It’s gonna take me months to consistently remember that it’s 2013. Seems like a strange number. I have trouble with my age too, and I’ll get used to it, but I do prefer even numbers to odd. Maybe because I was born in an even numbered year. They just feel more normal.
I don’t have a resolution, but I have a few goals for the new year.
By next January, I’d like to have published a couple of short stories or comics with online magazines, have a few ebooks available (collections of comics and possibly prose), and have a stronger selection of printed work I can take to cons or put online. I’d like to expand the shop and rework parts of the website so that my more recent work is more visible. I have a number of projects at various stages, and I’m hoping to have some exciting thing to share this spring. Some things started clicking for me at the end of the semester, and if I can keep up that energy and excitement then I believe that this next year could be truly amazing.
My biggest hurtle will be fear. I am often afraid to put down my pen, because translating stories from my head to the page is a difficult and imperfect process and I fear not being as good as I want to be. Once ink is down, it’s real and capable of being judged and evaluated. The things in my head are secure and un-judgeable by outsiders. I’m safe alone inside my head (except when I’m being my own worst critic), but that’s not where I want to be. I am in the storytelling business because I want to put my thoughts where others can see them. It is very hard for me to make myself vulnerable, but I think it’s worth it.
I played baseball for a few years when I was younger. I was never on a real team, but my sister and my dad and I would practice batting and play catch for a few weeks each spring, and that practice would culminate in a memorial day game with our uncles and cousins. As a kid, this was an event I looked forward to playing in. Nowadays, I bring a sketchbook or novel and sit on the bench.
When you’re batting, there’s a small, dense ball hurtling in your direction and you’re supposed to turn it away and send it back across the field with the large wooden stick held at the ready over your shoulder.
I’ve had more bruises than I can count from poorly aimed baseballs. Those things are hard. And though the pitcher isn’t supposed to hit the batter, and the batter gets a safe walk to first if the pitch does, in fact, make contact with the batter’s body, pitchers are imperfect. And so when this ball is hurtling in the general direction of your head, your impulse is to shut your eyes. It’s a tiny bit of protection, but it’s what instinct tells you to do.
The ball comes at you, you ready your swing, you swing and your eyes close for that second of anticipated impact, and you can feel if your bat made contact or not, so if you didn’t hit the ball you get ready for the next pitch and if you did hit it you’ve got your eyes open now and you see where it’s going and if it’s good you run like a mad person to get on base.
This is not how professional baseball players play. Coaches early on offer correction and drill home form and you don’t close your eyes because it makes you a better batter to be able to see everything. You can’t be afraid of the ball. You’ve just got to hit it.
I feel like this is how I draw comics sometimes.
Potential projects come hurtling at me and I don’t know if I’ll be able to hit them at all, or hit them in the right direction, or whether they’re going to slam right into me and knock me over. And sometimes I miss a good pitch and sometimes I swing when I shouldn’t, and sometimes I strike out, and sometimes the fear of not doing well enough is nearly paralyzing and I just have to close my eyes and swing. And sometimes I make it onto a base and it’s exhilarating.
So I’ve got to get better at looking at the throw that’s coming my way and deciding whether or not it’s good, and when it is I need to get past my fear and keep my eyes open and my attention focused and trust myself. To be more intentional and aware as I’m working and stop swinging blindly, hoping the bat will connect.
So that’s my other goal.
Happy new year.