Post-Traumatic Tech Disorder

This is the first year for Wizard’s new offering in Texas. Lots of good guests, the primary convention hotel sold out a long while back…as well as the Artist Alley tables and Exhibitor booths. There will be lots to see…and hopefully a good crowd to match the event. If there’s a strong showing from the Texas area, this will probably become a regular event. So, if you’re in the Dallas area (or anywhere close) and you like comics, pop culture, anime, and the like…hop on over to Wizard World Texas and have some fun.

A special thanks goes out to all the people who enjoyed the story enough to give it a nomination vote. I’ve received lots of great emails and feedback at conventions about the story, and the artist for the story is picking up pace (he’s taken over the penciling duties on an Image book). “Dungeon Bears: An 80s Parody” did make it onto the final voting ballot, so if you’ve read the story and enjoyed it, please go participate in the voting at the Comic Book Resources message boards (open to everyone…you just have to register with the messageboards). If you’re a fan of comics, the CBR message boards and website also contain lots of great information and interaction with other comic fans (and even some pros)…so poke around while you’re there and see if something in the site or the community catches your attention.

Now, for those that haven’t read Dungeon Bears yet, here’s a special treat for you (and for those that have read it but don’t want to dig it out of your longboxes ^_^)…I’m posting the entire story on my website for you to enjoy. The files are about 170K to 200K each in size (sorry lo-bandwith people, but I wanted to make sure it was still easily legible). The last two aren’t quite as high in quality as the first three (I scanned the last two pages in because I don’t have the lettered files yet). Enjoy!

Dungeon Bears page 1
Dungeon Bears page 2
Dungeon Bears page 3
Dungeon Bears page 4
Dungeon Bears page 5

I’m sure people have heard the sayings–writers write, pencilers pencil, and all that. But the same can be said about the negative aspects of the arts…quitters quit. It’s actually much easier to quit sometimes than go through all the hard work it takes to create comics. Why is that? Well, one big factor is instant gratification. When you quit, you suddenly reclaim time to play more video games, spend more time at the bar, and stuff your face with dessert sandwiches made out of chocolate bars, pudding, and whipped cream. You also have one less project to stress over, so your blood pressure goes down…your hair starts to grow back…and your hypochondria eases up a bit.

Of course, there are instances where it’s nearly impossible to quit…when you’re addicted. Giving up smoking? How about caffeine? Or sweets? Quitting isn’t always a bad thing. When you actually think about it, quitting can be a form of sacrifice to help bring your life in line with your goals. Set a goal and try not to give up anything to achieve it. Want to lose weight? You’ll probably need to give up a lot of your favorite foods and some of your time for exercise. Want to watch a weekend-long MST3K marathon? You’ll lose out on time for other projects, sleep, and you might even sacrifice a little sanity along the way.

When I decided to get serious with my writing, I gave up a lot of my late nights playing games to make time for it. I also gave up an hour of sleep each night to get up early and work on my craft. My TV watching dropped to minimal levels as well, but that’s to give myself more time with the family (so they don’t feel left out when I’m locked away in my office writing).

Unfortunately, giving up so many different things to go after a goal also helps make it easier to quit later on. Think of how much you had to quit to go after a single goal. That’s a lot of practice, isn’t it? And if you have time to work on your projects, then you’ve been practicing how to quit other things correctly. You need to put that kind of practice into your creative endeavors as well, or you’ll be tempted to fall back to something you’re good at…quitting. But you can practice all the time and still feel the urge to quit.

So, how can you increase your odds of not giving up and falling back to all that well-practiced quitting? You get yourself addicted. Give yourself time to enjoy the rush of creating something new. Reward yourself whenever you stick to your goals and when you do a good job. Take a break every now and then to do something weird with your artwork…something fun. Set yourself up, so that you always feel your creativity overwhelming you to the point where you have no choice but to follow that path. Get yourself to the point where you stop thinking about how much you’re giving up and sacrificing to be a creator and start filling your thoughts with your creations instead.

Let’s flip back to the creative side real quick. You’re now addicted to all that fun creative stuff. You write or pencil all the time. But if you don’t take the effort to tear apart and analyze your work and guide all that practicing towards improvement, you’ll just be spinning your wheels. If you write and draw all the time, but do it wrong, you’re just reinforcing all those bad habits (and making them more difficult to break later on). So, it’s not enough to just write or draw all the time unless you constantly review your work with a critical eye to push yourself to improve your craft. Get the most out of the time you’ve made for yourself. To paraphrase from George Leonard’s book, Mastery–practice perfectly.

So, be a quitter! Quit the things you can afford to sacrifice to reach your goals, quit viewing the world through a pessimistic lens, quit worrying about your big break not showing up, and quit reinforcing bad habits in your craft. Quit those things, so you can reclaim the time, develop the positive attitude and practice the skills you need to reach your goals.

One of the greatest assets of the artistic creator is…well…creativity. Whether they work in a medium of words, pencils, ink, colors, or nifty sound effects and logos, creativity is a crucial part of the process. When the creative thoughts don’t flock to them, they stumble into a block and find themselves staring at the blank page for what seems like an eternity. And many just sit there…staring…waiting for their muse to enlighten them and lead them to the promised land of creative genius. Why? You can’t just sit around waiting for inspiration–it’s too sly and evasive for that. You have to hunt it down. So, grab your orange reflective vests and your camouflage socks and get ready to track down some creativity out in the wild.

Know where to find your prey. If you’re in the middle of the wilderness starving to death, it doesn’t do any good to set a trap or spend your time hunting in an area with no animals. Is there a water hole nearby? Is there a trail leading to it with a variety of different tracks along it? Guess what you might find there? Our prey is a little different. It’s bits of fashion or culture or psychology or science or history twisted around into something fresh and exciting. It’s information and observations tossed into our brain blender and pureed into an imagination smoothie. So, where does this information come from? A blank page? Not hardly. Stop staring at it and track down the fruit you need to squeeze for those creative juices. It lurks in pictures, conversations, news articles, history, scientific advancements, nature, events, and anywhere else you can learn something or spark a response from your senses and emotions.

Follow the trail. When you find a source of information that looks promising, don’t just stop there–follow the trail. If that bit of information whets your creativity appetite, chances are good that it could lead to some bigger game. Let yourself get lost in a sea of ideas, whimsies, data, and imagery. Let yourself leap freely from one intriguing tidbit of information to the next. Explore as much of the trail as you can and gather the resources you’ll need to capture your prey.

Tag it. What about when you find something that sparks your interest or triggers some thoughts and emotions? Tag it. Write it down, clip it out, or sketch it…and then file it away. If it triggers some reaction in you now, it will do the same later on. Build a file of ideas, thoughts, and possibilities that you can snack on whenever your mind’s starving for creativity. Leave yourself a trail that allows you to wander those paths you found again…and again…and again.

Corral those ornery critters. You have all this information now that’s running around wild and free like a pack of animals. You can just browse through some of this data and try to spot the inspiring information, or you can attempt to corral those ideas and put the one you want within reach. Just take a few random bits of data from your file, and let them run wild across the plains of your mind. Now, figure out a way to logically pull them together and guide them along. Let the ideas feed off of each other until you can shape the strange or opposing ideas into a logical, cohesive pattern. Take the chaos of the world and find a way to guide it into a premise that people might think, “If things were just a tiny bit different, this could really happen.” Practice pulling these stray ideas together and train your mind to constantly look for the creative patterns in the ideas around you.

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What? You thought we were going to actually hunt creativity with rifles, shoot it and drag it back to the house on the hood of our truck to carve up into creativity chops? But that only provides you with a limited amount of ideas…if you want your creativity to grow and be easily accessible, you need to have a lot of lively ideas at your disposal. Be the smart hunter…capture and secure them in a place where they’ll grow and spawn even more ideas. Ideas that are easy to get to and will last for a long while.

Fair warning here–we’re not really going to be conducting ritual acts of voodoo and black magic to charm our way into the ranks of comicdom. It’s more like an exercise to psychologically reinforce your positive “can do” attitude and exorcise the demons of negativity. Those of you that still think it would be better to just sneak your way in with the help of actual magic, just skip this article and contact me at iwannalearnpatiencenow@darkora.net (and wait for a response before taking any action).

Bad reviews, harsh critiques, rejection letters, overwhelming self-doubts, and obstacle after obstacle toss up the roadblocks on the road to your dreams. These things add up and can even rattle the best of us at times. To keep going, you need some thick skin, a positive attitude and enough knowledge in your craft to cull the useful commentary from the crap. The knowledge can be gained through study and training, but how can you get that thick skin and high-octane positive attitude? You could start early by writing essay papers on Norman Vincent Peale when you’re in fourth grade or you could get a job in a hostile verbal work environment…like working in customer service/tech support somewhere. That would give you a good start, but is there more you could do? Yep, you could train for it just like with your artwork.

Arts and crafts time! Here’s what you’ll need to construct your “Pessimism Voodoo Doll.”

–Cloth…two pieces cut into the same pattern (or you could just pick up a kit at a local crafts store). If you have or receive lots of negative thoughts and comments, make sure your patterns have lots of surface area. The actual pattern itself is up to you–square, skull, pyramid, teddy bear, Jigglypuff, or whatever shape makes you feel happy.
–Needle and thread
–Pins!
–regular paper
–a small notebook that’s easy to carry around with you

Now, sew those pieces of cloth together around the edges as if you’re turning it into a small pillow but make sure to leave an opening to add the stuffing. If you have a deadly allergy to needles, then you can take the easy route with construction paper and a stapler.

Next, get yourself a piece of paper and a comfy-grip writing implement of doom. Jot down as many negative and non-constructive comments you’ve heard (or even just thought) about yourself or your work. Fill that page up with every little negative thought that shows a glimmer of a chance of getting uppity one day and stopping your productivity in its tracks. Now, for the fun part. Take a good, long look at that sheet of paper, take a deep breath, and then tear it to shreds. Use this as your stuffing for your “doll.”

Ready for the next part? It gets a bit tricky here. Take that small notebook and write down three concise yet highly positive sentences about yourself. It could be a good quote from a review, a comment someone made about your appearance or personality, something you’re really good at, or any number of positive thoughts. As long as they instantly bring on feelings of happiness, pride, accomplishment, or hope, they’ll work. Take a deep breath, slowly release it, read those three sentences out loud, and then stab a pin into your “doll” to teach those nasty thoughts a lesson.

Keep your notebook handy, and every time you get a pessimistic thought or someone tells you something negative and non-constructive, put a mark in your notebook. Don’t write down the exact comment or action–just put a mark down, read one of your positive statements, and move on. When you get home, take a deep breath, slowly release it, read your three positive statements, and then stick another pin in the doll for each new mark in your notebook. And let all those negative thoughts go. Don’t give them a chance to hold you back from what you’re capable of.

When the path to your dreams is littered with criticisms, subjective likes and dislikes, frustrated people lashing out, and self-doubts, it can make it difficult to press on. Sometimes, it’s enough to make a person turn back and return to the easier life. The path to your dreams is definitely a tough one, so be sure to pack all the positive thinking you can carry with you…and lose all that unnecessary negative baggage.