The Art of the Pivot

Part 27

Photo by Erik Mclean on Unsplash

When in doubt, write.

A few posts ago I made the claim that my next Kickstarter campaign would be my most ambitious yet. That I’d release books on a monthly schedule for three months. There would be a $10,000 goal, a collector’s box, and special deluxe editions. And now…

I think I changed my mind.

Since then, I’ve:

• Stayed up well past my already too late bedtime to write (I’m tired)

• Lettered zero pages (I lettered 12 between Christmas and New Year’s Eve)

• Made one order for rewards for the campaign (I like how they turned out)

• Tested a t-shirt design (it was cool)

• Had little to no enjoyment of ANY of it other than the writing

Woe is me, right? Trust me I’m not pushing this out there for sympathy, just to say I was quickly reminded why I burnt out last year:

I don’t really want to sell comic books. I want to write. I want to explore.

I want to tell a story.

I want the validation, too.

I want this story out in the world so badly, but not just for the stake storytelling. I want the validation- of my peers, of pulling in over 5 figures in funding, of being like “the other” Kickstarter comic creators. That’s why I wanted this upcoming campaign to be so grandiose. Do I need the money to create more comics?

Abso-fuckin-lutely.

I don’t have the discretionary funds to spend frivolously on Ennead anymore. I can’t move forward without pre-sales or Kickstarter funding. So I have to wait… and that’s a good thing. Rushing this project out would’ve been a massive mistake.

So now what?

Things will continue as they were, but I am not going to force myself to have a 3 book, $10,000 campaign. I might do that. I might not. There is nothing wrong with a 1 book, $3,000 campaign, followed by another, followed by another. So I am going to delay my launch until all 3 books are colored, lettered, and covered. All of which is well underway and will be completed soon.

I’ve got lots planned here on Substack (including a name change, see you Wednesday for that) and that doesn’t require much money at all, so this is where the majority of my focus is going for the foreseeable future.

I will finish The Rule of Nine.

Too much of Amashik’s past has led to these events and too much of its future depends on them. But I cannot operate like I did when I first introduced Ennead and I’m grateful that I discovered that before I hit the launch button. This isn’t the end of the comic by any means; this is just me recognizing that I was about to take a huge risk- launch a large campaign and fail, or even worse, succeed and then be on the hook for a fulfillment process that would’ve driven me and my family insane.

Book 8 is done. I’m just waiting on the cover. Who knows, maybe I’ll restructure the campaign page to meet the needs of a much smaller, singularly focused, project and hit launch in a couple of weeks. Or maybe I won’t. I told myself I was done making promises and then I went ahead and made one.

Promises as a marketing strategy.

This is a fatal flaw I suffer from. And I think a lot of other indies do as well. We know we want to deliver on them and we know we can, so we say it out loud in hopes of getting our fans and followers of our work excited. It’s a silly thing to admit, but it’s true. I’ve done it a handful of times and it’s worked wonders. But I don’t have the space, the time, or the energy to operate under that kind of pressure and I know that now.

So here is where I’ll leave you on this lovely Sunday. To contemplate, to ask questions, or to ignore where Ennead: The Rule of Nine goes from here. Because anything more than a “I’m not really sure” feels an awful lot like another empty promise.

JL