February Update: Fashionably Early (Patreon)

Hey team! Figured I'd get February's update to you early, since there's a decent chance I'll be bottlenecked come the end of the month.

Protagony Continues

I super appreciate everybody's feedback on the rough cut of the first Protagony! I finished it before taking a long weekend in New York for a They Might Be Giants concert and some time with friends. ("Friends" may or may not have included Mike Rugnetta.) The trip gave me some distance from the video, and coming back to Boston and rewatching it and then reading all the feedback has given me a clearer view on it, and that's really valuable.

I agree with a lot of what you all said and think the chief issue is my self-imposed 5-minute time limit. Much as I thought it would be fun to work within that restriction, the solution to most of the problems with the video are simply "it's trying to say too much in too little time." When that's the problem, there are only two solutions: say less, or take more time.

I'm not one for cutting ideas I think are interesting, so I'm lifting the time restriction. It's still my goal that these videos be brief, and I don't want them to creep longer and longer like all my other series tend to do, so I may impose a time limit. But, first, I'm going to just revise, let the ideas breathe, and see how long things get.

I've already revised the script for the next Protagony along similar lines, and it pushed it from a little under 2 pages to a little under 3, and it feels much better. So the target going forward will probably be around there.

I've also begun writing the next Alt-Right Playbook! So, for the time being, I'm dipping in and out of all three videos: revising Protagony 1, editing Protagony 2, and writing The Alt-Right Playbook. It's kinda nice to keep things varied for a bit.

Passion Projects

I came to a realization recently, so I'm gonna float something by you. But just... ok, give me a little runway first...

One of the hardest parts of my job is shifting gears. I can get pretty singleminded when I'm working - it's caused some misalignment in my work/life balance - so when it comes time to switch from writing to illustrating, or from illustrating to editing, the transition is often very difficult. The first day of editing is usually a wash; I just bang my head against the timeline for hours on a hope and a prayer that I will get something done before the end of the day that will make it easier to start in the morning. Sometimes it takes two or three days of this before I shake off the writing or drawing phase and get into my editing groove.

And it dawned on me why my various passion/bonus projects keep stalling out: I don't think I can do creative work in the margins.

I've mentioned my side projects before: I owe you a podcast, I've been planning this fiction thing for a long time, and I recently started brainstorming a screenplay. And my plan has been to just peck away slowly at them on weekends and in free hours here and there. It seemed like a healthy way to explore other interests without taking too much attention from the channel.

But it hasn't been going well, and I think... I think I just don't work like that. It takes me a full day, if not more, to shift from writing to editing, and I'm trying to shift to a completely different project and back every weekend.

It's not that all work is infeasible, it's mostly the proper creative stuff. Things like note-taking, research, planning, outlining, and such aren't too difficult. But writing a story or a script or doing an interview take a kind of focus that I don't jump into and out of quickly.

If I wanted to really tackle any of these projects, I would need to properly devote attention to them. And, upon realizing this, I felt kind of defeated, because I can't afford to clear the schedule when none of these are YouTube projects and YouTube is what pays the bills.

But... I had an idea. And I want to float it to you.

Innuendo Studios Sabbatical?!?!

Okay, this is a weird idea, but hear me out:

First of all, this wouldn't be any time soon. I would want to get caught up on the videos I owe you and finish the main body of The Alt-Right Playbook, of which there are 5-6 videos remaining, depending on how the scripts shake out. I've ironed out a schedule where, if I don't blow any deadlines (which I often do...) I could have the main series complete before the election in November. There's still a lot of additional stuff, like "how to fight the Alt-Right" videos and some kind of conclusion and maybe another Endnote or two. But having the main body done by November is my hope.

Second, y'all wouldn't get charged for it. I would try raising enough money on another platform - GoFundMe, probably - to cover me for a few months and pause the Patreon during that time. I'd probably still write updates and whatnot, and anyone who wants to get in on that project can back the other campaign. But this is a Patreon for video essays, and I'm not gonna compel anyone to cover me going off on tangents.

Anyway... here's the pitch:

Maybe around the beginning of 2021, I would take four months off YouTube. I'd spend one month working on the podcast, one month writing the fiction project, and two months working on a script treatment for the screenplay. Each project would have its own private blog that people who back it on GoFundMe (or whatever) can access. I'd share all the work there, posting drafts, plot outlines, research notes, the whole shebang. They'd be chockablock with spoilers, too, so people'd have to decide whether they want to be surprised. But I'd pretty much take people on a tour of the nuts and bolts of doing things that I've never really done before.

And, after four months, I'd (hopefully) have some podcast episodes and a short story to send to my illustrators, so it would, in the long run, be #content for the main channel.

This is a fairly new idea, and I'm not entirely sure it's a good one. So I wanted to pitch it to all of you and see how you'd feel about it. It would mean a break from videos for a little while, but at least it would be a planned break, and you'd still have access to tons of my ramblings if you wanted it. :)

So what, ah... what do you think?

-I