EVERYTHING BUT IMAGINARY #188: MEETING THE CHALLENGE

[Blake Petit]

Today, friends, is November first, and for writers across the globe both would-be and professional that means one thing. It’s too late to come out with this year’s horror bestseller. But it also means today is the start of National Novel Writing Month, that ultimate challenge for the prose author.

The challenge, which I am participating in for the second time this year, is as simple as it is monumental. In one month’s time, from midnight in the morning of November 1st until midnight on the evening of November 30th, compose an original 50,000-word novel. Millions of people take the challenge every year. Thousands meet it. I’ve been writing for as long as I can remember, and this is by far one of the most difficult tasks I’ve ever attempted. I’m proud to say I met the challenge last year, topping off my 51,000-word Christmas story, A Long November, just a few days after Thanksgiving. This year I’m trying my hand at a modern potboiler mystery about a private eye hired to find something lost in the chaos of Hurricane Katrina. It’s tentatively entitled The Book of Lisimba. Wish me luck.

This is the eighth year NaNoWriMo is being conducted overall, and I was quite happy when I learned of its existence last year. I’ve been looking for a real writing challenge to take part in. After all, I simply don’t have the talents for the other great creative challenge I’d like to try: the 24-Hour Comic. Just as NaNoWriMo is the novelist’s marathon, the 24-Hour Comic is the ultimate challenge for the cartoonist. The brainchild of Scott McCloud, the rules for a 24-Hour Comic are quite similar to those for NaNoWrimo, although the time frame is greatly compressed. You have 24 hours to write and draw (and letter, color or whatever else you choose to do with it) a 24-page comic book story. A great number of comic pros and amateurs have tackled the challenge. Naturally, not all of them have succeeded, but a great many have.

There are at least three digest-sized paperbacks available from About Comics collecting successful 24-Hour Comics, including some made on scheduled “24-Hour Comic Days” across America. Erik Larsen and Chris Eliopoulos published their efforts in the Image Two-In-One one-shot, and Scott Kurtz’s effort saw print in the 17th issue of his own PVP comic book. Kurtz did his own version of the challenge, though – he used the 24 hours to write and draw a complete 24-strip storyline for his popular webcomic.

There are two other variations on the theme worth mentioning. Neil Gaiman, he of Sandman and Eternals fame, inspired the “Gaiman Variation,” in which the cartoonist doesn’t reach 24 pages in the allotted time, and just stops wherever he is when the clock runs out. The result here is, more often than not, an incomplete story. The Kevin Eastman Variation (you’ve heard of Eastman, he helped cook up those Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles all the kids are talking about) is when a cartoonist hasn’t finished in 24 hours, and simply continues working until he is done. Here you get a complete story, but in an extended time period. Neither of these variations are true 24-Hour Comics as McCloud envisioned the concept, but they’re not easy either, and worth pointing out.

Challenges like these serve many purposes. First of all, they can be a much-needed kick in the shorts to get a stagnant writer working. If you ask the guys who launched NaNoWriMo, they’ll admittedly tell you that it’s about “quantity, not quality.” Not to say you should just treat it as a lark, but having that impetus, that urge to write a full 1667 words a day, is something that can help someone who otherwise may never get his ideas on paper. I’ve always felt having that sort of dedication is important. Getting something on the page, anything on the page is absolutely vital to keep you going. Even it if turns out to be crap, you can always come back and fix it later. That’s what second drafts are for.

It’s different, of course, with a 24-Hour Comic. To be completely true to the spirit of the exercise, there are to be no second drafts, no corrections, no coming back and tweaking a weak panel or rewriting dialogue. Whatever you’ve got when you cross that finish line is what you’re left with. But that’s all right, don’t you think? It’s still something that forces you to create, that squeezes those artistic juices right out of your system, that plucks the nose hairs of story from the nostril of mediocrity. You can tell I’m in a high-creativity cycle right now because my metaphors are getting kinda gross.

There have been other comic book challenges, of course. There was actually a book called DC Challenge in the mid-80s, a 12-issue miniseries structured like a “round robin” story. A group of writers and artist put their name into a hat and were paired off and assigned an issue each of a comic book story. It was an ongoing storyline, but there was no writing summit, no pre-planning, not even a discussion of the story with the other writers. When Writer #1 finished his chapter, he handed it off to Writer #2 to continue on his own. Each chapter ended with a cliffhanger, and by the time issue #11 rolled around, it was really getting absurd. There were aliens, extradimensional beings, some funky problem with the Guardians of the Universe and Jimmy Olsen running around on Earth-X and being terrified by the ghost of Groucho Marx while Albert Einstein completed his Unified Field Theory. To be honest, it was kind of a mess. Rather than simply building one chapter on top of the other, the writers wound up wrapping the story in their own interpretation of the events so far, and as each interpretation contradicted each previous interpretation, it turned into a real mess.

The thing is – it was a fun mess, and I’ll bet if you asked those involved writers who maintained their sanity after the project was over, they’d tell you that they absolutely loved working on it, and they’d never do it again.

Everybody has a creative gene in them somewhere. Sometimes you just need to find that impetus to get you going, that reason to take the spark and blow it into a flame. NaNoWrimo, 24-Hour Comics… these are fantastic tools to get you going. Whatever you’re passionate about, try to find something like this to get yourself creating. There’s always room in this world for more stories.

Favorite of the Week: October 24, 2006

It was another one of those “no brainer” weeks for the favorite, guys. Was I initially nervous about the news that Geoff Johns and Richard Donner would be taking over writing chores on Action Comics? A little. But I had faith in Johns, and I thought that if they could blend his knowledge and skill with the DC Universe with Donner’s interpretation of Superman, we’d have a comic book worth writing home about. About an hour after I left the comic shop, my buddy Chase called me and asked, “Did you just read the best comic book ever?” That may be a bit of an exaggeration, but his enthusiasm is spot-on. The new writing team managed to create a rendition of Superman that’s consistent with the DCU as it stands today (people worried about “continuity errors” need to recall that continuity has been rewritten, and nothing in this issue contradicts what we’ve seen of the “New Earth” since Infinite Crisis), and still captures the feel and flavor of the first two brilliant Superman movies. This is the Man of Steel some of us have been wanting to read our whole lives.

Blake M. Petit is the author of the superhero comedy novel, Other People's Heroes, the suspense novel The Beginner and the weekly “Think About It” humor column at Think About It Central. His new comic, Evertime, is coming soon from Tightlip Entertainment. E-mail him at Blake@comixtreme.com and visit him on the web at Evertime Realms.

[Jason Kanno]

Gotta agree with your book of the week. I was excited the moment it was announced and I'm so glad it payed off. Also, Adam Kubert's art has never looked more vibrant.

Hey, your column is especially timely for the USH. We have a round robin story circulating over in our thread.

[Blake Petit]

Really? Cool beans. Those are always fun.

Any of you guys taking part in NaNoWriMo?

[cv_otaku]

Originally Posted by Blake Petit

Really? Cool beans. Those are always fun.

Any of you guys taking part in NaNoWriMo?

I am, but you already knew that.

As far as why I do NaNoWriMo, it's actually to reaffirm that this is what I want to do for a living. I'm not saying that everyone who wants to be a writer HAS to do the challenge, but, FOR ME, when I complete it, and I don't get sick of writing in the process, I can say "Yes, this is something I can see myself doing for the rest of my life."

[Blake Petit]

I know what you mean, CV. Heck, I've only been working on this story for less than a day, but I'm feeling those juices flowing again. It feels GREAT.

[Andrea Speed]

Well, I write for stress release; I think I'd go crazy if I didn't write every day. (Well, crazier. ) I don't know how anyone goes without doing it for a day or so.

Which leads me to suspect this may be some compulsive disorder on my part, but oh well - at least it's a harmless madness.

[JX141]

Sounds cool good luck with it Blake try not to let posting on here interfere too much

[Blake Petit]

Hey, it didn't hurt me last year.

[chrismozer]

anyone but me remember Eclipse Comics "Whodunnit?" mini-series?

Click on the link:

http://milehighcomics.com/cgi-bin/ba...5331719372%201

[Blake Petit]

Can't say I ever heard of it, Chris, but the cover intrigues me. What was the deal there?

[chrismozer]

Originally Posted by Blake Petit

Can't say I ever heard of it, Chris, but the cover intrigues me. What was the deal there?

Can't say i remember much about the story. I only purchased the 1st issue when it first came out in 1986. That was during the time i was on my "buy every 1st issue" kick.

I only remembered it because it was the first time i has seen something like this done. I don't even know if anyone won the contest by figuring out the villian.

[Blake Petit]

Seems interesting, nonetheless. I'll have to keep an eye out for it next time I'm diving into a quarter bin.

[cv_otaku]

My friend and co-hort in crime picked up this issue from a quarter bin. I've been trying to find the second issue ever since, because I really want to know who did it.

Alas, my mind is not a steel trap. Years of alcohol have destroyed more than enough brain cells to ever prevent me from solving a mystery. I'm no Velma, is what I'm saying.

[Blake Petit]

Yes, but who among us is?

[chrismozer]

The only other comic related challenge i can remember stemmed from an Atari 2600 game. The Swordquest series was Atari's first multi-part gaming series. The games were accompanied by a small comic book which, in addition to providing entertainment, also yielded clues to helping complete that particular game.

The following links give some info and pictures from the comic.

http://www.atariage.com/2600/archive...?SystemID=2600

http://www.atariage.com/comics/comic...?MagazineID=45

http://www.gooddealgames.com/articles/Boardquest.html

[Blake Petit]

Interesting -- so the comic books acted as sort of a guide (or even a "cheat code") to the video game? That's a nice bit of corporate synergy there.