#ive come to the conclusion that i just cant do multis as much as i wish i could

[martyirize-moved]

saved a url for drummer hehe

[kosmicdream]

Hi I’m Kosmic. I draw webcomics and my webcomics are really long sprawling huge cast ones that will go on for years and they’re non linear and all this stuff that makes ppls heads spin when they try to explain wtf they’re about. I ask myself this question a lot: How the fuck do I maintain this motivation for continuing projects that are honestly, probably bigger than i can possibly feasibly create??? How do i avoid swallowed up by anxiety of my own creations???? is that energy going to run out at any time? should i be worried?? Well! For some reason I... don’t? like i get winded sometimes but in the end, I actually quite like what i do and I don’t care that it takes literally years to make my stories. but when I step back and look at it objectively it does make me scratch my head and wonder how i came to be in this situation. So, sometimes i  try and write a few things that help me with understanding my own process, for whatever reason. Or at least I’ll TRY to articulate some of the things i seem to tell myself again and again that help me feel very comfortable with my writing/creating process. So if you want an insight into tips that i give myself.. this is that! 

TIP #1 - Everything you Plan will take longer than you planned, but you can make it easier by unexpectedly including information you might have otherwise withheld.

Secrets are cool in your stories. I have so many of them, but I also understand that they’re much more fun to share than to always keep locked up and out of knowledge. I often overshare to the point where ‘info dumping’ happens which is often considered an unattractive quality in comics. But IDM it so much because my comics just need to be drawn and you can’t glorify and hold every flaw over your shoulders when in the end its not going to be that big of a deal. I think its better to give out more information than finding reasons to bend around a story to avoid revealing things. I feel it might even be more obvious if you attempt to do that.

Also, I feel that everything planned in a story can happen quite quickly, and feel much shorter than actually drawing it. Even with the experience ive gained, i still am surprised just by how much i must throw out to make my long scenes shorter and snappier. even then, they are still really long scenes. I don’t mind doing this, I like to make my stories this way- but ive also designed my comic to serve this pace by making my pages less intensive physically to make. I’m not going to go in depth about this as ive already discussed this many times before, but I do think its important to understand that generally, a commitment to a comic is going to be bigger and longer than it appears in your mind or even on paper as a script or thumbnails.

(my comic eggshells, for example, was originally going to be 340ish pages long. but back then, my pacing was much different-- and my pages were generally twice as wide with around 15 panels per page..sometimes more. but i would over-render and make them hard to read, and now i draw very few panels per page and my comics are much ‘longer’ in page count.)

TIP #2

-Accept that your ideas are bigger than what you can draw and enjoy the private context and history of your work without feeling like its less accomplished for not being all out there. Validate yourself but also understand that your readers are not going to understand the depth from your perspective and they will be engaging with the view they’ve been exposed to.

This is kind of a complicated one but I think that its both humbling to accept your work as this multi layered experiences of contradicting perspectives.. theres the planning and your engagement with the goals, the work of translating your creation to others and the vulnerable exposure of these ideas to the audience. As the creator, you get to see things in a very unique way that no one else can but... the one feeling you will never get to see is the audience who has no idea what will happen next. You can anticipate it, but in the end its so vast and unpredictable that it will be impossible to judge what they ALL will FEEL and sometimes? their perceptions can alter your own enjoyment of your work. I guarantee it will change it in SOME way.. that’s part of the sacrifice.

TIP #3

-Allowing change, flexibility and growth into your series- and letting go of control over all facets of it.

As time goes on things just change. Its hard to accommodate or prepare for that kind of investment in your work when you feel like you havent even gotten through the starting gates of your story. Comics are particularly difficult for that because once you draw a thing, it takes time to edit and you cant really undo and go back. Each panel informs and builds on the next. You have to use what’s there and figure out how it can be a structure for the future.

Accepting the past that has helped create the situation and platform of your comic in the present, which will lead into the future. Personally, i’m not a fan of retconing* certain decisions that have been already made into the canon-- however, i think if a new conclusion or idea is discovered in the process of writing and it works to include because it creates a new and alive energy in the work that will help push it to the next stage.. i think that’s very helpful and useful for sustaining the growth and motivation in a story. Making choices like this can be tricky, however, but even small ones can give a lot of natural growth and flexibility in the comic. The problem can often come with letting go of that unseen, unrealized version we had intended. I know for myself, i can get very nostalgically attached to old ideas but-- if i think of something better that works or makes more sense, I’m always thankful to let go and let my stories grow into a better thing. I try to remember where it came from, however. Because that helps inform me where to go.

(*generally my definition for this is altering events of the past, certain core plans of the comic, character motivations, or facts that are connected to the worldbuilding. im kind of a hoarder so once its in the story aka on a specific page-- its not going anywhere. until then things can be up in the air. for example, the characters knife and spoon were not originally intended to be mutually in love and it was more of a one sided idol worship, but as i fleshed their characters out i realized that it was mutual and it changed and altered the story because of that. now it cannot/will not be “undone” for whatever reason bc this is.. an established fact in the story. but at one point, it was not! i hope that makes sense.)

SO TO SUMMARIZE... plans will always be “”bigger”” in the ever expansive space of your mind so also dont be afraid to get to the point sometimes even if it feels a little, like. less exciting than you thought? accept your story is going to be different for YOU vrs your audience and make peace with that disconnect even tho its disorienting + upsetting sometimes & accommodate the ~natural personal and artistic growth~ you will experience and let go of things that might be holding you or your work back from improving with you. but also dont try to cut out too much of the past because.. it is what helped you get to where you are right now? focus on the present & allow growth for the future, dont try to alter the past and pretend it didnt happen. bc that will be confusing as fuck for everyone involved and also probably hurt the story more than help it. esp if its a long one. ur building a tower dont pull out too many foundational blocks and try to make it too much of something else unless its growing there on its own.. u kno? 

When I try to write these tips these are just things I find myself doing in a cycle as i create that seem to keep re igniting my passion for my story again and again. It makes me curious because it also is a very instinctual thing so I thought I might try and write it out!!!!!!!!!! ENJOY.

ALSO some bonus thoughts!!!!!!!!!! I will say that I’ve never completed a long format comic series, so take it w/ a grain of salt imo. HOWEVER...I probably will, eventually. Even if I don’t, I do enjoy writing really big ones and I feel very happy with the work i do on them! and still feel no inclination to move onto other things. Or even when I work on other things, I don’t have a feeling of dropping a story entirely. (for example, i still intend to work on my older series eggshells and don’t really feel a desire to ‘quit’ that story even when i have matured as an author/artist since starting it.)

When I read really long comic series I wonder a lot of internal decisions that happen out of sight, since the timeline of a comic that you read is so much different than the timeline it takes actually creating the thing. its so easy to write/plan/form ideas for lifetimes of work that will never be realized, so what is it that we actually get in the pages? What aspects of this author are we actually seeing? how much have they grown since beginning and what about the story we will never know? I know I’ll never know, because, I am only the reader! And as the creator, I will never know what the feeling of my work as the reader. or the cool and interesting things they predict will happen based on their perseptions, which are so different from mine. Yet!! we are all engaged in the same story unfolding, never fully discovering what its like on the other side but only getting little glimpses and thats fascinating how a story is almost this vast illusion of experiences maintained by so many different minds. 

Long format comics captivate me because they are just, really time consuming to make and the pacing of them are so different and less consumable than other stories. They like become.. this place you live in! Why are they my favorite to enjoy even when its natural that, when a story becomes longer, its going to end up attracting more & more issues? Why do i Not care about resolutions to long stories sometimes bc my expectations for them are different?? (also lets face it, experience writing long stories is going to be different than writing short ones because it takes time to write longer things & we are not going to have as much experienc having more than one completed super long multi-act-multi-characterplot story vrs a bunch of smaller ones. it doesnt mean its EASIER to write shorter ones, if anything id argue its probably much harder to write good short things + isolate a story down to that focused vision than making tons of long ones that avoid endings) but..yet!! here i am...

why am i constantly drawn to trying to understand long format stories when I probably could improve faster by writing shorter things??! i dont really know! but i follow my heart and my heart likes to do things this way......

anyway, this entire post is mostly inspired by the fact that many of my favorite stories started before i was even born or have been going on for decades and i wonder if we’ll ever read the endings to many of them.... would it.. matter? they’ve already inspired me so much even without a resolution because i can imagine my own endings to things.. but in the end that is not what happened in the actual story. it was only in my mind.. and yet it never happened, and was an illusion unknown to anyone but myself.....and sometimes my favorite stories are my favorites because of the things i imagined them to be, rather than what they actually were or how they actually turned out.. i dont know how this happens..... but i wonder about what this means with my OWN comics, and how my perceptions of what they could be vrs what they are is like, this weird illusion that also exists only in my mind and no one else can see it. yet we are both looking at the same thing. and i want to know what others see and i never will get to??? ....stories are......... so fucking spooky!!!!!!!!!! AHHH!! ok thats all. thx for reading

[therealestatesparkblog]

The Real Estate Investing Strategy I'd Recommend to Newbies (as a Seasoned Investor)

After having a real estate license for close to 30 years and having worked hundreds of real estate deals, as well as specializing in investment real estate, Ive been fortunate enough to see people from all walks of life and incomes deal with just about all aspects of real estate. Ive pretty much come to the conclusion that the decisions one makes with real estate, especially first-time home buyers, are very critical. A few minor tweaks in the strategy and order in which they do things with their real estate can have a monumental impact on their overall investing career. Recently, a young, single, 23-year-old guy in my Investor Relations Department began looking for his first rental property. I agreed to help him on his way to building a nice real estate portfolio by showing him some of the strategies that Ive employed and lessons that Ive learned while becoming a multimillionaire on a modest salary. For someone looking to buy that first investment property, in most cases, it still makes sense to utilize FHA owner-occupied financing if at all possible. FHA Owner-Occupied Now, I know what some of you may be thinking: FHA is the most expensive way to buy, especially with MIP (Mortgage Insurance Premium). Isnt 5 percent down on a conventional mortgage better? Well, not really, and heres why. With FHA, they not only allow seller assists, as do most mortgages, but you can purchase with as little as a 3 percent down payment. You are also able to count up to 90 percent of the current rents (as opposed to 75 percent with conventional mortgages), provided that they have a one-year lease agreement signed, and theyll count this towards the buyers monthly income. This can dramatically increase ones buying power, especially since you can purchase up to a four-unit dwelling with FHA financing. Keep in mind, you can normally only have one FHA mortgage at any given time.

Related: The Achievable 5-Step Process For Getting That First Property Under Your Belt So, instead of my guy buying, say, a $100,000 single-family rental property FHA, he could possibly buy a $200,000 quadraplex, live in one unit, and count 90 percent of the $750/month per unit rent of the other three units toward his monthly income, enabling him to live in this building almost completely free. This will enable him to buy the next property in a year or two much more easily, since hell be able to save up more money that would have been spent on higher housing expenses. Just think, hell have almost double the write-offs because you cant depreciate your primary residence nor write off any repairs or maintenance. Buying the Second Property When it comes to buying the second property, if he rents out his apartment (the fourth unit of the quadraplex) that would help him pay the second propertys mortgage, thus enabling him to save even more money for the third property, which he could purchase owner-occupied a year or two later. The best thing you can do here is to buy conventional, owner-occupied with 5 percent down payment and utilize another seller assist. The trick here is to only buy a house where the mortgage payment is less than rent. By purchasing these first several properties owner-occupied, hell get much more favorable interest rates and terms, such as lower down payment requirements. Also, if he keeps all of the properties hes ever lived in without selling any of them, he would not be wasting the past settlement costs hes already spent. (See Plan to Sell Your Primary Residence? STOPAnd Consider This First.) Errors in Judgment A big error in judgment when young and starting out in real estate is buying as much house as possible in the best area possible (usually to impress family and friends), with the highest payment possible (usually one thats much higher than rent). By doing this, its much harder to save for the next property. Often, the investor then has to sell this owner-occupied property prior to buying the next one since it doesnt make sense as a rental. Even if the person is doing well later in life and their accountant is telling them they should buy an investment property for the write-offs, now its going to cost them big timebecausethey already could have had an investment property if they had used the right buying strategy when starting out to really accelerate their real estate investing portfolio. Let Me Illustrate Lets say you bought a $100,000 property owner-occupied, with a 5 percent down payment on a 30-year mortgage of $95,000 (4.5 percent interest, with approximately $3,000/year in taxes and $700/year in homeowners insurance). With a monthly payment of around $789.68 or so toward the mortgage, it rents for $1,000/month and you live there for five years before renting it out. With this strategy, you acquired the property owner-occupied with a great rate and little down, and youre five years into your 30-year loan before making it a rental property. If you waited until later in life to get a property (not owner-occupied), now youll need a 25 to 30 percent down payment, youll pay a higher investor interest rate, and youll have around 8 percent in closing costs. In this scenario, you would need a whopping $38,000 to purchase an average $100,000 SFR ($663.011 monthly PITI), as opposed to approximately $13,000 on a conventional, owner-occupied deal. Now you might say, Yeah, Ill have more cash flow since I put more money down. But the truth is, your yield went down. Lets look at the numbers FHA owner occupied 5% down payment: $210.32/mo. cash flow x 12 mos. = $2,524/yr. $13,000 total invested = 19% return before expenses (i.e., management, maintenance, and vacancies, etc.) Conventional mortgage non-owner occupied 30% down payment: $336.99/mo. cash flow x 12 mos. = $4,044/yr. $38,000 total invested = 10.6% return before expenses As long as youre cash flowing, the less money that you put down, the higher your yield.

Related: Newbies: These 3 Simple Steps Will Prepare You For Your First Deal Strategy So, although buying a property FHA owner-occupied may not be the cheapest way to own, as far as monthly payment, it can be a great strategy for the first property, especially if its a multi-unit (less than four units). When starting out, it can cost the buyer the least amount of capital up front, and by counting 90 percent of the rents, it can also enable the investor to catapult into a much more valuable property. FHA can have other advantages as well since their underwriting can be more lenient, and their front-end and back-end ratios are much easier (for example, 29 percent versus 28 percent on the front-end ratio and 41 percent versus 36 percent on the back-end ratios). FHA will also send an inspector out who may require additional repairs to be completed. This may enable the buyer to get more work done prior to closing, and its usually paid for by the seller. Also, it puts pressure on the seller to accept the FHA appraisal, even if it comes in low, since the seller has to use this appraisal for up to six months if a future buyer is FHA/VA. So, if youre a newbie real estate investor looking to buy your first investment property, maybe it makes sense to purchase owner-occupied with FHA financing, too. [ Editors note: Were republishing this article to help out our newer members. ]

Newbies, are you using this strategy? If youre a seasoned investor, what advice would you give to someone just starting out? Lets talk in the comments section below. https://www.biggerpockets.com/blog/2015/10/01/real-estate-strategy-newbies/