A Small Confession
A short column this week folks, for reasons that are likely obvious, should you plow your way through my latest serving of self-indulgence and safely-from-the-sideline coaching.
It strikes of late, that I may indeed come across as a supremely confident know-it-all with a resolution of adamantine steel and unshakable determination. At least I like to think so. After all, I’m about to become a fearless self-publisher, right?
And really, that’s what it takes to get out and do this stuff. Money? Sure, it’s an issue. It can smooth out some bumps in the road (y’know, like paying artists and getting the books printed), but by itself, it’s relatively useless. What it really takes to make this work is the ability to stand up and tell your story, to look at what you’re working on and acknowledge that it may indeed be crap. It may indeed need reworking and perhaps you’ll have to throw your work away and start all over again.
And even then, you might have to do it a second time.
So, what the hell am I talking about? Call it a crisis of faith. I just spent most of the last week looking at my work and wondering if it’s going to stand up to anything resembling the publication process. Suddenly, I was gripped by fear. “What if it isn’t good enough?” “What if it flops deader than Tsunami?” “And what the hell are you going to do if and when you figure out that you’re no good at writing?”
That’s when it became real for me. For a long time, I’d been working on Strangeways (back when it was called Badlands) as if it had been any other project that I’ve worked on (and there’ve been a number of them) that was never going to see the light of day. Sure, I did the work and gave it a decent shot, and I’ve done that with a number of things that just died on the vine.
Something nagged at me, though. Something told me that this project wasn’t going to be different from any of the others that are now languishing on my hard drive (including two novels and two others in various stages of completion; ever written a novel? It’s surprisingly tricky.) And last week, that feeling changed. No longer was I just going through the motions, working on a doomed project.
I sent out the formal letter of agreement to the artist last week. And after that, I was filled with nothing but dread. I was ready to throw the whole thing into the trashcan and call it off, scrapping the story and the project. I mean, how insane is it in today’s comic market to release an original B&W 88-page graphic novel that’s in a genre that isn’t well-received? I may as well just throw all that money out the window.
What’s more, it’s going to die and nobody’s going to like it and I’ll look foolish and I may as well never have quit my job that I hated because my writing wasn’t going to go anywhere. I’ll be stuck with a bunch of boxes of unsalable material that I’ll have to turn into wallpaper or a room divider or something. I’m wasting my time, energy, money and sanity on this thing that’s going to amount to nothing.
Like I said, crisis of faith. But that’s what comes of actually moving forward on a self-published project. It’s a million times easier to say than it is to follow-through on. It isn’t easy. Maybe it is for someone else, but not for me.
And I’ve had nothing but support from folks along the way. Lots of folks who I haven’t even met in person have chimed in with advice and answered questions and promoted the work even before it’s born yet. I read Larry Young’s True Facts and can’t really imagine a better no-nonsense guide to putting out your own self-published book. People over at the Isotope Lounge forum were gracious with their time and encouragement, even though they didn’t know me from Adam. Guys like Graeme McMillan and Chris Hunter have already started the promotional works (Chris being the first to take it nationwide on Fanboy Radio).
Even then, and maybe particularly then, I was struck by a sudden fear that my work just wasn’t GOOD ENOUGH. It hadn’t been so in the past, what was to make any kind of difference now?
Only one thing. The fact that I’m finishing this work now. The fact that I’ve said that I was going to do it, and dammit, it’s going to get done. If I fall on my face doing it, then so be it. “Be the bunny,” Mr. Young states in True Facts.
And he is by God right. The only way to do it is to do it. Yeah, real Zen. I know. It’s a tautology. But sometimes tautologies work.
So yeah, things might not work out. I’ll deal with that if it happens, but worrying about How You Might Fail is far less useful than actually getting along and seeing if you fail in the first place. I know, big freaking revelation. “You went to college to figure that out?”
No, I had to actually do it to figure it out. College was pretty useless in that regard.
Okay, like I said, a short one. I got work to do. See you all in a week.