Change Yourself, Change Everything, by Merlin
Dec14
Merlin’s amazing, isn’t she?
I’m glad she did this, our proposal to an anthology got rejected and I’ve been taking it hard, very hard. Absolutely no mental shape to make comics. Merlin’s picking up the slack with amazing enthusiasm, though. You will hear about our revised plans for this story in the near future.
That’s pretty friggin’ sweet. I like the lighting.
Take care of yourself, Speedball. And thank you, Merlin, for helping. 🙂
No Speedball! I wanna hear a story! Please Please be in a mood to write comics soon! From what I’ve heard, writing is a really tough business and you can expect to get lots of rejections.
Don’t give up, Speed. Rowling got rejected several time (don’t remember exact number but it was close to 40) before someone decided to release Harry Potter.
Hey, I know, rejection can be hard. But remember, it’s never an ironclad measure of worth… many utterly brilliant artists and writers have had equally brilliant work turned down for any number of reasons. Of course, it’s always important to take into account what we might have done better, but that’s a rule that never turns off. This shouldn’t be a special occasion.
Listen, this reminds me of a story one of my professors told me once. I forget most of the details, but it has to do with Hal Foster. If you don’t know, Hal was the creator of Prince Valiant, one of the great-grands of newspaper comics since 1937. And he was a masterful talent, truly an exceptional sequential artist. Once he set out to apply himself to a particular page, a majestic vista of a medieval castle… I saw the picture, and sure, it was an extraordinary work of art. The guy slaved over this one spread, and it would have been marvelous… except his publisher decided to reject it. The reason? He felt like Hal needed to be “taken down a peg.” Not that Foster had really done much to deserve it, and not that it wasn’t quality work… no, there was no motivation beyond a guy pushing papers thinking that the employees had to take it on the chin now and then to keep ’em humble.
And hey, I’ve been rejected too, plenty of times, for plenty of reasons… sometimes I tell myself it’s because I didn’t apply myself properly, other times I say it’s because the guys in charge didn’t know just what I could do with my proposal. Either way, we shouldn’t attach too much weight to empty space. And that’s all it is, really, when something falls through.
This comic keeps drawing me back to find out what happens next. There’s a compassion to your writing, which I think is a central good thing about it. Don’t let rejection get you down. You are good at what you do.
Woah, looking badass there!
Always hard dealing with rejection, obviously. But if it helps, Speed: We really enjoy your storytelling! Good work, man, good work!
You are all angels. Thank you so much. I treasure each of these.
You’re welcome. It’ll be really great to see that anthology thing. Have you considered self-publishing?
Way too goddamn expensive for a small-timer like me. I’d need to Kickstart it and I don’t have nearly enough exposure to have a hope of getting people to buy in.
Really? Unibook was quite cheap last time I’ve checked.