Open Casting Call for Aspersions The title was clickbait. My apologies. This article is really about the process of working with and protecting your creative energy and spirit from those who cast aspersions upon it, AND the setup for the open submission process for Elder Glade Publishing. You can jump to those sections below. Or listen to this article as it is read by text to voice translation. It’s about 22 minutes long. In the newsletter made public on my blog, Failure is Creative Compost, I talk a lot about making mistakes. In that article, I typoed a phrase and wrote “cast dispersion” rather than “cast aspersion.” I chuckled when I realized it the next day because it completely changed the sentence and meaning. (It gets funnier the further down you read. I kept imagining myself running around throwing rose petals on the winds for dispersion. Lol!) Both are legitimate words and so spellcheck would not have noticed the difference. On my personal blog, I don’t generally use an editor, as I mentioned in that exact post. On the publishing house blogs, yes, editors are employed. It’s the difference between a public profile and a personal profile. For just little old Athena? Naw. No need to bother the editors for a raw, human voice. My whole platform since the days of TheBlissQuest has been on being seen as raw and as unfiltered as possible because being human is being real and in the moment. Still, I have since gone back and corrected the typo, along with a few others because I often do that when I notice a mistake and rather than looping infinitely on the error. Just fix it. No need to ruminate upon a spill emotionally or mentally, just wipe it up and keep moving. No fuss. No muss. No hours of internal trauma required about worthiness and value and perceived loss of status. Yadda yadda. Just a click, a fix, and voila. But boy, howdy, does it trigger the fuck out of people when there are typos on a personal blog. Same for the swearing—which is why I don’t bother correcting that voice either. It assures a nice tidy filter on my following! The quickest way to be delegitimized as a publisher/writer is to make silly typos or drop a bunch of f-bombs in public, right? Good, then we’re staying on course for non-containment protocol. The series of posts I had mapped out prior to Elder Glade Publishing’s open submission portal were related to imperfection and a different kind of storytelling plan for our future, so the original goal to keep Athena the author a separate platform from Elder Glade Publishing’s up-front presence may need to be re-imagined so we can talk bluntly and openly about creative energy protections and human expectations. This is Athena, the author, talking to creatives out there who may be interested in the open submission process to Elder Glade Publishing this summer. You. Yes, you. And all other creatives who struggle with worthiness or fear of being imperfect. If you are a creator, a writer, and you have not been submitting your work to publishers for fear of not being taken seriously, or you’re one of the writers discussed in the later Section A, or you’ve been rejected by everyone else--please consider applying in July. Dear Creative, protect your creative energy. It is precious.I am personally used to the volume of critical notes and toxic feedback that comes from the general public (and people I know) regarding imperfections, mistakes and failed expectations. Not all people, not all creatives are okay with that level of criticism. I don’t mind it, but I had to learn that skill. There are days where I still slip up and let something bother me, or I roll my eyes so hard I land a headache, but in the general practice of protecting my creativity and spirit—this is the method I use, and it may help you as well. You too, can protect your creative spirit with this easy four step program. See? Easy peasy. When and IF you decide step three is useful, I’ve attached my handy guide to accepting critique as a downloadable PDF. This is the process I use when evaluating feedback from folks in the entertainment world, and even some of my editorial reports.
Someone out there will always know more or be better than you.Keep in mind, however, that statement goes both ways. You’re up one round, and down another. You’re par for the course, or somewhere in the weeds. Getting snagged in the sand trap does NOTHING for your craft or personal development, so don’t linger in someone else’s sand hole. Yeah? My favorite argument from people when I don’t adapt their advice, usually unsolicited, or roll into change mode for their criticisms is, “You just don’t know how to admit you’re wrong.” Or “You’re such an amateur.” I mean, that’s partly true. But the irony is that in many cases, if not the majority, notes and feedback, criticisms and aspersions on my creative work are missing CONTEXT. It also presupposes they have the “right” answer. Which for them, very well may be the truth—but for me, does not fit into my operating mode, context, or intention—or even my reality in some cases. Thus, many of those well-intended notes are really just personal projections from people who are operating containment protocols. No shade on them, they are where they are with the process, too. As are we all. I have zero arguments with people pointing out inaccuracies on mathematical facts, typos, or measurable metrics because of Section A, and because I appreciate being given the option to tone that section of communication or numerical facts. As to notes on emotional context, characters, world and craft in general—I only take the notes that improve the work, not the notes that just make it different. You, dear creator, are what you decide to be, regardless of the metrics applied by anyone else including myself. Don’t linger in my sand trap either. Section A – Context for creatives of all varieties.The non-linear brain. I don’t like labels or personal excuses in my own craft and process. However, what I’m about to say, I’ve never admitted publicly before. I’m dyslexic (specific to bd, pq and a few others, but this strangely does not impact numbers) have been diagnosed by random doctors with various non-linear brain patterns, and a handful of other chemical imbalances. I take it ALL with a grain of salt because over the 45 years of constant medical mis-diagnoses, missed obvious easy corrections to vitamins, or unsupported traumatic events all wrapped into one belief system I currently carry that our institutions are not designed to make or keep us well, but are designed instead for profit and containing; which may or may not be accurate for specific individuals at any given time—I have chosen over the last two decades to completely ignore the framework of this “diagnostic box” and re-design my own. I don’t advertise this because it’s a non-conversation. I hit a snag and worked around it the best I could. Nothing else to do but carry on! For every doctor that said one thing- a different doctor said another, which gave me, the creative, the opportunity to decide, “Maybe they just don’t know me and what I can do, and what I can build. Maybe their very limited range of acceptability or normal is just not within my LOD. Cool. Build a new LOD.” Turns out, my complaints were curable with non-invasive, non-pharmaceutical supports, and training. I always knew spelling was a mother-fucking challenge. Early on in life I just assumed my last incarnation spoke a different language, so I was somehow karmically inhibited by English. When I launched TheBlissQuest the number of people globally who took time out of their day to help me with spelling—either politely or impolitely-- over those eight years was incredible, and yet, it still doesn’t fully stick. To say it was a bombardment of advice would be an understatement. The truth is, we live in a world where the impact of your idea is only as valuable as your ability to generate buy-in… which is dependent upon your ability to communicate it articulately, and accurately through the intellectual perfectionism containment net. And because we live in a “containing culture,” as mentioned in the Failure is Creative Compost blog, the system is designed to keep ideas and people in or out of tiers by applied “bulk judgements” applied without context or emotional resonance. Interestingly we gravitate to art, to flow, and creative expression as a human species because it’s the only true place where emotional freedom still has some room to breathe. As a creator, I embraced my odd patterning, re-routed my rhythms to support my odd processes and built structure around it. Then slowly, I began retraining my brain and methods to a progress model to reach my own goals and metrics—no one else, just my own. Magic happened. I took the chocks off my editorial process and began writing auditorily: writing what I HEAR or SEE as I’m processing a scene. I knew this would create issues with homonyms and with spelling, but I wanted to capture the ideas and concepts—the emotional translations into form without losing the flow. Then, when I could afford it, and time allowed, I’d have an editor tidy it up for the audience. That was not always time efficient or affordable. Writing auditorily, I can dump mega chunks of content three times faster, which supports my personal end goal to be productive. Yet does not support the goal of precision. Part of my give in the creative process is to hand over, release control of the monitoring of detail and precision to those people who find joy in that element of a build. I do not find joy in that part of the build, and it sucks mega-Jules of precious creative energy to refocus and target that functional process by re-formatting my brain to those tasks, then rolling my brain BACK to the imagination and innovation track. I can do it, but it is energetically costly, and often still leaves gaps. Hiring out that part of the process to people who love it and excel in that talent zone is a collaborative creative step, supports economic business relationships, and benefits us both. (Again, dependent upon my time and budgets) I do what I can and keep moving forward—because there are worlds to be built. Do I have a high bar for the editors I work with because of that need to cover that function? You bet I do. I have a very high bar because they are covering my naked backside. But they are still people, and people will make mistakes too. In the meantime, I invite readers and followers to make themselves comfortable with their own levels of perfection, and how that sits with their worldview and needs. Because someone else’s relationship with perfection and the context of the perception of perfection is really none of my business. The Discovery ProcessI’m 100% convinced we are all creative. We are, however, taught to create only within an acceptable framework of expression. For lack of terms I’ll say, pink thinking and expression, which we say socially is the “literary” or “factual” intellectual creative expression. This is also a metric associated with the standard IQ test, and other scoring methods I believe often lack an emotional context. But there’s another creative expression I’ll call salmon. Pink and salmon can look an awful lot alike—but one is socially acceptable and the other is not. One is considered to be industrial and intellectual, and the other is not. Salmon is considered to be too emotional, too conversational, loose—in other words, too human. This is why AI is a tinder box. It is being trained primarily off of the human misconception that thoughtforms have a right or wrong communication patterning. AI is being built by engineers with moralistic, and/or containered concept management. This or that. I or other. We vs. They. Which requires discernment and then the application of context within an artform that is language, and language is also a moving breathing art of its very own. It also doesn’t factor in the socio-economic inequity between intellectual and emotional producers. To a large degree, the heavy-thinker creatives are either afforded time or finances to formal education, training and the time to process thoughts intellectually and into a streamlined format. Whereas the emotional creatives, are to a large degree, living in survival mode (financially or conditionally) which is a feeling place of creative expression. Innovation takes place in both hemispheres of the brain and both those different human lived experiences, but access to financial resources does impact the form of expression and the functional delivery of that idea. Having the TIME to sit, process, analyze is a class benefit. To have the time and wealth to be able to study, practice, and formalize a standard delivery method is a luxury. To inhibit ideas that aren’t disseminated through that method of procurement and process is a form of class warfare. Hunger can make you try harder, fight harder, and strive—but if it leads to malnutrition, exhaustion, and burnout, it will lower intelligence levels and cognitive functions. Poverty can make one exceptionally creative, or entirely overlooked despite that creativity. Simply by the measure of unconscious bias and perceptions taken out of context. The differences in brains, life experience, pink or salmon expressions (among all the other variances), craft and infinite human diversities is why art is such a kaleidoscope of beautiful possibility. These variations allow a taste of something for everyone. Any personal taste can be satisfied by any number of expressions. Creatives, especially non-linear brained creatives, are often shamed so hard by standardized measures of acceptable intellect or conditioned measures, they give up trying altogether on their emotionally aware artforms and never move beyond the rudimentary stages of their creative containments. Shame is the ceiling applied by the process monitors or early-stage gate keepers. (back to the discussion of farmable energy in previous post) This in turn forces salmon creatives to adapt to pink protocols to be taken seriously or admitted into the room. This can look a lot like “doing time” “paying dues” “running the ropes” and various training-into-ideal-form processes for stackable containment. Ironically, then they spend the greater portion of their editorial process and notes and feedback from the same gatekeepers trying to re-inject the salmon nutrients back into their work after over-intellectualizing the creative process into stale confinements that critically undermined the emotional concepts and character arcs and altered the original voice. All that “find your author voice” bullshit? What they really mean by that is, “re-find your voice.” They mean go back to who you were as a creative before you were conditioned. The mistake publishers, gatekeepers, and even audience members make with regard to content is in the assumption of intellect by comparing salmon to a pink measuring tape. Cool if that fits the mandate of what a publisher or company is looking for specifically. But occasionally, when they aren’t actively attempting to apply that rigor, they take on something that is human, emotional, loose, and it hits an open audience target with so much force it goes instantly viral, mega, because it had not been distilled three times unto death but has only been brewed. Then that publisher, studio, industry spends a decade attempting to copy that success, when all they need to do is open the net a little wider and broaden their scope. Big publishing and entertainment studios want hits. They want acclaim. They want to participate in world and cultural development. They want profit. Like, as do we all to some measure or another. The commonly applied scale of audience base intellect vs emotional intelligence is, I believe, a total mystery to the large companies so removed from their core market purchasers. They don’t know what the audience wants anymore. They’ve rarely had an honest sit-down with a subscriber or reader. They certainly don’t want to be perceived as un-intellectual, or low class as they call it (classism), uneducated, or ignorant, or sloppy. Who wants to be judged in such a way? As the salmon creatives are often, not always but often, falling within the realm of emotionally creative and/or non-linear minds, they can have superpowers in areas of world building, character connection and reference. They can connect disparate lines of logic an intellectual would never notice. They can recognize a pattern or probability far in advance of the immediate, obvious data and re-calculate to hit that far out target with better precision than the average intellectual with near vision, hyper detailed visibility. They can see scope and scale beyond standard implementation, imagine probabilities in realms that have not even broken ground yet in plausible reality and so on, but they can also be lacking in formal protocol or what may seem like “educated” practice. I know a great many salmon creatives with brilliant ideas, human stories…and terrible formal execution. They often die on the cross of industry aspersions (see what I did there? Lol!), their creative impulses withered and crushed. Their work, however, was and is--exceptionally creative, imaginative and rare. They were just swimming up the wrong river. That is not to say execution, tradition, audience standardized expectations of articulate accuracy and formal presentation are invalid or unnecessary. No, it’s already part of our socially conditioned expectation. IT HAS A PLACE in the dialog, just not a final say in the overall story. Pink creatives, the hyper-intellectuals are just as magnificent as their salmony counterparts. The methods used are just as wonderful, specific, and detailed as you could hope for. Without their meticulous accuracy—there would be typos galore in the literary world. There is no this or that in this conversation, it’s an invitation to teamwork. What I’m saying is that content submissions should open the target zone with some scalability and with respect to ideas, concepts, and the spirit of the art. The spectrum between intellectual intelligence and emotional intelligence should be hitting within a range of discovery and only then should the form and function measure be applied as a cleanup tool for audience expectation and clarity of delivery. There will still be cracks in that system. There will still be errors, disappointments, failures. There will still be humans with judgments and critiques, and complaints. Perfection is a myth. Just do your best. **See above four-step guide to processing criticism. Submissions to Elder Glade PublishingThe plan was to release this information next month, after it had a chance to go through the EGP side of the release process with an editor—but under the circumstances…. This open casting call is for authors and creators for July 2024 submissions to Elder Glade Publishing. Our submission process will be through webforms, because first and foremost, we are looking for ideas, concepts and tones—and the creatives who will build them with us. We are looking for creators for Storyverse builds. (More on Storyverse later)The idea is, we are not looking for perfect delivery, exceptional sentence structure, formally educated spelling and punctuation—we are looking for creators with flex, imagination, and a creative force that’s uncontained (not stuck in a stackable container). We’re not rejecting content because the font isn’t standard, or the format isn’t industry snuff. If the submission concept falls into the mandate we’re ready to build out, and does not compete with any active projects we have in the pipeline, then we’ll request a manuscript, script, or content cube. When that happens, yes, we’ll be evaluating some formal ability to a degree, and the skillset to take feedback, work as a team and show up to the table. Precision accuracy of sentence structure and spelling is not the end all be all in the decision-making process… that’s what editors are for. Can you communicate your goal well enough to be a builder? Do you have a novel, script or plan that will entertain and show your imagination? Please stop by the Elder Glade Publishing submission portal in July. Formatting and submission policy. This will be clarified and released formally on the EGP site later.We are not asking for a synopsis or query letter, because we understand the linear skillsets of those submission devices are a fully different level than the creative work itself. Query letters and synopses are for measuring how tight and succinctly a writer can deliver an idea while also selling themselves as an individual—which is usually not an accurate yardstick of a successfully imaginative IP. It can be, but not always.
You might be a shitty speller. I know I am. You might think of yourself as a hack. Some days I think I’m a hack, too. Know what? I still submitted my work, I still tried. I wasn’t a fit for anyone, and that’s okay by me because I love what I do. It doesn’t stop me from building, creating, loving or living—if anything it just helped me understand that there are probably a lot more people like me than not. Maybe even with similar challenges to the creative process. So rather than continuing to smash my face against a system, I figured I’d just go around it, chop some bramble to make a trail and shoot up a flare for anyone looking for an alternate pathway. Maybe we’re headed the same direction? Worth a shot, right? If you made it to the end of this epically long tale, then I salute you, my creative friend. And I look forward to seeing you around as we continue to build out the new pathways. Sincerely, Athena
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Winter solstice blessings brought a bounty of beautiful beginnings on the development front. It looks as though 2024 might be like gunning for a merge window onto a crowded, speeding freeway. I’m down for it! Okeydokey.
Settle coffee mug in the holster. Tighten seat belt. Check blind spot. Eyeball timing. Focus. Mash the gas. The last week of December has been a mad dash of pushing out emails and swiping everything off my desk to reset the flow for upcoming volume. Yes, I had hoped to have a nice quiet winter of reboot and novel writing, but timing being what it is, Tangle of Mermaids might have to take the back burner for a minute or two. That’s the speed up or slow down process of merging. Thankfully, the last few months of 2023 have been relatively tame so I’ve been able to get real sleep, and reorient to priorities. You heard it here first… I am coming out of the woods. It’s a long story. It’s all good. Good reasons. Happy reasons. Healthy reasons. It’s time. More details on all that to come. Don’t worry—I’m quite happy to start making steps back out into the real world, towing a wagon full of work created over the seven years I’ve been sitting out here in the wilderness. Seven years of building and stashing writing, ideas, concepts and planning models. Now it’s time to put it in the chute. I’m always charmed by folks who are curious about my last seven years alone in the wild. When I say, “I needed to be alone to able to hear myself think, so I could get work done uninterrupted.” Most creatives immediately understand. Then there are those extroverts in the room who visibly shudder. It’s equally amusing when I explain my corporate background, or work history which runs parallel to my writing life. Are you a business developer? Or a creative? Who says they aren’t the same thing? Molecular genetics. Regulatory and Compliance. Director of Finance. R&D. Project Management. Commercial loan auditor. Document Control and Database Management. And finally, owner and operator of a small business development firm, and a publishing label. (and waiting tables in between as needed) All of my former corporate jobs have run on the same creative matrices as my writing and art—yes, even the jobs in finance and molecular genetics. Which means, thankfully, I happen to be one of those lucky artists who can build a budget, read a balance sheet, manage a team, run my own PMP, and build a contract from scratch. Do I enjoy it? Actually, yes. I adore performing those functions. I still think pivot tables are the playthings of Satan, but I handle them just fine. Business development and Storyverse Construction are actually VERY similar. They run on a hierarchy of constructs, with gears and levers. Business functions such as auditing commercial loan files for internal cohesion and consistency for clients gives my left brain something to chew on while my right brain takes a break from writing and story craft. When people ask me how I relax in the evening, I honestly tell them, “I perform internal reviews on multi-million-dollar conglomerate loan packages and file indexing reports while listening to my favorite popcorn astrology podcasts… What do you do to relax in the evening?” Everyone needs a hobby… preferably one that pays well, and only requires a few hours at a time. Then I save my artistic mind, the build energy for story craft and world building—and because there is no pressure to make my art pay me what I want to be comfortable, I’m able to make creative decisions that are uncompromising, riskier, and which produce higher yield--at least for me--in the emotional fulfillment department. Thus, my HOBBY life as consultant PAYS FOR MY REAL JOB as a creator. All if which I do from the middle of nowhere in the backwater woods of Oregon. I hope that makes sense. It seems to be confusing at meetings. People seem to be flummoxed by my background on the regular. A young exec in a meeting said, “The target margin for a cost-plus model is on the budget sheet. You just stick to the writing. Artists can’t really handle the numbers anyway.…” My old financial aid boss would be laughing her ass off at this right now. I was legitimately taken aback. My brain was processing quickly trying to decide if he’d intended to be so careless, or if he was young and possibly embarrassed to not know the answer to the question, or if he was trying to obfuscate and hide figures because he wanted to end the meeting early.” “I dunno… I guess you could just try me on the budget sheet. I might surprise you.” “Budget sheets take years to understand.” He said curtly. Oh, pookey. It’s about to get really uncomfortable for you. “Maybe not years, but with a little focus, they make sense. I’ve seen a show budget and schedule before. Every industry has different terms, but money is ALWAYS money—every industry still answers to the SUM. Whether you’re in banking, or entertainment—everything runs on the bottom line. Is your budget exportable? I have Excel or I can do a Google doc, whichever you prefer. Or do you just want to share your screen?” I could tell he felt like I had somehow betrayed him. I wasn’t just a novelist from under a bridge somewhere in the hinterlands—it showed on his face that I’d been the asshole tricking HIM this whole time. How dare I? “I thought you were an artist.” “Worse. I’m an artist who understands the business side of making a creative living. There’s no shame in ethical profit—so I make money. Then when I want my art to make money, I ask for it to do that, too.” Anywhoo, it is what it is. When you look like a dumpy gnome that just crawled out of a hole, all mossy-haired and yellow toothed, and step into a room to sell a script--assumptions will be made. It’s the nature of humans to quantify or judge quickly in order to navigate social expectations. So, I guess some smile brightener, hair dye and a freshen up on the wardrobe will help a little in this regard. I mean, it’s been a minute since I’ve had to be presentable. Like, seven years kinda minute. Long story short, too late, this is to say that coming out of the woods and back to society means bringing ALL previous experiences to the high-speed merge. I mean, lesson learned, I’ll clean up a bit first to assist with the being presentable and believable. I also provided my new agent with my corporate resume to help alleviate any confusion about my work experience running alongside my creative world building and writing experience when she’s making introductions or connections. Hopefully that will help some. There’s not a lot that can be done about taking meetings in an industry where folks seem to be eager to be seen, but not to see. Eager to be heard, but not to listen. Desperate to reach, but not to be touched. Hopefully, this next part of housing the IPs will be quick and easy and we’ll be on to assembling the teams in no time at all. Because I WOULD LOVE to see people, talent, builders and creators in their most authentic and creative selves. I would dearly love to hear them, learn them, discover who they are and how they work—then invite them to come play in these amazing sandboxes being built for The Pillars of Dawn and The Life Erotic. I can’t think of anything right now that would bring me more joy than to be able to see, hear, learn and reach for those creative geniuses who want to build. So, I can’t even be mad at the kid about the budget. He knows what he knows. He’d been conditioned how he’s been conditioned. Though my crinkly Grinch heart felt for him. Being disabused of one’s illusions can be a rough kind of day. It just makes me more determined, I guess, to find those unicorns in the Hollywild that want to see, hear, and be welcomed. But first things first. Settle coffee mug in the holster. Tighten seat belt. Check blind spot. Eyeball timing. Focus. May your 2024 be filled with all the joy and magic of your wildest dreams. See you on the other side. Xo Athena Holy moly, I had no idea I was going to have such a great time explaining Storyverse construction! I could do this all day long and still never run out of breath. World builders unite! Yes, please sign me up for more workshops!
The joy of working in storyverse modeling is the ability to blow out huge section of lore, lay timelines, and stack constructs to up to the eyeballs—then watch a well-developed character ping around the universe like a pinball activating more stories and off-shoots as they go. The key is in the stackable constructs. Layering hierarchy is a laborious process in the beginning, because a fictional hierarchy of constructs is not always the same as our human/real world hierarchy. However, sometimes the most common constructs of our current world are pulled laterally into the storyverse build… we can’t help it. I do it all the time. Good examples of this are all the isms. If it’s an ism in this world, think twice, maybe even three times, before it becomes a copy & paste construct into your storyverse. For sure, some is good. It helps keep things relatable and “recognizable” to a majority audience, but too many duplicate or pull-through constructs and you’re not in genre fiction anymore. In the end, as I’m explaining, diagraming, and building out POD for others to follow along— we get to drift through layers of constructs, activate gears and levels, toggle timelines and kick the tires. It’s been a blast! Ideally, a well-built storyverse is a playground, a park full of instruments, tools, toys, and playground equipment that has a solid fence (guardrail) and a chaperone. Then, when that area is mapped, and all the exploratory creative equipment has been laid out, it’s a handoff to the next teams who will be developing scripts (streaming and film), graphic novels, games and more. The trans-media side of the development plans cannot happen if we’re not all working with the same core engines, storyverse laws, and guardrails. But once they get all that, and can speak the language comfortably—I get to pop off and have a margarita and let the kids play. Okay, two margaritas. Anywhoo, testing out the workbook pages, and the diagrams on people has been a wonderful experience. It’s not lost on me how lucky I am to be able to build out these worlds for others to play in. As 2023 wraps and 2024 looms, I’m just sitting in my feels that others are able to get in and play in the universes for POD and TLE and that these imaginary realms will not be alone with me any longer. Finally… they are going home to audiences where they belong. My winter writing season is half over already. Let’s be honest, I used some of that time to catch up on rest and getting organized, only to realize—I’m still far from being as organized as I’d like.
The updates are as so: The Pillars of Dawn streaming adaptation comes to life more each day! The hardest part of the adaptation process so far is not being able to share the bigger breakthroughs. I am allowed to say, and I’m proud to do so, that all but two reader/fan requests were heard and answered with regard to casting suggestions and desires for the series. That is not to say that most of those performers and writers were interested in attachment, no. BUT I can say with pleasure they/agents were all contacted with the exception of two as they had no agent or manager to reach. What a privilege to be able to live in a time as an author wherein the ability to reach out and invite collaborators from the very hearts and minds of readers who enjoyed the books and envisioned certain performers in the parts. I can’t even express how grateful I am that we got to do that. It never hurts to ask, and it was such an honor to do so. Any unfilled attachments will likely be studio or producer picks. Although, I reserve the right to send a few more out as inspiration strikes. I have dearly enjoyed this part of the process. Meeting new people, speaking with performers and creatives from all over the world has been such a wonderful surprise. So deeply fulfilling. I’ve learned so much from agents, managers, and executives at all levels. The next stage is a total mystery. I have no frame of reference for what happens next in adaptation, but I hope you’ll stay tuned to discover it with me. The wild ride continues! Welcome to The Pillars of Dawn adaptation chronicles. I’ll be updating and documenting the adaptation process in this category over the coming months. Secondly: BOOKS! BOOKS! BOOKS! I’m in the process of finalizing The Pillars of Dawn refurbishment and relaunch for Sinnet of Dragons, Murder of Crows, and Scold of Jays. The editing and proofing team is coming together, and the story development group who will take over the wiki development is poised to receive all the Rubber Maid tubs and external hard drives from my worldbuilding stock as soon as we have a formal team decision. Some big decisions still need to be made in the refurb process to align certain areas of the arcs and timeline to match slightly better with the streaming adaptation. This is only possible because I haven’t mass distributed before and the books are still being cleaned and repackaged for relaunch. The most notable of these changes is pulling the first five chapters off Plague of Gargoyles and adding it to the end of the Scold of Jays relaunch, so the series will have matching season and book endings. I’m still sitting on the fence about it—as it would require readers to repurchase Scold of Jays and that doesn’t sit well with me. So, meetings on the issue will continue. This transition phase is messy. Most of the details and world building are currently in my brain- getting everyone on the same page, same timeline, same agenda/budget schedule/expectation is almost entirely dependent on extracting canon and pushing content out of my head onto a shared network which is also dependent on funding and an agile project management workflow. From the wiki world build we will be able to hand off to producers and studios the full Muse-verse. All of it. It’s been in my head for so long, I didn’t realize how massive the world had gotten until I had to start teasing out the threads, sub-threads, and spinoff channels. Also, the game developers and other transmedia developed content will stem from that formal knowledge database. Some days I sit in front of the screen to transcribe old notes from the tubs for the drobox and I’m instantly exhausted. Twenty years of notes… where do I even start? Yet, it needs to be done, so, coffee. Which brings me to worldbuilding. WORLDBUILDING!! This is one of my favorite parts of IP development. The adaptation has been an interesting challenge in that, there are few reliable IP adaptation sources for reference. At least not that I’ve found or that I trust. There are dozens of great worldbuilding guides and tools, but few of those take and existing franchise and convert it to transmedia functionality with team developmental support. So, after an exhaustive tool search and several meetings with providers—I settled on my choice of platform, which will be a hybrid and mostly developed by myself and my group as we go. That said, I made the decision to release some of the forms and processes as we go for anyone else out there who is struggling with taking a cumbersomely large IP and extensive world build and streamlining/packaging it for transmedia development. Maybe it will help someone else, because hell’s bells, I would have loved to have been walked through this earlier in my career or set up with growth tools a decade prior to this point. The parts I’m most excited about are the world constructs AND the exportable character maps for performer packages. World constructs are a given, and used in multiple adaption platforms. So, that’s not new. But being able to build out a performer package for each character is huge. I’m so stoked about this. Giddy with new tools to support crews, designers, and performers! During the attachment process, there wasn’t much I was really allowed to say to prospective performers about the arcs of their characters without giving away spoilers. A standard handoff to a performer might include a set of attributes or characteristics/movement/motivations yadda yadda. BUT a character map export handoff allows the stages of a character’s development to be arced, broken into relationship interactions and sectioned into development stages and parceled out to a performer based on stages of production and publication, etc. It is a meatier glimpse into their background with extra tools and goodies the public might not know—while still protecting their future development and allowing a production team to control reveals, mitigate leaks, as well as allow performers to live more in the moment of the scene rather than the ending they know is coming. It's controversial. Some folks are fully against the tool while others think it’s amazing. The plan is to build it in—and let the production team decide how to use it. There if they want it, but they don’t have to use it. In the end, I hope the adaptation process made a bit more public will help others with their projects too. If you’re in the midst of building out an IP adaptation, follow this space for news and tools. Have a fantastic 2023! I hope this year sets you all up for grand new adventures and an embarrassment of rich blessings. |
AuthorAthena lives and writes in the Siuslaw Forest, Oregon. Archives
March 2024
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