6: The Vodun & Taking Stock
9/24/2011
Just finished my stylized pen drawing of Vaal, the 3rd of the Vodun series I’m working on. I won’t do all 40 of the gods, just the 10 primary humanoid personifications. They look okay, but their borders take longer to draw than the gods themselves. This is a good project for me in terms of fleshing out the Vodun, so they’re concrete in my mind, not just ideas and names on a page.
Spent most of the day today collating my mythology notes, assigning the appropriate attributes to each of the 40 Vodun. I’m eager to get back to breaking down the Kanar glyphs, but I need to make sure my mythology is well established first in order to use them with the glyphs.
I’m giving The Song of Alodia a rest for the moment.
I’d really like to synthesize my notes into essays to firmly establish the Batu once and for all. I have a hundred ideas of what they could be, many contradicting, many not quite right. I’d like to settle it. Also, to reduce the number of notes I have. Get rid of what I don’t need. But it’s a huge undertaking, and part of me suspects it’s a way to avoid writing.
I also took stock of where I am today. To date, I’ve done 40 Batu illustrations, with 14 preconceived yet to do. I’ve written 9 myths, 6 fables, 13 of the 40 Kanar breakdowns is done, 28 songs/poems/chants, 330 words in my Kanar lexicon, a Batu timeline, the introduction, most of the 40 Vodun profiles, 24 of the 72 chapters (including prologues and epilogues) have been thoroughly mapped out scene by scene, I have 3 psych profiles for 3 of my characters… Yet, of the 72 chapters that make up all 4 books, I’ve only finished 1 ½ of them.
I’ve previously written up to chapter 7, but I’ve changed so much of that that I started over. I only now have what I’m calling my official first draft. Having already outlined the first 2 books scene by scene, I am confident no major rewrites will occur again. Even so, I admit that I’m a bit ashamed of the early chapters, so I have no excuses. Just scared is all.
I’ll get to it. Soon. I will. No, really. At least, I better.
Thing is though; Batu is much more to me than a story. More than a book.
Present-Day Reflection
5/31/2026
There I go again, listing off all the things I got done in order to feel better about not working on what I thought I should be working on. Poor guy. I’m much more understanding toward myself these days though. I still rationalize and make my lists of achievements to counter my conscience for not doing what I think I should have been doing instead, but I do it tongue in cheek these days. I realize it’s okay, and that everything I do needs to be done, even if that means sleeping in and not doing a damn thing. I’m much more tolerant of letting everything have its place and trusting that it will all work out in the end.
More or less.
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