Hey guys, it's Scott.
It is Tuesday, January 31st. How did January already pass us by? I have no idea. Quick bit of housekeeping before we get to Two Question Tuesday. This coming Monday, January 6th, is the FOC (Final Order Cutoff) for Clear #1. This is a creator-owned book that I did with good friend and artist extraordinaire Francis Manapul. It's a sci-fi noir mystery that imagines a future where everybody connects to the internet biologically and can skin the world however they want through their own vision. So it's sort of a future in which everybody insulates themselves from reality by looking at the world cosmetically through things called ‘veils’ that make the aesthetics of the world look however you want, so 1940s Glamour or World War Three—whatever you want to look out and see, the world look like it looks like that even if the superstructure is the same.
So it's a visual buffet and an incredibly dazzling, kaleidoscopic book that Francis just does next level work on. But it's also a personal book about a scary future in which everybody lives in subjective bubbles and avoids anything confrontational. And the main character, detective Sam Dunes, keeps his setting on ‘Clear,’ which allows you to see the world as it is. And so it's a mystery that takes us from the twisted underbelly of this future all the way to the heights of power. And it's a book that Francis and I came up with a few years ago based on our fears for our kids living in a time when different algorithms and systems just continue to push things at them more and more aggressively that they're comfortable with as opposed to things that make them uncomfortable. I hope you'll check it out!
And then next week, the week after that on Monday, February 13th, is the FOC for the very first issue of our new arc of Nocterra, which is issue #12. This is Tony Daniel's return. We push the book back a tiny bit because Tony, he was very open with this on social media or I wouldn't say it otherwise, his daughter had some health issues and even though the comic issues had been done (and we're working on the fourth of five issues now for the arc), we didn't feel like we'd be able to give it our full attention in terms of promotion or just get into the spirit of it until things were in a better place, which they are now. So I hope you'll order high!
Now for questions from you guys. One is sort of an amalgamation of a couple questions that I got, which are:
“How do you convince people when you're writing that you're really working?”
And the answer is: you can't. You do your best. But I got asked this by a number of people, and the basic gist is whether they are professional writers or aspiring writers who have other jobs and day jobs, how do you convince the people in your life that when you're working and you've isolated this time to write, that you really are doing something that can't be interrupted. That's just a problem that I think every writer I know has, whether they're by themselves or they're with a significant other or others of some kind. And it's a balance you're going to have to figure out for yourself, but most people I know who are in the creative arts run into the problem at some point, if they're with somebody else, of having to convince that person that they are doing a real job when they are home. For me, it's why I built the studio off the house, because it's like when I'm in the studio, I really am at work. It's like I can imagine I'm in California or I'm in Boston or far away, and I can't come to the house to do things. It doesn't mean that I'm not highly involved in my kids lives and here doing plenty of house stuff and all of that. It’s not like, “hey, I go off to work and everybody else does this,” it just means that during that isolated time, I'm really devoted to writing.
And, of course, things will happen. There'll be an emergency, a kid will get sick, or something will happen and I have to run an errand. But for the most part, drawing as close as you can to walls around that time and space that you create for yourself to write, whether it's a single hour a day at one in the morning (which was my old life back when I was teaching and before I broke in), whether it was four in the morning (before I had to go teach), that hour and a half or two hours, whatever that was, that was my writing time. And it was as important, if not more important, than my quote unquote “real job.” So if you can think of it that way for yourself, like, “this is your superpower. This is your secret identity. This is the thing that matters the most to you.” And when you isolate that time, whether it's all day, because you're a professional writer and you need four to five hours or whatever it is, or an hour and a half, whatever you can manage in your personal life and whatever is a healthy balance for you.
Once you decide that and you designate that time as your creative working time, you've got to protect it. Don't take calls, don't look at the internet, don't procrastinate, don't say “hey, I'm happy to do this or that.” Of course, be a good partner, be a good person in your family. But during that period, you've got to also be good to yourself as a writer, as a creative. But it is a struggle. Believe me, to this day it's hard when I'm out in a studio if it's like, “hey the garbage” or “hey this” or “hey that.” It's a struggle not to come in and do errands not just because I'm being asked, but sometimes part of it is procrastination and part of it is other responsibilities. But that is a responsibility, and that is your work and that's who you are if you want to be a writer, and you've got to protect that too.
Second question:
J@n3K3rn asks, “Do you ever struggle with feeling like your ideas are not original enough? How do you work through those doubts on your own?”
I absolutely feel that way. I think everybody feels that way. You'll come up with an idea and be like, “did somebody already do this?” Like Nocterra—a darkness falls over the earth and darkness changes people into monsters. I'm sure somebody has done a variation of that in some way. Similarly, when I'm on Batman—the Joker is coming back, and this time he's going to show Batman that they're destined to be together in some way without family distracting them (in Death of the Family), or that he's eternal and Batman is mortal and so on (in Endgame). Those things are not inherently original ideas. I mean, I hope there's originality to them. A secret organization hiding in the shadows of Gotham that's been there a long time is not necessarily the most original idea, right? There was the Black Glove and other things like the Court of Owls. But the thing that makes it original, in my opinion, is investing your own hopes and fears in it in such a way that those things become nuanced. They create details. They create new characters, they create villains, they create monsters, they create gadgets and all kinds of stuff if you follow the right compass for it.
So if I'm doing Court of Owls, they’re not an original idea. But when I say I want the legacy, what really was worrying me at that time, was a history of Batman, this crushing weight that I felt coming on to a book I felt ill prepared to write. So how do I do that? How do I create a secret organization that represents that history? Well, what animal can I use? What's something that's predatory? Okay, an owl. Well, they hide, so they're hiding in the shadows. Well okay, what if they have an assassin? okay, then that's a Talon. the claw of an owl. Okay, but what if they have them every decade? That's cool. Alright, how do we make something that gets closer and closer to Bruce and makes him feel like he knows less and less about himself and the city? Okay, well, they're in buildings, they're in the Wayne buildings. Okay, well, maybe it's tied to Dick Grayson… and it goes further and further. It becomes more and more original is the point, because I'm following the thing that attracts me to the idea in the first place.
Nocterra, I want it to be about a bunch of people that start to realize they can't just bring back the sunlight, but have to make something better on this side of it and bring back an even more powerful light. Okay, well then how do I do that? Let me pick somebody as the beginning character who's absolutely jaded about things. Well, what if she was born in darkness? Okay, that's cool. That starts to make it more original. What if all the human shades, then, are harbingers of this eternal, universal darkness and want to make something here that they think is natural? Okay, well then now I have a more interesting monster.
All of it comes from the same engine. What is this about for me? What is the fear of the hope I'm trying to express or explore through this? And then that leads to originality. Personal leads to originality, that's really all it is. When you put your own hopes and fears in something, it's inherently original and yours, okay? If you're just thinking of it as a plot, very few things are totally original. Very, very few things I’ve done, for sure. But what makes them original is when you follow your own hopes and fears down the rabbit hole creatively and let yourself start making things in that story, your decisions in that story, that are dictated by those things that keep you up at night. I hope that answers that question. Again, thank you guys for everything. I hope you'll order big on Clear and on Nocterra. You can already start ordering Nocterra, obviously, but the final order is the week after this coming Monday, which is the Clear one. So thank you guys again. Talk to you soon. Bye!
S
Newsletter #117: Making Time to Write