Hello! After Technical Difficulties (again) Here Is The Hamilcoins Comic I Posted This Morning. Have

Hello! Here is a bonus to this morning's comic. Check back tomorrow morning, I'm going to introduce Aaron Burr into the world of Hamilcoins.

heart warming story time

so ive been teaching at this summer camp for a week. last week i met the sweetest little girl, who was at the camp along with her wonderfully kind older sister. the little girl is 7. she and her sister both have most likely have anxiety disorders, and the little one cries often. she’s so sunny, though, that she never stays upset very long. usually, she’ll sit down by herself and if i can coax her out of her little ball she’ll bury her head in my shoulder, let me give her an encouraging few sentences, and brighten right back up. this little girl is deaf. she was most likely born deaf, but she has been able to hear for, im guessing, the past five years (the majority) of her life, so she speaks normally and is pretty much used to hearing. this is because of her cochlear implants, she has one in both ear. so the first week of this camp all the kids wanted to play telephone. i said sure, why not? so we all sat in a circle. the little girl only had one of her cochlear implant devices on that day so she had to use a specific ear to play, and could NOT play very well. after a few rounds she had her head buried in her knees and was crying. i felt completely awful, and i immediately switched the game. i hugged her and apologized for playing telephone, and she hugged me back and gave me a huge smile, then ran off to her friends. so i decided to make sure this experience would be a fantastic one for her. i made sure not to play any games with them that required auditory cues. i started teaching the kids a couple sign language terms just for fun, i signed one of the songs they were learning to the little girl and she loved it. i told the other directors about her hard of hearing so they would be lenient when she didn’t hear them tell everyone to sit down. fast forward to today. halfway through the day, she ran over to me and started pulling on my sleeve. “um, ms. hope? the thing that helps me hear…it ran out of battery”, she whispered i sort of froze. i wasn’t sure if she could hear me. i told her we’d go find her sister, and she just looked at me for a moment then said “what?!” pretty loudly. i took her hand and pointed to her sister again. we walked over and i brought them in the hall so the little girl could hear better…. after two seconds of trying to talk to the little one, the older sister covered her mouth with her hand (so she couldn’t lip read) and yelled out “say pumpkin!” and the little one didn’t react at all. i realised she was 100% deaf without that battery. but she’s not panicking. she’s calmly letting me lead her around, and granted, she looks nervous and worried, but she isn’t crying. i tried to mouth “do you want to call your mom?” and she didn’t understand, and she goes “wait….can you say that in sign language? i nodded, and mouthed again while signing YOU WANT CALL YOUR MOM? she. grinned. so. wide. her eyes lit up and she goes "OOOOOooohhh!!!!!! yeah!! yeah, i know her number!!! i know her number!” so i got my phone, and her older sister typed in the number (while tiny one was jumping up and down going “i know her number!! i know it!! i know her number!” and trying to give her sister the numbers. so her mom was coming with a replacement battery, in about an hour. i brought the little girl back into rehearsal and sat her next to me in case i needed to get her attention. after a while, rehearsal stopped because of shenanigans, as usual. poor little child looked to me and said “what’s going on?” but she said it VeRY LOUDLY. i put a finger to my lips and she realised she couldn’t tell how loud to be and stopped talking, just mouthed words. i couldn’t figure out how to sign what was going on, and her sign language is pretty limited anyways, so i pulled out my phone, and typed it into a note. she read it, then smiled real wide again, and typed back “ok!” she took my phone back a couple times to ask me a few other questions about what was happening. after a few minutes, one of the other little girls ran over and said, “i want to talk to you on your phone!!” “what?” “i want….why does [the other girl] get to talk to you on your phone?” “she can’t hear at all right now.” the other little girl stared at me for a second and said, “wait…really???” i nodded, and the other girl thought for a moment. she turned to the little deaf girl. and waved. she waved back. Other girl turned to me again and asked,“ may i talk to her on your phone?” i gave her my phone and nodded. little girl was sO HAPPY that the other kid could talk to her by writing. more kids started coming over. one pointed to the hearing aid device in my hand that i was holding for her and looked completely horrified, saying,“ why did you take that away from her!?” i laughed and told her it died, and she ran over to give the little girl a hug. soon, three or four girls were crowded around her playing with her hair and talking to her on my phone. it warmed my heart how they were so excited just to help this little girl feel included. the first note someone typed to her was “are you ok?” (of course, little girl grinned and nodded before beginning to type back). then came time for her scene, which we decided she could still do. she went onstage, and watched everyone around her and lip read so she didn’t miss a single line. when it was time for their song, i mouthed the words really big, and she watched me the whole time, and actually sang!! you could hardly even tell she wasn’t able to hear the music. she was so excited to be dancing around onstage, skipping and grinning like the sun. after her scene she came back, and was sitting with her friends again. they asked her why she couldn’t hear, and she told them. she then grabbed her device from me and whispered “watch this!!” to the others. she took the magnet part, pressed it to her head, and leaned over. it’s magnetic, so it stuck, and the kids were so impressed and it was so adorable! later it was time for break, and i tried to tell her, but lipreading is difficult, guys. finally i signed the word EAT, and she went “OOOHHH!!! :D” and ran to the break room to get her snack. in the break room, her friends were all sitting with her, and they were so excited to sign CAT to her over and over because that’s what i taught them this morning. they all kept smiling and nodding at each other and mouthing “cat!” and signing it, it was the cutest thing ever. later we played a game and she messed up due to the whole not hearing thing, but she didn’t notice, and no one called her out on it or even told her, once i told them it was because she couldn’t hear the instruction she messed up on. later, her mom brought her a device for each ear and the little sunny girl was happy to be able to talk with her friends again.

im just so touched by how much all these children wanted to include her. they didn’t think she was odd, they just did their best to understand what was up, then put in the effort to communicate so they could all have fun together. it was such an amazing experience and i’m never going to forget it. we’re always the most open minded and enthusiastic when we’re children, and i really hope that this bit of acceptance and inclusion ive taught to them sticks with them the rest of their lives. and i think the rest of the world could stand to learn a few lessons from these kids, their sunny smiles, and their open hearts.

Good evening! Here's the Hamilcoins comic that I forgot to post this morning. Lotta stuff going on. Have a nice night!

hey guys i actually never use this blog, find me at @iamhop :)

Just a few of my favorite inktober pieces I’ve done so far :)

I’m using my own prompts based off of ghost quartet

you’re going to love again, find a job again, create art again, do what you love again, feel powerful again. you’re going to be back on track. i don’t know when, but you are going to feel like yourself again, eventually. this isn’t the end. hang in there.

Okay but hear me out: the second and the third chapters are the hardest in the entire book.

Everybody complains about chapter one and endings, and I get it - that's your big money moment, make or break. That's what matters the most to the reader. But I think in terms of sheer difficulty for the writer, in terms of individual chapters, the very beginning is where projects live and die.

Chapter one is an idea. I have probably thirty or forty chapter ones sitting in my computer that never went anywhere, or were cool thoughts but didn't have a plot behind them. They were scenarios with no inertia. One chapter a story does not make.

But the second chapter, that's where things start to change. Chapter two, in most books, is pure setup. You're not just writing the immediate aftermath of the first chapter, you're writing the whole damn book in a few thousand words. That's hard. It takes a LOT of mental energy and requires you to do the actual work of plotting, whereas chapter one you can just dash down whatever inspo you've got whether it goes somewhere or not.

That's tough as hell, but I don't count two chapters as a story either. Two chapters is still nothing but an idea. Chapter three is where the character takes their first action influenced by the inciting event, makes their first move, goes from a person to a protagonist. Chapter three is where you stop telling the reader what could be and start showing them what is. I think you can have the best idea in the world, but if it can't carry itself to chapter three, it's not a story. Certainly not a novel, yet. And that's why the beginning of a project is so critical, because you're mega frontloading and roadmapping a lot of what comes later right at the very beginning.

So when you're starting your next WIP, don't make your goal be to reach the end of the book. Shoot for chapter three. I promise you, once you've got three chapters down in your word processor, the rest of the book will be a whole lot easier.

Like a half hour after taking pain relief meds: oh actually it doesnt hurt anymore i probably didnt even need to take those

Listened to Ghost Quartet for the first time in awhile. Will probably go back and fix a few things, but I like how this turned out.