“Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit.
Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know its normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through.”
– Ira Glass
I definitely felt this frustration when I was starting out, and see it a lot in first-early comics from new creators. That nervous-awkward feeling because they finished a comic and are proud of it, but know it’s not clicking like the work that inspires them. They feel that gap.
Getting their first project done was incredibly hard and finishing it didn’t hit that high, so clearly they’re not cut out for this because creativity is supposed to feel good and inspiring and this doesn’t feel like that at all, so they quit.
The bad news is that it’s not destiny or the muses driving the work. You making this stuff is not inevitable or unstoppable. It’s messy and annoying and jam-packed with doubt because there are no guarantees on the other side of completion and there never will be.
And the people you know who aren’t in this field tell you you’re “brilliant” because they want to be supportive and don’t know any better, and that’s incredibly kind, but the compliment doesn’t fit how you feel or the quality you see, so you carry this dichotomy around with nowhere to put it.
When I was coordinating the Animation program at Seneca, there was an inevitable drop in student morale during second year (before it slooowly climbed back up). We’d warn students that drop was coming and they’d chuckle about it on the first day of class when I brought it up, but it always happened. Foundational learning was done (but not yet mastered) and we were moving into more advanced lessons, assignments where we wanted them to not just follow along and demonstrate the basics, but show us their creativity in storytelling and design. The vast majority of material handed in was poorly stitched-together monstrosities of current trends and obvious influences, surface level aesthetics at best, and when we called them on it they’d absolutely crumble. Maybe they weren’t cut out for this art thing after all. They wanted the work to be just as good as the stuff that inspired them and the gap was so damn obvious.
But, what they didn’t realize, was they were actually making important progress. They weren’t as good as they thought they were and were finally aware of it. They’d pushed through a crucial barrier – They could finally see the gap and work to close it!
The process hurts, but take comfort that you have a goal to achieve and see quality worth striving for. Being aware and chipping away at improving your craft is far better than producing utter trash and thinking you’re brilliant. Oh sure, you’d love to have that mind-melting level of confidence, but ignorance and hubris is so much worse in the long run. As frustrating as it can be, seeing quality and striving to reach it is a crucial aspect of the journey, wherever it leads.
Mind the gap and carry on.
Free Scripts
A new writer reached out with questions about how much detail they should have in their comic scripts. Every writer I know approaches it differently, and the amount of detail given when describing panels varies from project to project depending on the artist, specific reference required, and complexity of each scene. I have a lot of writing tutorials free on my website and, for more direct examples, browse these free full issue scripts available on my Patreon:
• SKULLKICKERS #1 and WAYWARD #1 full scripts
• WAYWARD #6 full script
• CARGO, a sci-fi short story script
For the price of a coffee you can dig into my Patreon script archive – over 300 scripts produced for practically every major comic publisher in North America – and compare the script I wrote to the published version to see how it all came together.
Last Chance Bundle
Speaking of Skullkickers, you have only a few days left to take advantage of the Skullkickers digital Bundle of Holding deal! Over 1000 pages of comics and gaming goodness for $10? Ridiculous.
If you’ve never read my creator-owned action-comedy series, this is where my sword & sorcery writing career begins!
Back to the Cimmerian Source, Part 3
In previous newsletters I mentioned Cimmerian September, with bloggers and vloggers reading and chatting about Conan stories. I’m hoping to reread all the original Robert E. Howard Conan prose stories and jot down a few thoughts about each one. I don’t want to overwhelm this newsletter with text, so if you want to read what I think of more of the original Cimmerian stories, click on through to the posts linked below:
9) Queen of the Black Cost
10) The Devil In Iron
11) People of the Black Circle – Part 1 Part 2
12) A Witch Shall Be Born
13) The Servants of Bit-Yakin
Quite a Trip
The 2024 Tripwire Awards have been announced and Conan creators are nominated for 4 awards:
Best Writer, Best Cover Artist, Best New Series, and Best New Talent!
Current + Upcoming Releases
Upcoming Appearances
| Oct 15, 2024 | Kowabunga Comics | Oconomowoc, WI, USA |
| Oct 17-20, 2024 | Gamehole Con | Madison, WI, USA |
| Oct 25-27, 2024 | MCM Expo: London | London, England, UK |
| Nov 4-8, 2024 | D&D In a Castle | Newcastle, UK |
Links and Other Things
• Blood and Thunder: The Life and Art of Robert E. Howard, Mark Finn‘s excellent biography of the creator of Conan, is now finally available as an ebook on Kindle.
• The documentary Mike Mignola: Drawing Monsters by my friend Jim Demonakos is now available on a slew of different platforms: Amazon, AppleTV, Google Play, Microsoft, Vimeo, YouTube.
• I made this pork tenderloin recipe last night for Stacy and friends and it turned out great. I don’t usually try out a new recipe with company coming over, but in this case it was a great choice.
Have a great weekend!
Jim
Zub on Amazon
Zub on Buttondown
Zub on deviantART
Zub on Facebook
Zub on GoodReads
Zub on Instagram
Zub on Patreon
Zub on Tumblr
Zub on Twitter
Zub on YouTube
Follow this blog's RSS feed
Makeshift Miracle
0 Comments.