Mental stages of creating a manga

 

A piece from my last manga

 

I am at the last stage of finishing up my last manga for the year (at my school we have to write two each year) and I am probably further ahead than anyone!

I made sure to get this one approved as quickly as possible and then get to this last stage as quickly as possible and now I am far ahead compared to many people. There are still people that haven't even finished their first manga for the year and I really do wonder how it will go for those guys.

If you don't finish 2 mangas before the 20th of December you will not be allowed to graduate, which means you kinda spent 2 years on this education for nothing!

Anyway, that is not what I am here to talk about. I was thinking the other day about how much I hate my manga and wish that I never had to lay eyes on it again. Which is weird because when I came up with the idea for this manga I thought it was going to be my best one so far and that it was a great story (even though it's very short).

That is also what I tought about all my previous mangas (except for the first one cause I never really liked that one)! For all my mangas I really loved the plot in the beginning and was really excited to draw it, but somewhere halfway I just started hating it, thinking "This is the worst crap ever why did I write this? I should have gone with this story instead!". Why do I have this recurring patterns for all my mangas? I wonder if it's because they really are bad or just because I got tired of it.

One of our teachers said that you write manga you have to be fast, especially if you are writing comedy, because "neta ga kusaru" which means "the story will begin to rot". So if you write a joke in your manga and you think it is the most awesome thing ever, just wait a little bit when you have been around that joke for a while and you will wonder why you ever wrote something that dumb in the first place.

I suppose even if it's not comedy, a story will begin to rot if you stick around it for too long. But I still think it is odd, since I've written many novels and never had this problem.
Maybe it is because when it comes to manga, I also have to look at my own characters and see the reality of how my drawings turned out, and they never turn out as good as hoped.
When I look at the drawings in my manga I feel like I've failed, because this is not an acceptable level for a real manga: Granted I am not trying to sell my manga or anything, but still. We all want to feel that we have created something great, so when you see that it's not turning out great you want to quit.

Now I am at the last stage, just a little more and I will be done, and hopefully this will be my best manga so far, even if I hate it.

Don't wanna work!

Hello there! This post has nothing to do with Japan, it is just gonna be me talking about my future!

Here is the basic gist: I don't wanna grow up! I don't want to have a job where I have to wake up at 7am (or earlier) and be at work at 8, and do not get to leave until atleast 9 hours have gone by. Plus, there might even be some overtime in there, eh.

This is not the kinda future I want. A future where you work 8+ hours a day 5 days a week, with only a 5 to 6 weeks holiday each year. Think about it if you could choose would you choose a life like that?

When I come back to Sweden I want to study something to do with programming and I think I found just the program for me. It is not at the university I first wanted to go to, but it is still a program at one of the top uni's in Sweden.

Thing is, I do not really want to study programming just for finding a job, I wanna study it because it seems like a lot of fun and I want to be able to make my own little games in the future.
Buuuut of course if you study programming (well, software engineering, really, but let's just call it programming) that is what you are going to be working with in the future, right? There are loads of programming jobs and the salary is quite good!

Yes, working with programming seems like it could be lots of fun but it really depends on the company. One company may work with programming for wheel chairs (like where my dad works) while another creates games. The chance that you will get to work in a gaming company though seems pretty low. Everyone wants to work there! (I think?)

Anyway, with programming it doesn't really matter where you work, you will probably have to work overtime. Not always, but if there is a product supposed to be delivered at a certain time you have to pull through and get it finished or else you have failed the customer and the company you work for. Therefore - overtime!

I don't want to work overtime.

Even now, going to school here in Japan where I only have six hours of school every day, I come home some time before 17.30 and more often than not there are a lot of things I need to do, cooking and cleaning and homework etc. I have barely no free-time left to just do what I want to and it really gets to me sometimes. I think about my future and how I don't want it to be but there really is nothing to be done...

What I can hope for is a job that is so much fun that it doesn't even feel like work. But how can I know what such a job would be when I don't even know what I want to work with in the future?

So for now I am really looking forward to going to university, but dreading working life.
Sorry for complaining, haha.

Teachers wise words?

It was last week or something that all the students in our class had a one on one chat with the teacher about their grades. When it was my turn I first got shown my grades and stuff and my teacher asked me how I liked school and so on.

Then he went on to small talk and asked me "you don't drink, right?" and I said that I don't. My teacher said that when he was around 20 like me he didn't drink that much either, but now he wouldn't be able to live without alcohol. "Nai to muri" he said, lol.

"So maybe that will change for you too" he said, and I smiled and said yeaa maybeeee...

So he thinks that I will probably start drinking and then when I am 40+ like him I too will not be able to live without alcohol?

I guess he didn't realized how sad what he said sounds! Who wants to end up like that? Saying something like that just makes me wanna keep away from alcohol even more. Don't wanna end up feeling like I need alcohol to keep going, that just seems like a very sad life.

Cat Island Ainoshima in Fukuoka, Japan

Last month I went on a small trip to Fukuoka, and on the last day I went to Ainoshima, which is the cat island of Fukuoka!

I have always wanted to go to a cat island and I didn't even know there was one near Fukuoka, so good thing I checked right before leaving.

I had totally forgotten how awesome just hanging out with cats is! It was the best day of the trip and the best day I've had in a long time. Just sitting down anywhere you want, with a bunch of cuddly cats around you, is something I truly wish would be possible in my daily life.

Even though being with cats is pretty much the only thing you can do on this island, it is more than enough. The time went by so fast before I suddenly had to leave all my new friends, and for days all I could think about was cats, haha.

I had a great time on the island, and even though I didn't bring food with me there were several cats that seemed happy with just attention and cuddles. One kitten even slept in my lap for a while.

Some of the cats look sick, and some are really skinny, but there are still many that are in quite a good shape for strays. Still, if you are like me, you will probably feel bad for the cats and want to take them all home with you anyway! 

One thing good to know is that the people who live on the island seem to like the cats, I saw a fisherman sitting by the port fishing, petting a stray cat next to him. It looked like a really nice moment.

There were some tourists there, but it was certainly not crowded. Most of the time I was alone with a few cats at a time, so you don't have to wait for your turn to pet them etc most of the time.

All in all, had a great time, wanna go again. Time for pics:

This one was my first cuddle-buddy! Haha

I decided to walk around the island, but I don't really recommend it, there was nothing to see (then again I didn't have a map) and I felt like I missed quality time with the cats from this trip.

This snot faced skinny baby was super tiny, but really cuddly and playful. Wish I could've taken it home with me..

What it takes to succeed!

Yello, humans!
This post is kinda about my procrastination again and doesn't really have anything to do with Japan but, w.e. My boring blog, my boring posts.

I've always been looking for ways to help me learn the things I wanna learn in the most effortless way possible. I thought that if I had a piano teacher I would get better at playing the piano a lot faster (because that is what happened in Sweden when I took guitarlessons). But when that didn't really happen with my first piano teacher, I thought that that teacher might not be for me. That she wasn't really teaching me the things I wanted to learn.

So when I got this new piano teacher who is really good (my old one was good too ofc) I thought: Yea, now I will finally learn what I wanted to learn for so long! (which is to read sheet music btw)
But so far, I am still at the same stage I was when I first started the lessons. I can't play the piano, I can't read sheet music. I can't do anything. And then I log onto facebook and see a guy I know has put up yet another piano video, like he does like every other day. And he is teaching himself!

I'm pretty sure he started around the same time I did, but has gone so much further than me. Why?

How come I am not improving at all even though I got this new teacher and have been taking lessons for atleast a year now? Weeeeeeeellllll, my friend (talking to you myself!) you are lacking the DORYOKU!

I have just realized that to succeed at anything you need to make an effort, and I am not really making an effort, am I? I go to my lessons 2 times a month and as of right now I probably only practice playing at home like 3 times between every lesson. And when I do practice it is only for a short period of time, and then I forget all about it.

It's like this with everything I do right now, I don't ever go out of my way to do more than the bare minimum of what I have to. I only need to practice these three parts for my next lesson? I don't even need to know them by heart? Well then I guess I only need to practice for 20 minutes today!

It doesn't matter what you use to learn something, if it is with a teacher or by yourself, by watching youtube videos about it or reading about it. It doesn't make any difference in your learning! All that matters is how much effort you are actually putting into what you want to learn.
Just doing the bare minimum will get you nowhere.

It's the same with manga, and that's why I wont become a mangaka. At school we were told that you don't become a mangaka by creating one manga a year, you become one by creating atleast four times more than that, on a consistent basis. That's how you show the publishers you mean business, you wont give in under pressure and you got what it takes. Effort is how you show that you want something, and that is how you get something in return.

So far I've gotten nothing, nowhere. And I'm the only one to blame for that.

pic from google

Random quitters in my class

Our school started again after the holiday on the 1st of September and already 2 more people in my class have quit. The weird thing this time though is that both these people were not slackers, they came to class on time and did not skip a lot.

But after the summer holiday one of them just didn't show up at all for all this time, and when I asked another classmate about it they just said it had something to do with youtube and collabs and that they didn't know or couldn't tell me anything else. Now this person has quit school, and they left our class group chat on Line without saying a word.

The other person who quit had been coming to school as usual and just sent a message on Line yesterday that they would quit school because of something concerning their faimly situation, and then they just left the chat.

This all just seems very weird to me, especially since they have been paying for this education for 1.5 years and now only have 6 months left until graduation and their diploma (or w.e it is you get). Now all that money will basically have been wasted. Then again, I don't know if a certificate of having graduated with manga as your main subject would give a lot of jobs, but still.

Procrastination strikes, and it strikes hard!

I have been drawing manga while watching "Supergirl" since I got home from school today, so now I really have to do something else and that is why I am here! Writing yet another post!

I am a person who likes to be very organized and I always make lists of things to try and keep track on what I need to do every day. I also make lists that I then totally ignore, until I make a new very similar list and ignore that too.
These are the lists that contain things I wanna do/learn during my freetime that I do not have to do, no one is forcing me to do them and there is no set goal or deadline.
In fact, this blog is yet another list, for me to look back on in the future! Ok, here goes:

Things I wanna learn/other things I wanna do:

1. Learn how to program in Java - not sure what I wanna learn but I'd like to make some games.

2. Learn more about webdesign such as HTML and CSS to finally be good enough to make beautiful, interactive websites by myself.

2,5. Learn other languages related to web programming like Javascript, MySQL, XML, etc etc

3. Start writing books again and finish writing a full book that might eventually be good enough to get published.

4. Learn how to play the piano

5. Finish all the drawings/paintings I started.

6. "Working out" (just to counteract future backproblems caused by drawing/sitting infront of the computer so much)

7. Read more books

ETC ETC

The list goes on but right now it's number 1, 3 and 4 that I would like to do on pretty much a daily basis. But what do I do instead? YOUTUBE! I watch youtube videos!! When I am not doing schoolwork I am watching videos on youtube as well as movies on other sites and it's taking away all my time.

When I actually do some of the things on my list I give minimum effort, and most likely wont stick to it for even an hour a day and I'm honestly fed up with what I am doing with my life! Why can't I just make an effort?? Why can't I be as diligent with this as I am with my schoolwork when there is a deadline to keep?
Is it really so hard for me to focus on something that I need something like a teacher or employer to give me a serious deadline, or else I wont do anything?

I am sick of this, I am sick of myself and I wish writing this post would make something in me change, and get me on the path of productiveness, but I know it wont. I have already tried things like Leech Block and RescueTime etc, but there is always a way to get what you want (for example I can't block youtube on my tablet as far as I know cuz it's not in the browser!) and I cannot stay productive even with these countermeasures.

There is not really a point with this post, I just simply wanted to get this off my chest and say that I am really disappointed in myself right now..