Dear Someone

I just won the latest write-off competition on the Millarworld forum.

Even though the competition is just a bit of fun, it’s nice to haver the recognition. I will post the winning entry here when I get time.

I just updated the home page of my site. For no particular reason. I just didn’t like some of the words on it.

I’m not sure why I’m bothering to post this.

My next writing competition entry: Max Smart: Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. Full script for a projected Marvel Comics series.

The most common criticism I got was that it wasn’t funny enough. Humour is really hard to write. Well, it is for me. I mean, if I can’t make a premise like “what if Maxwell Smart was in Stan Lee’s S.H.I.E.L.D. comics in the 1960s” funny, I’ve got no hope. 

So, back to the drawing board…

Last year I started entering writing competitions on Mark Millar’s forum. This was just for fun and to get some feedback from other writers, but now I have a page for unpublished writing on my site, I have a place to store the entries for posterity.

The theme of the first competition was to take an established comic character and “re-imagine” a new origin for the character. I chose Wonder Woman.

(Wonder Woman is a registered trademark of DC Comics and no challenge to the trademark is intended, blah blah.)

My main aim in the script was to retain the iconography of the character while completely changing the origin, and to see how the new origin would inevitably produce a different character with a completely different set of morals and values. I had fun writing it but it’s not a version of Wonder Woman I would actually want to read.

I have no idea how to write a Wonder Woman comic that I would personally like to read. I hope somebody manages it some day, though. Wonder Woman is a character that many writers have failed to handle properly. The character concept is so perfect, but so many people write bad stories for her… maybe it’s not possible to tell any more great Wonder Woman stories, and the character’s potential has been exhausted. I hope not…

Fey was an entry in Shadowline comics’ ”Create a superheroine” contest. The winning entry would be published as a three-issue miniseries by Shadowline. Fey was rejected without comment, but as Shadowline apparently had several thousand entries I don’t feel at all discouraged by this. I don’t intend to try to get it published anywhere else, though. The comic market is notoriously difficult to break into for solo writers (which is why Shadowline’s competition was flooded by entries) and I am not committed enough to employ an artist to illustrate my pitch.

I later entered the proposal in a “just for fun” competition and got some good feedback on it. The main criticism was that although it was competently written it had nothing, apart from the setting, to make it stand out from the hunderds of other comics on the shelves.

Which is true. But I personally still like the character and the setting. I just accept that I’ll never do anything with it.

So I’ve uploaded the pitch and five pages of script (all that exist, outside my head) onto my web site. In case anybody is interested.

I didn’t finish all the things I wanted to do but the concert reviews have started again and I’ve started tidying things up.

Hopefully there will be some Real Stuff to download within the next few days.

And the bullet points in my last post totally lacked bullets. Something wrong with the WordPress editor but I don’t know what. I shall investigate.

So, things have been quiet on the writing front. But things have been happening. In a quiet sort of way.

• I submitted a story proposal last week. I can’t say anything about it yet, but if anything happens I’ll report it here.
• I’ve been entering several writing competitions. Only for fun (and practice), not for real publication or prizes or anything like that. But it does mean I have been writing things (and people have been reading them). I’m planning to put the entries up on my web site (as it’s unlikely I’ll ever seriously submit any of them for publication.
• The web site itself has been completely untouched since December. I’m tidying it up a bit at the moment and there should be a couple of concert reviews going up in the next few days. So that will feel like progress.
• I am completely unmotivated to write any more of Heroes. It’s not abandoned; it’s just on hold for the forseeable future.

Well, that’s about all. Hardly worth reporting, except I wanted to keep up the blogging momentum. Something more concrete coming next time…

There are three things you need to do if you’re a writer.

1) Have an idea.

Ideas aren’t hard. Ideas come to me faster than I can deal with them. A couple of weeks ago, I was asked to pitch a story idea to fit a specific format. I started with nothing. I walked down to the supermarket and by the time I reached it (about 20 minutes) I had a fully-formed idea. Ideas are easy. I can have six ideas before breakfast (not always good ones).

People who think they want to be writers but don’t have any ideas what to write about probably shouldn’t really be writers. Have an idea first, and then decide to write about it. Don’t decide to write something and then have to beg for ideas. You’re in the wrong business if you’re doing that. Seriously.

2) Know the mechanics.

Yes you need to know grammer and have a decent vocabulary and understand how to structure your writing on the large and small scale. You need to learn all this before you start writing.

This isn’t difficult. Grammar and structure and vocabulary can be learned. It’s a skill like any other, and you put the time in to learn it and practice it just as you would any other skill.

The mechanics aren’t hard.

3) Sit down and write.

This is what’s hard about writing. The mental discipline to sit down and turn all the great ideas and knowledge into written words. Since last summer I’ve had a dozen writing projects I should have done, and I just haven’t done them. I should be finishing the next issue of Heroes (it’s been two-thirds written for months). I should be fixing The Hero and the Ice Queen and submitting it somewhere (it needs two minor changes to improve the ending, a total of 10 minutes’ work). I should be starting any of the other publishable ideas I have in the back of my mind.

If I sit at the keyboard and concentrate, I can write a short story in an afternoon. I have the ideas and I know the mechanics. There should be nothing stopping me from writing something productive right now.

But I’m not. I’m finding a hundred other pointless things to waste time on.

Because writing is really HARD.

Who knew that blogs had to have names? I didn’t, until I was installing WordPress and it asked me for a blog title. I hadn’t put any thought into it at all, and the installation was stalled until I entered something, so I used the first title that popped into my head — and it so happened that I was listening to the album Dear Someone by Rachel and Lillias at the time.

Rachel plays the harp and sings (in English and Gaelic). Lillias Kinsman-Blake plays the flute. And the album sounds like… exactly what you would expect an album with harp, flute and voice to sound like. Only better. It’s absolutely beautiful. My favourite new album of the year, so far.

So now you know. (Not that anybody had asked.) Anyway, I think it fits.