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.

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 This was just for fun and to get some feedback from other writers, but now I have a page for unpublished writing on my site, I have a place to store the entries for posterity.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.

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.

Although I often write with music playing, I don’t edit with songs playing.

Friday night I broke the rule and started copy-editing my latest story while listening to David Gilmour live in Gdansk.

I was doing ok until I had to sing along to Wish You Were Here. Then playing air guitar to Comfortably Numb completely finished me off. It’s impossible to read something accurately if you don’t have your full attention on it, and if you’re not reading something accurately then you’re not editing it properly.

Last night I finished the editing to Vaughn Williams’s 9th Symphony. This isn’t quite as bad, as there are no words to sing along to, but it’s still not good. If music is any good, it has to be listened to. Putting it on as ‘background’ is pointless. So with a complex symphony I still have part of my attention following the music and I’m not reading properly.

The only real way to edit is in silence. Or with background noise that you don’t need (or want) to listen to. I’m thinking that doing it on the beach, listening to waves and seagulls, might be the best approach. Unfortunately it’s going to be months before we get good enough weather to try it out.

(This post was brought to you with the accompaniment of Ravel, Daphnis and Chloe Suite No. 2.)

I firmly believe there is no such thing as writer’s block. There is only writer’s laziness.

So all summer I’ve been promising to resume writing my Heroes serial after a short break. And the break has dragged on longer and longer…

Not because I don’t know what to write. I’ve had the entire issue plotted and large chunks of it in my head. I’m just too lazy to sit down and type it. I kept thinking I had something more important to do (I didn’t), or that I didn’t have a big enough block of time to write it in one go (I did), or that it was the wrong time of the month (er…).

Anyway I took today off work and vowed to get it finished or die trying. I wasted the morning watching TV, I went out for lunch and ate too many donuts, I went for a long walk down the beach… and the hours slowly vanished…

So the next time somebody tells you they have writer’s block, you’ll know what they really have…

P.S. I finished the issue. It will go on line this weekend.

When I write a comic script, I always try to break a scene at the bottom of a page.

When I read other people’s comics, I don’t see the same thing. Sometimes it happens, but not always. Scenes break all over the place, in the middle of pages.

End-of-page scene breaks seem to be my own personal quirk. Not a deliberately-adopted quirk, just something I started doing because it felt right at the time.

Sometimes it’s awkward to get the pacing to fit around it. But I don’t see anything bad about it from a story-telling point of view, so I’ll probably keep doing it.

Yes, this post does mean that I’ve started writing Heroes again after my long summer break.

I was walking down the sea front this morning, with a huge storm out to sea, sky and water both grey, with waves breaking right over the lighthouse at the end of the pier. I was listening to Arnold’s Concerto for Viola & Chamber Orchestra, which has a wild and angry first movement that perfectly matched the weather.

And I looked at all this, and thought it ought to inspire me to write something.

But it didnt. No ideas came to mind at all.

So I started composing a blog post while I walked. I thought, “I will write that I looked at all this and thought it ought to inspire me to write something. But it didnt. No ideas came to mind at all.” And while I was thinking that, I had an idea for a character I could introduce in the afternoon’s game, somebody with weather control powers. And by the time I was home I had all his abilities, background and personality worked out, as well as those of his two team mates, and their relationships. I knew exactly how and why to introduce them into the game’s plot.

So I did have an idea.

But the idea wasn’t triggered by the storm. Not really. The idea came from me thinking about writing. Or possibly not even that. It was just an idea.

Writers are supposed to get inspiration from things. They are supposed to be able to answer questions about where their ideas come from. Well I like Neil Gaiman’s answer to that question: “I make them up.” That’s what happens. Everything you see and hear, and have seen and heard your entire life, adds to your collected store of knowledge, and you need that knowledge inside you or you’ll never get anywhere. But when you need an idea for a character or plot or setting, the idea doesn’t come from anywhere. You just think hard and make something up.