Alan Moore's 5 Tips for Would-Be Comics Writers
I was saddened tonight to notice that my Science Fiction Book Club edition of Watchmen is yellowing. Cheap acidic paper. Some time when I have more money I’ll have to see whether there’s a better hardcover edition.
I’d picked it up to reread my favorite bits. All of chapter 7. Parts of chapter 8. The end. I’m not much of a rereader, and this is about the only book I do that with.
When I was done, I turned to The Extraordinary Works of Alan Moore to see what Moore had to say about it there. I was shocked to see that he and Gibbons began it, still the graphic novel with the most tightly interwoven plot, without the ending in mind.
It also contains Alan Moore’s 5 Tips for Would-Be Comics Writers (emphasis in original.)
- Don’t
- No, really don’t
- DEFINITELY don’t — I mean it.
- Whatever you might be imagining about a life of writing, it’s not like that.
OK, if you’re going to anyway, if you’re going to be a writer of any quality, you will have to commit yourself to writing — which is something that, when you’re young and idealistic, sounds incredibly easy to do, but you should commit yourself to writing almost as if you were some ancient Greek or Egyptian commiting yourself to a god.
If you do right by the god, then the god may, at some point in the future, reward you. But if you slack off and don’t do right by your talent or your god, then you are heading for a world of immense and unimaginable pain. If you have a gift that you choose to pursue, then you have to pursue it seriously. Don’t be half-assed about it, but realize what that commitment means.
Committing yourself to writing will mean, to a certain extent, your writing will become the most important part of your life — and that’s a big thing to say. It can have a distancing effect upon other relationships. It can be sometimes quite a solitary life. If you’re committed to your writing, you’re going to spend most of your life indoors in a silent, empty room, concentrating on a pen and a piece of paper or their equivalent. Be prepared to take it seriously and be prepared to follow where it takes you, even if that takes you to some very strange places.
This is by no means the most glamorous profession.
Don’t say that I didn’t warn you.
Many years ago, I thought I wanted to be a professional writer. As time went on, reading and talking to real professional writers disabused me of that notion. Alan Moore's advice is another good data point for those who don't really understand what they'd be getting into.
As I got older and wiser, I realized that what I really wanted to do was hang around Manhattan with lots of money to spend. And for most people, there are easier ways to do that than writing fiction.
Posted by Jimcat on March 18 2004 05:45
This post also prompted me to look over my own copy of Watchmen again. My copy of the collected paperback graphic novel, which I purchased way back during the 1988 Christmas season, is holding up excellently. Ah, the good old days, when men were real men, women were real women, and comic books were real comic books.
Personally, I found chapters 4 and 11 to be the most compelling. But then, I've always had a fondness for supermen.
I remember when the original comics first came out, I'd just gotten to college, Marvel comics were mired in some worthless "Yet More Secret Wars" crossover, DC had just started to revive itself with the "Man of Steel" relaunch, and "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" was still an edgy alternative comic. And then came something truly new under the sun.
Issue 10 came out right around the end of the school year. Then issue 11 sometime in the early summer, and as the nation sweltered under the endless drought and heat wave of the summer of '87, I listened to Adrian Viedt reveal the structure of his history and plans in his Antarctic refuge. Then the agonizing wait for the conclusion... but then, "Nothing ends, Adrian. Nothing ever ends."
Shortly after I bought the collected edition, I lent it to my then-girlfriend. She was impressed, even though she'd never been a comic reader. A few years after we broke up, I picked up the book to re-read it, and found one of her hairs between the pages. I'm sure that Jon Osterman would have appreciated the irony of the connection.
Posted by Jimcat on March 22 2004 16:40