we were chattering away at the same time. But half an hour later, the drawings and scribbles we’d used to describe what we were talking about looked like a load of nonsense even to us.

So Kathryn wrote it all down on her computer and the ideas are all safe on there. I’ve just got to expand it all and work out a coherent ending. Which I think is the only scene that’s changed so much in the entire story, and it’s not even been written yet! You see, Kathryn and I have been debating about what “should” happen at the ending of Heartstones, and what we “want” to happen.

What should I choose?

Logic or what Kathryn and I would like to happen?

Lucy

2011′s first update

There’s a reason that I decided to update this blog at a certain time and automate it so I wouldn’t have to worry on fridays. Part of this reason was so that there wasn’t a massive rush on a friday morning/afternoon/night that was full of typos and would bring down the possible professional quality I want this to look like.

Of course, today, I have failed this yet again. So I do apologize for any kind of tYp0 there may be. I do understand the importance of editing my work, especially now I’m at university!

I haven’t updated since Christmas because I for starters thought I deserved a break at the one time of year I was around all of my family and friends. But in this time between blog updates, I’m extremely pleased to announce that the Heartstone Odyssey Volume 2 (draft 1) script I have been complaining about for weeks, has finally been finished.

One of the reasons I hadn’t written something in so long was because I was busy with my uni work. But another reason was because I think I was scared to do the ending of this volume. It’s quite a ‘tear jerker’ and after two years of living with this story in my head you do get very attached to certain parts of it. But then I just sat down at my grandma’s house, listened to dramatic music (which just so happened to be War from the AVATAR soundtrack, but The Tear Heals from the Tangled soundtrack I think is much better now) and wrote.

Then the next day I was so ill I couldn’t move from the sofa without fear of shaking more violently or throwing up. If my characters are real in some kind of parallel world, I reckon they were trying to punish me!

Then I travelled to Scotland to visit my family. And whilst I was on the train there I was editing the newly finished script. And just as I put the phone down (and had also just informed who I was speaking to that I was going through my script and not in the slightest bit bored) the woman asked me whether I was writing a movie script.

This completely threw me off. I seem to remember me saying a lot of “ums” and “errs” in my shock (at first). I don’t often get asked about my writing, but I soon managed to recover and told her all about Heartstone Odyssey and excitedly texted Kathryn moments after. It was a lovely moment!

I love the life of being a writer. It does throw you off sometimes, but for really good reasons!

Lucy

ps, Happy New Year!

HAPPY SECOND BIRTHDAY HEARTSTONES!

Wow.

Two years! How time flies eh?

Quick post just to say a big thank you to everyone who’s helped and supported this project for the last couple of years. It’s lovely to have people who are at least a little bit interested in it, and I don’t think I’d have managed it without some of that support (nor without the constant support of Kathryn.)

Here’s to another great two years!

Hope you had a lovely christmas/holidays/just a general weekend if you don’t celebrate christmas and I shall be posting again on the 7th! (For those of you aren’t on the facebook group, there’s no update from me next week because I’m going to visit my family for New Year/Hogmany. Kathryn may well be planning something for in between that so keep your eyes out on here/the actual website.

Lucy

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

In just two days time, Heartstone Odyssey will have it’s second “birthday”. Of course, when I say birthday, I literally mean the day it was created. If we had birthdays for when the characters, blog, website or even the name Heartstone Odyssey was made. Then I think we would be here for a very long time, and bordering on obsessive!

The good news I come bearing this week is that I’ve managed to write a lot more of the script. (At this moment, I’m in the middle of writing it. But I’m hoping that I’ve managed to finish it and send it to Kathryn by the time this would have updated.) The bad news is that I’ve realized there are parts I have forgotten, and so I need to go and read it through again. Then I can get onto the editing and finalizing of of the script. Then I can plan out the final volume/s (depending on how it plans out, it could just be three volumes long) and write the final scripts.

Two years of hard work, I hope that whatever happens in the future I’ll be satisfied with these scripts. It’s a long time to put work into something and if something were to go wrong with them then I think I’d be disappointed in myself. But, nothing has so far, so I think I’ll get through!

Happy chirstmas/holidays/if you don’t celebrate any of it this then just have a great day!

I’m off to Scotland to see my lovely family. So there may well not be an update next week (from me – I have no idea whether Kathryn has any plans to do something or not), so I shall be back on the 7th! (and the 26th for that automated blog I think I’ve posted… 0_O)

Until next time

Lucy

ELIZA’S BOOTS! :D

The threat of snow where I live has been constant these last few weeks (at one point it was up to my knees!) so out went the converses I wore until next summer and in came these very nice boots.

Kathryn and I are now both back in the same city so when we went out the other day, we were admiring the said boots. And we decided that these little boots of mine, were perfect for Eliza to wear in Heartstones. Although we did also decide that these particular boots should in fact look a little bit more “boyish”. Eliza is given some clothes, the boots included because we wanted her to have a new look at some point. But I’m sure those boots belonged to Jack at some point!

It was great the other day because Kathryn and I sat down and did a very long squee scene (as we did before uni). But I won’t talk about that one, we may well love it enough to go into the comic itself so that’d be a spoiler!

I’m going to write the christmas (hopefully!) story now.

It’s not long until Heartstones has it’s second birthday! I can’t believe this project has been going that long!

Until next week!

Lucy