Back in high school Danny and I decided it would be cool to film a parody of Back to the Future utilizing puppets and an old VHS camcorder.
We were both wrong and right. Right in that it was fun and therefore cool for us. Wrong in that for the spectator it was the opposite of cool…though in retrospect it may border on horribly awesome.
I need to mention that we apparently didn’t believe in either editing or multiple takes.
We didn’t even have a DeLorean. We opted instead for Danny’s charcoal gray Mazda GLC. A car similar to the DeLorean only in its rarity, except that you may actually see a DeLorean or two still running on the open road.
In our defense we were 16 years old and it was 1991.
I doubt it will ever see the light of day unless we want to attempt to unleash a viral video that goes worldwide becoming hugely popular and yet ruins the opportunity to do any reputable work for the rest of our lives.
I recently found the script for that creative milestone. A document that I wrote entirely out in pencil so I could erase, and then went back over in ink so it could be photocopied.
It was a different time, kids.
Working on a long term project like a graphic novel feels a lot like that script (minus the adolescent enthusiasm.) Slaving away at odd hours all alone… going over each page once in pencil, another in ink, thinking it’s cool, but wondering if it’s only cool for you and then thinking halfway through that you’d be happy with horribly awesome.
But at some point you have to commit to the uncertainty, be willing to accept the possibility of failure, and swear your next book, even if this one is good, will be better.
And that’s the key. Your next book. Then the next. Then the next.
The only alternative is to stop and one day years later to wonder if any of it would have ever gone anywhere.
And that to me is more frightening than failure.
-B
