Last week, my blog hosting site announced that they had a newer update for the hosting, with all these upgrades and new features. I loaded it up, and then learned that not only could I not edit any of my previous posts (which I do constantly, whenever I find formatting errors or remember something I forgot to mention). I also learned I could no longer post a new blog at all!
So I fucked with and fretted over this for a week, and tried to figure out how to get it going again. Finally this morning, I deleted my entire 65-entry blog, and began a “new blog,” in which I reposted my previous one in its entirety.
What a project, but I’m hoping by tonight, that means I’ll be caught up and able to continue sharing my saga of self-publishing.
I found a mention of my blog at Warren Ellis’s “The Engine” site. A discussion was going on about how self-publishers should stay away from superhero subject matter, and carve their own niche, because that way these creators will have a voice, and eventually, if they’re good enough, superhero companies will recognize their talent and see their individuality, and hire them to do superhero comics anyways, in the same way they eventually collect up all the talent.
Larry Young from AIT/Planet LAR was supporting this theory, in his arguments against some cocky young upstart, eager to try self-publishing superhero comics. Larry mentioned my blog, and said, “What makes you think this won’t happen to you?” and he added a link to my “falures of Tabloia” blog, in which I stated all the pathetic numbers my book sold, and how nothing I tried got me any sales or recognition.
The debate became so heated, that Newsarama picked up the story, and said that checking out the argument is worthwhile, if for nothing else, then to read the “depressing true story of Chris” self-publishing, or something like that.
This is all really the first press I’ve noticed about my blog. It was nice to see some people were beginning to talk about my blog. But on the other hand, I didn’t realilze everyone considered my blog so depressing. I didn’t know I was the perfect sample of a pitiable, pathetic, loser in the self-publishing industry.
I wrote a quick email to Larry, and he was so sweet writing back. He said that he was just trying to point out that he thinks I’m a perfect example of someone who’s done everything right, and how it’s still just so difficult to get any attention or success in this industry. Larry pointed out that he might not personally have written about all the comics companies I had tried to apply to, to get work from, who had turned me down (himself included), because it might look like my work isn’t good enough for any of them. It’s a hell of a valid point. So I mulled it over and decided, you know, this is what has happened to me, and maybe it is pathetic. Maybe it doesn’t look good that I keep trying to get work, and no one has hired me. Maybe that DOES mean my work isn’t good enough, or maybe it means I’m perceived that way. Who am I to say? But this is my story, and that’s part of my story. I’m telling my own version of how I perceive things to have happened, and that’s the whole point of this blog anyways. To mythologically share stories, about the fun, pathetic embarassments, and hell I’ve gone through over all these years.
I feel like I must sound like a drunk lush, upsetting a chair, all of a sudden raising my voice and shouting out, uncomfortably loudly in a public place, my bitter disappointed frustrations at my world turned sour. “Fuck it, FUCK IT, bunch-a no good…Sho no one will hire me, sho what? I’ve got my pride! I’VE GOT MY PRIDE!” Slurring my sentences, wiping the saliva off my mouth and toppling, unbalanced, into a pile of trash in the gutter and spilling my bottle before the embarrassed, pitying eyes of all.
And who knows, maybe I’ll keep at this self-publishing for years and years, and maybe I’ll be able to make a name for myself eventually, and then all this pathetic depressing shit that happened to me won’t look so pathetic any more. Maybe then it will all look ironic, that I worked my ass off, so hard, for so many YEARS and YEARS, but it all worked out eventually. I’ll be an inspiration, like Jack London who had hundreds of rejection letters before he was published or whatever.
I’m being sarcastic, of course, but JESUS, this industry! How can someone make it here??! As long as I’ve been self-publishing, my mind is consumed by this problem. I find myself not getting any sleep nights, because my mind is racing, trying to come up with ways to just make it in this godamn industry. It is so bitter and cold in the world of comics creating.
My wife used to joke, if anyone ever asks how I started making comics, that I should just tell them, “Oh, I just decided it’s something I wanted to do, and I just did it.” And just promote the myth that I was this instant sensation whose work just shined on that first, initial excursion.