Making a Graphic Novel - The Charlie Way : Part III

Hey, everyone.

We're in the home stretch now.

So, I had finished the book. I had my good friend Kenny to proofread it. After fixing some grammatical errors, I decided to also clean up the art a bit. I had decided to do a simplistic look to the graphic novel, but I still felt that the art looked a little sloppy and rushed. So I got an idea, which happens from time to time.

I had bought a tablet in August. It has a drawing program on it, so I took a leap to see if I could make changes to the book with it.

I scanned all the pages, and whited out mistakes (smooshed up words, crooked lines, and other nitpicky stuffl) on the computer. Then I saved the pages onto my USB drive, and backed them up on Dropbox. Then, I would open up a page in the drawing program and make the corrections.

While I was at it, I decided to do some real nitpicky changes, like filling in black areas, that was hard to do on paper at such a small size. For example, I drew the eyes as black circles, but tey didn't come out completely black because I was using a fine point pen. I was able to fill them in completely with the stylus on my tablet. This also applied to black ties, which all the guys in the story wore (told you I kept things simplistic). After I was finished with all the changes, I saved the new pages onto my USB drive, combined them into one big file, and printed it out.

I gave the proof to Kenny, who said it looked good. I should also mention that somewhere in all this, I asked for feedback from my ex-wife (yet still good friend) Diana, my college buddy Mat, my oldest friend Phil, and my therapist Carol, all of whom gave me the constructive criticism needed to make the book the best I felt it could be.

By this point, it was late December. The book was done! (Or so I thought; more on that later.)

I got up the nerve to send it to a publisher. I looked for one I thought would be the best fit. I typed up a letter introducing myself and my work, put it and a copy of the book in an envelope, and mailed it off.  Within two weeks, I got a nice rejection email. My first rejection! Not everyone gets that far.

The rejection didn't deter me. The next step was to look into self-publishing.

Tomorrow: the final act!

Later.

-Charlie

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