My last blog post was about some
of the research I have done. I was very pokey and did not even post it until
about a month after I’d written it; I sent it to Mrs. D’Avella so she could
double check my facts, and then I waited a good while before taking half an
hour to read and implement her corrections.
I would estimate that I’ve put
about 30 total hours into this project by now. Some of those hours should
definitely have been spent studying for a Chemistry exam, but this project was
far more fun. Most of my work has gone into writing and drawing. I ended up
putting off some aspects of the work because the resources were hard to get my
hands on.
I did put 30 hours of work in, and
since I wasn’t really done, I decided to push my goals way up and turn this
into a full-blown summer project.
Things that I have done so far:
-Thoroughly outlined 4 short
children’s stories (in a notebook) and revised every plot until I found it
satisfactory
-Mostly finished the text of 3 out
of 4 stories. Writing a complete draft of a story is not difficult, and the
brunt of the work lies in the revision process. I would consider the text of
these 3 stories about 90% done. My rewriting and editing is to increase
clarity, increase accessibility, and to fit the story into the 6 designated
pages. My total wordcount is about 1,200.
-Finished approximately ¼ of the
total sketches I want to include. I spent a lot less time drawing than I
expected to. The pictures are based around the text and the structure of the
story, so naturally, the story ought to be written before too much work is
given to the illustrations. This occurred to me as soon as I actually started
working on the stories. I am currently drawing in pencil on notebook paper. The
sketches each take about 8 minutes.
This is my Biology notebook
Things that I would like to do in
the future:
-Finalize the text of my 4 stories
and send them to Mrs. D’Avella for feedback before I publish them
-Scan the
pencil-on-notebook-paper illustrations and then re-trace them in a drawing
program on my computer or phone, ensuring that the end result looks clean.
-Spend a lot more time on the
future website than I originally intended, ensuring that it is extremely
accessible and easy to navigate. This is because I kind of want to keep going
after these 4 stories are complete.
-Convince my 15-year-old brother,
who is very good at reading aloud, to help me make an audio recording of the
stories that I can also include on my website.
-Talk to someone who knows about
copyrighting (at the request of my mom) and see if there are any legal-related
things that it would be responsible to know before publishing free pdfs of original
stories