I forgot to crosspost my November update from Patreon (in my defence, I was in Norway and then ill) so here is a mashup of November and December, wrapping up 2023 in one convenient post.
Book Stuff
I have finished an outline for the three remaining books of the series. This pass is just making very basic decisions about what gets included and what doesn’t, and roughly shaping the narrative so that I have a basic road map in place before getting creative. Cherry’s 600-page brick is actually quite lean when approached with this lens; I’m trying to let him make a lot of these decisions for me, but sometimes our priorities don’t really align and I’ve had to bring in other sources. Once this bullet-point list is done, then I go back over each section with my storytelling brain turned on, and go into greater narrative detail, so that when I write a script I only have to think about making a good script, and not structural matters. It’s a slow process, but it’s rewarding to feel that, after many months of chasing the whirlwind, I’m finally making forward progress on bringing books into the world.
Events
At the end of November, I made my first-ever trip to Oslo to speak at the 11th annual Roald Amundsen Memorial Lectures, a weekend of intense polar nerdery at the Fram Museum. Other speakers included scientists, explorers, filmmakers and musicians, all unified by a love of polar history, as well as a recreation of the celebratory dinner given for Amundsen on his successful return from the South Pole in 1912. It was a spectacularly good time, and highly recommended to anyone who might be inclined to go to that sort of thing in future. I will have to go back sometime to give the Fram Museum more dedicated attention, as the talks took up most of my time there and I hardly got to explore.
In December, I was supposed to have been a historical guest on a Zoom panel discussing Ralph Vaughan Williams’ Sinfonia Antarctica, which started life as the score to the 1948 film Scott of the Antarctic. However, too many of us were ill on the scheduled date, so it was deferred to January 15th. I will share the link, when it becomes available, over on Patreon; should a publicly-accessible recording be produced, I will share that here. The panel also includes Polar historiographer Anne Strathie, who will be bringing her expertise on Herbert Ponting and his photographs in particular, and two experts from the States, who will be approaching the material from a biographical and musical perspective, respectively.
An online event which did come off was being one half of the second keynote of Terror Camp, an online gathering that mashes up a fan convention and academic conference. The esteemed nonfiction-writer-turned-novelist Francis Spufford and I talked about writing Polar history, from two very different perspectives. It was excellent fun and seemed to have been received well; I don’t know if the recording is available to those who weren’t registered in advance for the event, but if you’re desperate to see it, it may be worth asking.
Media
I came back from Norway with a stack of books and one DVD. Being ill through the greater part of December gave me a chance to start tackling them, and I’ve written a bit about some of them on December’s Patreon Update, because there wasn’t much else to write. Feel free to nip over there if you’re curious; the post is, like all Updates, open to the public.
If you’d like to hear the guys you mostly only see in photos, you may appreciate this fine programme from the vaults of Radio New Zealand: https://www.ngataonga.org.nz/search-use-collection/search/28712/ It’s RNZ’s take on the 50th anniversary of the Expedition, including many clips from the parallel BBC programme for which my beloved tapes of Sir Charles Wright were recorded. This show also contains a good deal from Tom Clissold, who was living in New Zealand by then, and T. Griffith Taylor. Many thanks to the intrepid Allegra Rosenberg for finding this and bringing it to my attention.
Also hot off Allegra’s desk is the followup to Antarctic Lovebirds, looking at further communications between Atkinson and Pennell, and their lives post-Expedition. I challenge anyone not to be a little bit in love with these guys.
On Patreon
I’ve started doing themed months on Patreon. November’s theme was Scott’s Ponies, and saw the following posts (currently available to Patrons only):
The theme for December’s posts was Writing, which included:
- The Art of Adaptation
- The Master Timeline, Again
- Understanding the Characters
- The Shape Of The Rest Of The Series
There was also a secret post for the Paper Money tier, who get bonus behind-the-scenes features. The Writing theme will probably spill over into January a bit, but with one or two more visually-oriented posts if I can manage it.
If you want to see what Patreon is like without committing to anything, you can sign up for a week’s free trial at almost any tier, and read as much as you can cram in your eyeballs in that time. You can also subscribe directly to the Free tier and you will get Updates like this, as well as any posts that get made public. Of course, if you feel moved to toss a little cash into the potato pot to support the creation of these graphic novels, that is greatly appreciated, and you get weekly posts in return.
2023 is a mixed year to look back on. On one hand, I did a lot of things; on the other, I made vastly less progress than expected. I think, primarily, I underestimated how much time and energy the publicity rounds would demand; I thought I could juggle that stuff with getting the research in order, and it turns out, I really could not. I think I know better now what sort of events are worth it and which aren’t, but whether I’ll be allowed to act on that knowledge in future, I don’t know. Even excluding the bookselling business, it felt like every time I had a span of work time, something would come up that would keep me from working – December’s illnesses being the latest example, but in a long string of unforeseen somethings that had to be accommodated. I don’t remember this happening when I had a “real” job, and I’m not sure why. 2024 isn’t looking much better in this regard: I already know that January, February, probably May-ish, and possibly September are compromised. I need to figure out how to use these as bookends to keep me focused between times, rather than letting them be derailing distractions. (Any advice here is gratefully accepted.) But I have at least got the ball rolling on writing, so as long as I keep chipping away on that, I ought to inch forward … and once the writing is done, the drawing, which is the fun part!
The Worst Journey in the World: Graphic Novel 