Apologies on the delay, to anyone who cared...
I showed up at
New York Comic Con at about 11:15 am on Friday, having not even glanced at the
panel schedule. I walked a quick loop of the convention, marveling at the
collection of original Superman costumes on display at the far wing of the
Javits Center, passing by Rob Liefeld’s table (which strategically blocked any
view of his feet), and generally marveling at the scope and scale of it all. “Too
much” would be the running theme of the weekend.
Finally looking
at the brochure just before noon, my eyes immediately gravitated to “Writing
Workshop with Joe Stracynski.” I looked at the time – it was starting in 20
minutes. I quickly hustled into the bowels of the Javits and found the line,
right at the point where I was able to get one of the last seats.
Straczynski
opened by saying that conventions are a great place to get information from
experts, which is why, after an opening statement, he was going straight to the
question and answer portion of it.
“No questions
are out of bounds…. If this panel sucks, it’s your fault,” he cautioned.
His opening
statement was reminiscent of Neil Gaiman’s response to the question of “aren’t
there too many writers out there already?” He said, “You occupy a piece of turf
that no one else has, and that’s your prism, that no one else has,” pointing to
a girl in the front row as an example – that the story that she writes is one
that only she could ever write.
He also said
that if you were having trouble writing, “you’re probably tying to hard;
writing should not be homework…. The key is not to get in your own way. Where I
screw up is when I start to think ‘how do I write literally (with literature in
mind).’ There’s trying to write, and then there’s writing.”
This would be a
recurring idea throughout the talk.
Now, the
problem I always have, which was exacerbated by the fact that I was so suddenly
placed in this spot, is that when I’m confronted with someone I idolize, I
turtle. That is, I blank on what to say or do. Knowing this would be the case,
I texted my friend John as I entered the room.
“If you could
ask JMS one question, what would it be.” Having the benefit of 140 miles of
distance and a quicker wit, he answered, and as soon as Mr. Straczynski asked
for questions, mine was the first hand in the air.
“Is there
anything harder than starting something new? For example, switching gears from
an episode of a Ghostbusters cartoon to a Babylon 5 to a comic book, do you
have any tips for switching gears?”
Instead of
something deep and contemplative, he took no time to mull his answer.
“It’s not hard
at all. I love starting something new.”
He then let it
settle.
“Look, when
Picasso wanted to start a new period, he always did three things: He returned
to Spain, he got a new house, and he got a new woman, and that seemed to work
out pretty well for him…. The harder thing is three years down the road, trying
to stay fresh with the same characters.”
He then
referred to the old idea of the toolbox, that every time you complete
something, you add a tool to the box. When he started, all he had was an old
screwdriver, and over the years added a hammer, etc. After working on all of
those different projects, it prepared him for the next thing, made it easier to
adjust to something different.
Then, to make
it interesting, he turned it around and asked me, “What prompted you to ask
that question.”
Shit. I
couldn’t say, “Well, I couldn’t think of anything to ask, so I stole someone
else’s question,” so I told him that I was juggling three different projects,
all of which I felt were good ideas, and was having trouble jumping from one to
the next.
He then asked
me, “How many projects have you completed?”
He had me
again. My heart rate picked up. I
thought of my half-completed Master’s thesis, the rough draft of my comic, the
tattered pieces of my pulp novel. That epic about Richard Nixon that never
pieced itself together.
So I lied. I
lied to Joe Straczynski.
I said “One.”
He sat there
shaking his head, not mincing his words.
“Well there you
go. Pick one and get it the fuck done.” His fingers fluttered around his face.
“The other two things are like butterflies, flying in your face.”
It was an
obvious piece of advice, but coming from Joe Straczynski, directed at me, it came
with a certain amount of weight that left me wondering if I even could consider
myself a writer, having never really completed anything, always letting one
project get in the way of another and using it all as a crutch for never
finishing anything.
“Pick one and
get it the fuck done.”
This ties in
with the overall theme of the talk, which I can boil down to one word:
Confidence. The idea of taking your little piece of turf and having enough
faith in it to turn it into a thing.
He was quick to
caution people that this does not come easy. According to him, he writes “10-12
hours a day. Every day except my birthday, New Year’s Day and Christmas (later,
when someone asked how he had time to read or do research within that time
frame, he qualified it by saying “I consider research part of the writing
process.”).” In addition, he referred on several occasions to being a nighttime
writer, that he usually writes from around 8pm to 3 am, crashes, then wakes up
around noon and starts the process all over.
In addition,
once you get over the hump, it doesn’t get any easier. He quoted verbatim the
line from Harlan Ellison in “Dreams With Sharp Teeth”: “Becoming a writer isn’t
hard. Staying a writer is hard.” “Most writers in the union make $3,000 – 5,000
a year, selling one or two television scripts at a time, and then the industry
kind of sees what you have, and often times, that’s it.“
In a similar
vein, someone asked about writer’s block, to which he frankly responded “I’ve
never had writer’s block…. People tend to get writer’s block when they’re
trying to make their brains do something it doesn’t want to do.”
Despite this
assertion, he gave tips on how to avoid it.
“I don’t write
until I know what I’m going to say.” As an example, he mentioned how samurai
were required to have hobbies, because in having time to think things over,
they became better warriors.
He also
suggested finishing in the middle of a sentence, to prime the engine for the
next day.
In addition he
offered this perspective about writing:
“I’m not
telling the story. I’m watching the characters and writing down what they do…
let the characters do the writing for you…. Get out of your own way. Let them
do what they’re gonna do.”
This train of
thought led to the inevitable question of having days where you don’t feel like
writing. Straczynski was firm about this: It’s a job, like anything else. In
other professions, you don’t have the luxury of waking up and not going to
work.
“Many days I
wake up and feel like not writing… you do it anyway. I don’t care if you don’t
feel like writing; sit your ass in the chair.”
He also talked
a lot about world-building, something that John and I have had long discussions
about. His best piece of advice regarded a script he was writing for the Twilight Zone. He knew he had to write a
scene where a husband and wife were having an argument, but was having
difficulty making it sound realistic. He was going to argue over something big,
having to do with the rent – possible eviction. So he called up Harlan Ellison,
who yelled at him that it was stupid. Ellison suggested that the argument be
over jelly – that the husband asks the wife to pass the jelly at breakfast and
she passes him the jam, she always does that, always thinking them the same
thing when the husband knows they aren’t.
It was what he
referred to as a “specificity of ideas” – the notion that the smaller you go,
the more universal it becomes.
“You don’t say,
‘the room smells,’ you say, ‘the room smells like cabbage.’”
In addition, he
mentioned the idea of working backwards, to “take your character and ask how
they got there. G’Kar – warrior. How’d he get there? Lots of wars. Lizard like
– well, they’re probably from an arid planet with little water.”
Another
question that prompted an almost verbatim Ellison answer was when someone
mentioned blogging and “How much of your stuff should you give away for free?”
Again, the
answer was instantaneous.
“None of it.”
“People tend to
look a writing as being less serious than anything else (referring to other art
forms), and it’s not. You wouldn’t hire a carpenter to build you a shelf and
then not pay him, would you?” His answer was longer and more vitriolic (to the
point where my pen couldn’t keep up), but that’s what it boiled down to. He
even mentioned “being undercut by people like you,” with a wave to the crowd.
He finished
definitively with “Don’t give it away for free.”
The man who
asked the question attempted to save face by saying, “I don’t have a choice.”
Forcefully, JMS
said, “But you do. And when you say that, you just did.”
This then led
into the idea of personal blogging, and using it to build up an online presence
for your writing. Straczynski was for it,
“Every hour you
spent putting up a blog post, it’s an hour you spend not writing the next Great
American Novel… it’s not achieving the goal. Do the real work, then squeeze in
the free stuff.” He likened it to masturbating. Gratifying, perhaps, but
pointless in the long run.
The most
poignant moment of the day was when a sixteen year-old in Dr. Who get-up asked
something along the lines of “is there a minimum age that you can get
published.” Again, Straczynski wanted to know why the boy asked, how old he was,
etc. , and then proceeded to give the boy the longest, most heartfelt answer of
the day. He then said that he was envious of the boy, to know so young what he
wanted to do, that he was in the best position of anyone in the room. When
you’re that age, he said, you’re going to fuck up, and it’s the best time to do
so, because there are no repercussions. As an adult, if you fuck up your
writing, your livelihood is on the line. In high school, you’re allowed to,
you’re going to make mistakes, and the boy should take full advantage of it.
Possibly the
best quote, at least the one that resonated the most with me throughout the
weekend, and ties in well with the idea of confidence, was when Straczynski
said, “On a piece of white paper, you can be God.” This ties in with the idea
of confidence in your work.
“The faith in
yourself is what makes it easy.” He recounted his own upbringing, as a poor
white kid in an all-black school in Patterson, New Jersey, whose father’s
motives were to rack up as many bills as possible, then relocate when the
collectors started coming around. As he said on second day (at a different
panel), “If I, being the goofball that I am, can make it, than anyone in this
room can do the same thing… It’s not that big of a gulf between this dais and
where you’re sitting.”
Confidence that
you can make it work. It’s not easy, and it most likely will never get any
easier, but then again, being God isn’t supposed to be easy…
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