[My Leap Year is a 12-month life project at the end of which I intend to be writing full-time. 365 small steps = 1 giant leap.]
Obviously, I’ve given the website a new look. I needed a change. Something brighter, lighter and more optimistic. Something to match the feel of a Leap Year.
My previous post brings me back to the “quality > quantity” idea I mentioned yesterday. This week’s release of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: The Black Dossier struck the same chord. These are new books by two of my favorite writers, but they don’t come with a quick turnaround time. The Black Dossier was originally solicted for October of last year, but came out this week. And there’s a two-month wait for each issue of All-Star Superman, even when it’s on time.
But the wait is always worth it. These books are amazing reads.
I’m not arguing for lateness and delays here. In fact, as a reader and retailer it’s one of my pet peeves. There seems to be this atmosphere in comics where once you’re a hit creator or your working on a hit title, then lateness is acceptable. And these days, apparently inevitable. But the same creators used to produce on-time monthly books for the same publishers before they were such big names. By no means am I laying this all at the creators’ feet. I also think, in a rush to create hype, that the publishers get ahead of themselves with their solicitations.
Pet peeve.
My point is that there may be 52 issues of Countdown in the time it takes to put out 6 issues of All-Star Superman, but the latter is exceptional, while the former struggles to attain mediocracy (Sadly, despite having Sean McKeever on the writing team. I’m a HUGE fan of his Spider-Man Loves Mary Jane. It would definitely have been a You Should Be Reading This if the run wasn’t over). I’m seeing more and more the role that time plays in crafting quality stories. This is not a hard and fast rule (see the top of my Writer Services page for my stance on writing rules), but it’s what I’ve been thinking about.
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What I’ve tried doing lately (not with too much success yet, but I’m still tweaking it) is creating projects that I work on with release intentions.
The first mess of stories I thought of were all closed stories with specific events and endings. I realized that one part of working in the comic industry is the ability to write stories that don’t have strict pre-determined ending and can also change i direction continually due to editorial needs or other extenuating circumstances.
What I do is I set out to come up stories that essentially have different intentions. One day I’ll come up with something that’s supposed to end up as a long graphic novel. The next time I’ll set out to develop a story that has no certain ending, and I’ll specifically only plan out the first storyline or two, and possibly one overarching theme for the first while. I’ll also come up with mini-series, or very long epic series with definite endings but a lot in between.
I don’t know if any of that’s useful commentary on timing, but it’s the way I’ve been dealing with how I decide how to do it when I do write.