Tapas

Bite-sized morsels which, today, won't even add up to a light meal . . .

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Yesterday I saw a TV commercial that struck me as the strangest thing. It was advertising Valentine's Day apps for the iPhone (I think) that allow you to send greetings, animations, tunes, and I don't even know what-all to your sweetheart. Tell me if I'm off-base here, but I started yelling at my TV screen: "You have a phone in your hand! Call them up and tell them you love them yourself!"

I dunno. Sometimes I don't understand the 21st century.

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My presence here and on Facebook has been light lately, and will probably continue that way for a while. It's for a good cause. I am putting as much time and energy as I can into doing "thumbnails" for Mystery Project X, which I hope will be my next graphic novel, and whenever I have 20 minutes to spare they go toward that.

Thumbnailing is an interesting process of basically sketching the entire book showing the placement of panels, figures and dialog to give a very rough idea how it might look. I'd post an example but at this point I'm not sure I could even show you a page without giving away more than I want to. Later, for sure. Anyway, thumbnailing is harder than it looks. The layout of panels and words determines how the story flows and pulls the reader's eye through the pages. It's like the foundation and framing of a house: no one will see it later but everything is shaped by it. You'd think dashing off a sketch would go quickly, and maybe it does for some people, but it can take me an hour just to figure out whether a bit of story requires four or five or six or seven or eight panels and how they ought to be arranged. Plus I'm trying some layouts that are modestly innovative (or at least unusual) yet must still be clear enough for readers to follow effortlessly. Plus I'm researching some "special effects" that of course turn out to be more complex than I expected. Plus I discovered I don't know how to draw chickens.

It's fun but it hurts my brain.

With luck, the work I'm putting in now will make my job simpler and faster later, and not be entirely in vain. As I've paraphrased before: if it were easy, everybody would do it.

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I think I mentioned a while ago that I'd drawn a couple of sample pages for a friend putting together an anthology of short comics on a common theme so brilliant I can't believe no one's done it before. It's one of those ideas where I shouted "Yes, I'm in!" one sentence into the pitch. Last I heard, that project is still alive. I hope so. It'd be nice to have something in print in the relatively near future (even if Mystery Project X goes full steam ahead, I wouldn't expect it to drop before 2013) and an honor to be part of. The second I can tell you all about it, assuming it flies at all, you won't be able to shut me up.

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Happy Valentine's Day! Do something nice for somebody. Remember, nothing says "I love you" more than pushing a button on an iPhone.
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Colleen Doran Puts a Burr Under My Saddle

Mark Evanier posted this interview with writer and artist Colleen Doran. I don't know Ms. Doran and have only passing familiarity with her work, but she says two or three things in this short piece I found very interesting. If you've got five minutes, take a look then come back . . .



Mark described Colleen as an artist with unusual business acumen, which I think comes across. One of her points is the importance of a creative person understanding that his or her work has value. People who recognize that value more than the artist does will try to take advantage of it. It happens all the time. I know people who've made bad agreements in good faith and lost money, opportunities, or the right to work on or profit from their own creations.

A corallary of knowing your rights and what your work is worth is being willing to walk away from a bad deal. I think that can be tremendously hard to do. This may be the only offer you get! You'll rationalize that a bad deal is better than none--that getting your work into the world in any fashion is better than having it sit unseen in your drawer. I don't think so. Nothing will make you more miserable later than being stuck in a bad contract with exploitive jerks. (I emphasize I'm drawing lessons from the experience of friends, and haven't felt exploited myself. My dealings with my publisher and freelance clients have been respectful and fair.)

Colleen also touches on the economics of the Digital Age, our glorious "Information Should Be Free" era in which people would rather read Doran's work pirated on BitTorrent than on her website--where the content is already available free!--thus denying her the pennies in advertising revenue she would've gotten. I can't tell you how much this mindset of entitlement sticks in my craw, and the harm I foresee it doing to the creative arts.

Here's where I stand on that: Creators' rights are important. Copyright is important. I created something. It was hard work. It took a lot of time. Without me, it wouldn't exist. I get to decide if my work is best presented on paper, pixels, shadow puppets, or theater-in-the-round. If I want to give it away free, fine. If my publisher and I set a cover price of $14.95 or $24.95, you can pay it or not if you think it's worth it or not. Those are your only ethical choices. Downloading a copy that someone scanned without my permission is not an ethical choice. It is not the behavior of someone who professes to be a fan.

It's not about the money. I'm thrilled when people loan my books to friends or check them out of libraries. I think "Great, another reader!" not "Rats, another lost sale!" It's about respect. When you take my stuff, you're telling me it's literally worthless. I disagree. We may have a legitimate argument about whether it's worth $14.95 or $24.95, but it's not worthless.

A peripheral discussion comes up a lot in webcomic circles, where many cartoonists offer their comics for free and earn their living through advertising and product sales, sometimes derided as "selling mousepads and t-shirts." This is championed as the 21st-century business model that we'd better darn well get used to. Get on board or get left behind. It works for some people and I'm happy for them. What irks me is its fundamental assumption that the work itself--the writing and art that lures readers to the site so their eyeballs can be captured by ads--has no intrinsic value except as bait. There's something wrong with that.

What has more value than an idea no one has ever expressed in quite the same way? A story no one has told before? A character you'll never forget? Information you didn't know but which will enrich the rest of your life? A genuine laugh or tear? How much more valuable are "Macbeth" or "Starry Night" than a t-shirt or mug of the same?

It's an upside-down world, brother.

I've got no beef with someone who wants to give away their work, for whatever reason. When I serialized my Mom's Cancer webcomic it was free, with no advertising or product placement. I wanted my story to be read, and the Internet offered the easiest, cheapest way to present it to the world. I trusted that if readers thought the story was good, then good things would come from it. I was lucky; they did. That was an emotional and artistic choice rather than a business decision (it almost by definition couldn't have been a business decision, since no money was involved). The key is that it was my choice.

But I'm a writer, not a t-shirt salesman. I want to make words and pictures and stories that other people think are worth $14.95 or $24.95 or whatever price might earn enough that I can afford to make more. If I can't come up with material that's worth something to someone, I don't deserve to be in the business. Why would anybody with an ounce of self respect set out to create stuff they believe is worthless? Why would anybody read it?

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Well, There's Your Problem Right There

In a recent interview, NASA Administrator (and retired general and former astronaut) Charles Bolden said that President Obama gave him three priorities:

1. Re-inspire children to want to get into science and math.
2. Expand international relationships.
3. Find a way to reach out to the Muslim world and engage much more with dominantly Muslim nations to help them feel good about their historic contribution to science, math and engineering.

See, I'm just an old-fashioned 20th-century guy who remembers when NASA's priorities would have looked more like:

1. Put machines in space.
2. Put people in space.
3. Develop advanced technologies, materials, and systems to put machines and people in space.

Seems to me that if you do those three things right, then at least the first two of Bolden's priorities take care of themselves. As for the third, I think it better to leave Muslim self esteem to the U.N. and State Department, which have more appropriate resources than the slide-rule jockeys at NASA (also, doesn't it sound hugely condescending?).

Slide rules! There I go again . . .

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I'm reading David Sedaris's Naked, published in 1997 but new to me. I've read some of Sedaris's later work, including Me Talk Pretty One Day and When You Are Engulfed in Flames. He's a good, smart, witty storyteller, but man . . . if even one-tenth of the harrowing tales about his family and childhood are true, it's a miracle he survived to be a functioning adult, let alone a successful and relatively sane one.

As a fellow son and human being, I feel awful that young David had such a twisted upbringing. But as a writer, I confess I feel the same twinge of envy I did while reading David Small's excellent graphic novel Stitches: "Sure, it's easy to write great stuff when life hands you such terrific material!" What's a guy with a normal, happy life to do? Write about other people or make stuff up, I guess, all the while brooding because my family was way too loving and supportive. Darn my luck.
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I Just Don't Get It

The list of things I just don't get grows ever longer. Sometimes it's my fault: I haven't kept up, something slipped past me, I should have been paying attention. Sometimes it's by design: the moment a middle-aged middle-class square like me gets rap music, it has by definition lost its reason to exist. I like that about it. But sometimes . . . sometimes I'm pretty sure the world has simply gone mad.

Like last weekend, when I saw one of these:

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A woman walking her dog in a stroller. Now, this wasn't the first time I'd seen it, but it was the first time I'd really noticed and thought, "That's nuts!"

Sure, some dogs are old or infirm, and being wheeled around is their only way to experience the outdoors. Great. That doesn't account for the many manufacturers and vendors of dog strollers that seem to have sprung up overnight, nor the many apparently healthy, vigorous dogs I see in them.

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I mean . . . they're dogs! I've never known a dog yet that didn't love to walk! Sniffing every pole and bush, snapping alert to every bird and squirrel, checking the hydrant message board to see what their old buddy Bowser's been up to (and rolling in) lately. A walk around the block is a day at Disneyland for most dogs. Not to mention the value of exercise, or of wearing down their nails so they don't get overgrown. It seems cruel to deny it to them.

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My wife Karen pointed out that every dog she's ever seen in a stroller looks happy enough. I guess. But your dogs aren't your children--they're a different species, with different needs. I find it both funny and pitiable, and suspect a person pushing a dog stroller is saying a lot more about their own needs than their dog's.

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(If I've described any friends or readers of this blog, I'm sure you have excellent reasons and are the exception to the rule. Maybe you can explain it to me.)

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Dog strollers: I just don't get it.

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