TWO FISTED HOMEOPAPE July/19 - Being content isn’t a form of settling.
Also: new release dates for my comics contained within.
♫ I applied for a rescue dog,
But if I get you dog,
You're rescuing me ♫
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2021 -- beyond.
Puzzle pieces.
This was a week of making things fit. Like, dozens of pages of notes and thoughts and questions. I could see I’d circled [THE 36 HOUR PROJECT] story enough times that I finally knew how to put it all together.
So...I just had to...y’know...put it all together. That’s the part that’s hard because you’ve gotta do it in a way that makes sense. No publisher is going to accept a video where I flip through the pages of my ‘John Doe in SE&EN’-style notebook and greenlight that project. My job is to make it all make sense, make it accessible, and make it something they absolutely want to know more about.
This is otherwise known as “writing a pitch document.” And I hate it. Taking everything in my head, the swirling themes, the brilliant sequences, the character arcs, the high concept, which usually makes way for actual character dynamics and other set pieces, and then putting that into 1 page nearly kills me every time.
I took this week to write the pitch doc for [THE 36 HOUR PROJECT] and it took me a few drafts. I usually write one where I map out the entire plot, beat for beat, but that gets laborious, and lost in the weeds. So then I refine that - it’s usually 2 pages - and I slowly whittle it down. What’s necessary for the pitch? The aspects of what happens and why, but not always the how of it all. So I strip it back to character desires, and choices, and I trim, and I trim.
Then I just rewrite it from scratch, with that in mind, and hope I’ve got it succinct, but without losing any of the cool of it that publishers will want to see before they throw money at it.
Again, for clarity: I hate it. Mostly because I don’t think I’m any good at it.
But this week saw me get that pitch doc up and running, and it’s finally out into the wild. I’ve sent it to one publisher who has asked to see new stuff from me, and I’m determined to see if I can crack their castle walls.
They already passed on a few things, one of which is [THE SHARP INK PROJECT], which then got passed on by the second publisher, so now it’s onto its third. This process is very par for the course. Who knows if anything will get picked up, and when that will be.
As for which publishers I pitch to, well, it all depends. You need to check your story even matches a publisher before sending it there. Sometimes, I’ll have a vibe it fits best at a specific place, but usually I make a list of publishers who I know and are happy to look at my stuff, and I slowly work through them.
My list also takes into account pay and ownership. There are some ideas I’m happy to take a page rate on and be aware I’m getting rid of some of the media rights [which means if it gets optioned for a tv/film treatment, the publisher takes a wet bite outta that money, which makes sense, because they already fronted me a healthy page rate]. Some publishers want to also own IP [intellectual property] and I’m a little more hesitant on that front, but it’s not 100% off the table.
Some publishers don’t have much in the way of pay, but I’ll earn everything on a media option deal, so that’s a positive. I have an agent in LA, so I can send them completed comics and see if they think they can pair it with a tv/film writer, and then we seek options from there.
The odds of getting an option are slim, so that’s the balance I need to strike - get paid fairly well now, or hold out and hold to get paid maybe a little more, maybe a lot more, later. I try to find a balance between these two options in all my work.
I also had a thought recently that some publishers/editors I know hadn’t heard much from me in a while as far as pitches go because I would pitch elsewhere, it would get picked up, and then if my plate is full I don’t pitch much else because my brain is full. I only started really breaking ground on the pitches for [THE SHARP INK PROJECT] and [THE 36 HOUR PROJECT] and even [THE BLUEPRINT PROJECT] after I’d written all of SPEED REPUBLIC and BLACK BEACON, and even gotten EVERFROST to the launch platform.
My bandwidth for just churning out ideas and making them sound stories that I’m happy to pitch is low what with balancing writing against the rest of my life. I’m fine with that, but it means I’m slow [-er than others] and that I don’t have multiple battlefronts on which I can give my energy. I also don’t like pitching just loglines or story ideas, I like to break the story and see if I can tell something from start to finish that I’ll be completely happy with, and can devote 3-4 months of my time to it, or more.
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Comics/Life Balance.
I constantly talk about trying to find that sweet spot between making comics successfully and living a life successfully. I talk about it a lot because I’m constantly trying to figure it out, and I think best when talking out loud, or writing it down.
But I also talk about it because then others can see that the thoughts occur. And they can build their own context from it, or identify with it, or work out why they disagree, or whatever they need. Which is why I was so happy to see Joshua Dysart, a guy who’s been pretty successful in my eyes in writing comics, and good ones, come forward to talk about the financial/life realism of it all!
Many people can’t make comics full time - it is not financially viable. Many creative endeavours aren’t, and I guess that’s fine, in that it’s a part of life and a life we chose, not a life that chose us.
But it’s hard when you see people who do make it, and you wonder why you can’t be like that - then you learn their comics don’t pay all the bills and feed the family because they have family money that does that, or a partner who covers everything so they can tinker with scripts and make the stories happen. And yet no one is ever really open about that situation. So we look, from the outside in, and we make our own assumptions and draw our own conclusions, and we deem ourselves failures in context from it. Or, well, I know I do, periodically.
Taking the time to take stock of where you are, what you are doing, and how it all works is a healthy thing [for me to do]. It lets me think about the effort I put in, the results I want to get, the results that are reasonable to get, and all together I can assess whether it’s worth the 4am wake ups anymore.
Note: right now, it’s worth the 4am wake up, so I’ll keep doing it. I’ll stop when it’s not, I guess.
Once I have my view in the right alignment, I can progress forward meaningfully and happily. Because knowing my limits is important. I work ~50 hours a week as a teacher, and I do my best to make time for my family, and then I try to read and relax and exercise. Amid that, I make comics. Or, try to.
If you’ve been here long enough you’ll have heard this all before, apologies, I guess. But I found Dysart bringing it up helpful, so hopefully me bringing it up helps someone else. Hell, just seeing this again this week got me to make the same analysis I do all the time, and then unlock another piece of the puzzle in my brain.
You see, I still consider myself a failure...a lot. I haven’t cracked that sweet code to making gangbuster comic success stories, so for my brain: that’s not good enough. In my teaching, I gave up a career path pushing my up the chain through levels of principaldom [that’s a new word] so I could make comics: so maybe that’s a fail, too?
I was thinking about those promotion opportunities this week as I considered not aiming for one in the very near future, and then I saw someone who had aimed for one, and gotten two, and I [very momentarily] wondered if I was a failure compared to them, or if I was perceived as one. A silly thought, one I could bat away without much consideration, but it gave me this reminder:
I was an assistant principal and I stepped down out of the role consciously, despite being asked to continue it, because I knew I couldn’t teach a class, be an executive, *and* write comics. Something had to give, and I made my choice. That was when NEGATIVE SPACE came out from Dark Horse. Since then I’ve written/published 6 miniseries and 2 graphic novels, and some one-shots, and sold the TV rights to one of them, and am in the works of selling another one, and I’m also incredibly proud of those stories, and the relationships I’ve forged with those collaborators.
I could not have made those stories if I was hustling double-time at work, and I’m glad I made the decision to go down this path. If I’d continued writing these comics, and continued to push myself towards making deputy principal, I would have burnt myself out in a huge way, that I know as a fact. And what good would that do me and my mental health? And that flow on to my wife and kids would be terrible.
I think I have to be conscious that I’ll always doubt myself, but that I also have the tools to make myself squash that doubt. I know I value hard work to the extreme, I know I push myself, I know I’ll happily grind myself down to dust, so I need to know that I also have the option not to. That I can find a balance and be happy with the success I’ve had.
The chance to write deeply personal and fun stories, and teach spectacular classes full of amazing students, and engage with a wife perfect to spend my life with while raising two really phenomenal humans is not something to brush aside because I didn’t lunge at a position to earn more money at work, or write an arc of Ghost Cape where they punch Blue Balloon Baboon a bunch of times.
Being content isn’t a form of settling.
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ASD&D.
Had a really fun session with my mates last week. Just trying stupid things and having a laugh. Characters pissing into portals, and healing with necrotic microdosing, constantly walking on ceilings just because they can, and then I got to introduce the concept of a “true crime bard” which I’m hoping to use in some capacity moving forward.
I find I continually rate my “success” of a night of D&D in how many laughs we all generate.
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PERHAPS YOU'D CARE TO SAMPLE
Rat Queens! The Board Game - well, dang, one of my favourite comics is getting a board game edition and it looks amazing! Go check it out and help bring this to life!
Jason Sudeikis Profile on GQ - I loved Ted Lasso so much, and cannot wait for its return. This interview is a great insight into the guy behind him, and the final few paragraphs are really worth it for some Ted-style wisdom.
MANTICORE on Kickstarter - this one is an oversized graphic novella, and it’s written by Eric Palicki - double ticks right there. Have a look and back on sight!
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GRIST FOR THE MILL
MYTHIC QUEST - this show on Apple+ was great in its first season, and I just wanted the extra pandemic/work from home episode and it’s so well structured and delivered. But really, I’m just back on Apple+ waiting for TED LASSO S2 to drop.
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Be one of the good guys, because there's way too many of the bad.
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POST CREDITS SEQUENCE
Oh, I have comics coming out, just not when you thought they would, sorry.
EVERFROST #2 should be this week!
That shipping date looks pretty certain.
BLACK BEACON #1 will be the 28th of July
So not much longer to go.
Why are things pushed back? Who could say. Maybe a truck took a wrong turn at Albuquerque. Maybe my comics were deemed “Too hot to handle!” and the warehouse staff needed asbestos gloves. Maybe, just maybe, the stars are trying to tell me my shit isn’t good enough and it’s sparing me embarrassment by one more week, or two.
Maybe.
I don’t know.
But I know you should go out and buy them if you get the chance, I’m super proud of both series, and EVERFROST #2 has been getting really strong reviews already, so we’ve got that going for us :]
“Being content isn’t a form of settling.“
Amen