One Resolution

I know some people don't believe in making New Years' resolutions because they're usually not kept and/or are waste of time... but I actually like making them. I'm a big believer in more spiritual things, like signs, senses and the seasons, and I feel that making resolutions help put you in a good frame of mind and help motivate from within. But this year I'm only making one, and it's work related...

Less Procrastination, More Productivity

That's mine. Plain and simple. You see, I'm a huge procrastinator. I can find ways to talk myself out of doing anything. But the weird thing is, I can never figure out why.

I love to write. It's what I've always wanted to do. And now I'm doing it for a living. All I have to do is take my ideas, sit down and write them out. It's not that hard. And when I get into a groove, I can move on scripts. I get into the zone, start typing and just go. The problem is I have to talk myself into that groove. And it takes quite a lot of talking. Even though I love it, getting started is the hardest part of writing for me. I'll find any excuse to keep myself from launching into a script, be it that I need to see the last episode of Lost I taped so it doesn't get spoiled online for me, or watching Star Wars for the 250th time will inspire me, or brushing my cat will put me in a good state of mind. I subconsciously try and find ways from having to sit down in front of the computer. It's almost like I don't want to take the ideas that are floating around in my head and put them on paper.

And I'm aware of the fact that this is unfortunately slowly starting to affect my writing career. I know that I'm starting to drive some of my editors crazy and developing a bad rep of being hard to get scripts out of. I'm never so late that I leave an artist waiting, but I'm never all that early and tend to never get things in on time. It's a precarious place to be in the comics industry right now with so many talented new writers beating down the doors to break in. And as an ex-editor myself, I of course know this is a terrible position to be in. No matter how good any writer's ideas are, if you can't be depended on to deliver them in a timely fashion, you're not going to get work. I've seen too many other late writers develop bad reps and slowly see work dry up, so I'm determined not to let that happen to me.

I'm making a conscious effort starting here and now to get my ass in gear and start delivering.

I have too much work lined up in 2007 to start blowing things now. I want these projects to lead to bigger and better things. I have my foot on the bottom rung of the comics' ladder and want to start making my way up it. And the best way to do that is to prove to my editors that I'm a writer that they can trust to get the job done. I want to be the guy who can deliver the quality scripts they're looking for in a timely fashion.

So I'm putting it out there. Issuing this as a challenge to myself, if you will. I'm putting all distractions aside and getting my editors and artists their scripts to ensure that 2007 will be an extremely productive year for me as a comic book writer.

'Nuff said!