New Year’s Resolutions

This year’s are going to be pretty simple and straight forward I think, they look like this:

1. Talk less
2. Work more
3. Get into print
   

I like talking about comics, I like thinking about comics, particularly my own, but it takes up time that I could be using to MAKE comics. Clear enough distinction I believe. ‘Work more’ is simply a case of keeping my nose to the grind stone, making sure that I do work for the two hours a day I set aside for comics. Anything less means resistance is winning big time. Everyone wants to get into print, add me to the list! I love seeing art appear from the scripts I’ve written, finished pieces even more so, which means having something to hold of my own is the major goal for this coming year.

Happy New Year to you all, let’s make it a good one.

Heartless

Inspiration strikes! Went on a complete writing spree today. I wrote roughly fifteen pages of a first draft for a story idea, called Heartless, I thought I’d have trouble getting off the ground. Have to give some credit to Jimmie Robinson whose workblog at Panel and Pixel was a genuine kick in the pants. Hanging around ideas for ever and a day isn't healthy, get them down, get them out and move on to the next one. The fact that he could put a good part of the idea together so quickly smacked the hell out of a serial procrastinator like myself and, suitably admonished, I started researching the difficult idea. Unlike other misguided forays, ‘research’ this time around meant locating some valuable information, not boobies, though the science for it is still melting my brain cell – anyone know a good physics teacher?

From the success of the research and some quick structural wins, rare enough to warrant a suitable pause should celestial bodies then wish to dump on me, my fingers tapped their way happily into several fun pieces of dialogue and a finish I’m well chuffed with. Though I still find myself fighting not to use dialogue as an ‘in’ to a scene, which often leads to the inevitable act of getting carried away writing he-said-she-said, today I managed to strike a decent balance. More than that I have an estimated outline of five issues, possibly four given the one issue seems to be a little vague, the beats for each issue and almost a complete draft for #1. Plus I watched a bloody great rugby game. Today was a good day.
I’m off down the pub.

Actual Comics

So I guess one of the questions you’re asking yourself upon reading this blog is: does this guy actually write anything? I do and although as the blog title suggests I am some distance from being somebody, or anybody for that matter, I recently had a short story accepted for an anthology called Work! An interesting mix of the workers movement and its music, Work! couldn’t be more relevant than in this current climate of financial turmoil, where the fat cats get paid off while the workers join the ever lengthening dole queues.

Work! is the brainchild of Tim Twelves and Eric Palicki, bringing together a number of short stories based on the songs and anthems of the workers movement. From John Barleycorn to Sloop John B, the songs are used as the base for creators to interpret and re-imagine into stories that are relevant and interesting. Being Welsh my contribution focuses on the coal mines. Coal mining was a huge part of Wales at the end of the nineteenth and start of the twentieth century, employing anywhere up to a fifth of our total population. My great-grandfather was a miner, my grandfather was a miner and so many friends and family from the area at the time were miners. As such it has had a huge effect on the national consciousness and it’s landscape. But it was dangerous, very dangerous at the start of the coal boom. So I wanted to write something a little bit sobering and relevant to the tough conditions everyone, young or old, worked under. In a list of suggestions Tim posted, I came across this: http://www.bobdylanroots.com/miner1.html which gave form to an idea I’d been chewing over since I read about the anthology.

Obviously I’m not going to give the story away, I’d rather you read it and all the other stories in the anthology the way we hope you will, book in hand. But I can give you a decent idea of what’s to come from myself because a few weeks back Tim e-mailed me the first images of the pencils for the story, by a talented artist named Chris Fenoglio. So here are the first two pages of pencils with more about the Work! Anthology to come later in the week.

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