万年筆 10,000 Year Brush Hiatus


Hello followers and fountain pen fans! I’m sad to say that, after the next two 10,000 year brush comics are published, the strip will be put on indefinite hiatus similar to Dice Comics. They reason for the stop at this point is both because 84 is a good number to work with in collection format, and because I like the number. But I also feel that I’m just not making as good a strip as I can. I’m not out of jokes yet, but there are some weeks when I feel like I’m forcing a joke where there is none, and I don’t want to continue on and produce a sub-par product. I hope y’all have enjoyed the run so far and that in the future I can restart with fresh ideas.

– Austin

Forcing My Work

Well, I just got back from a little Thanksgiving vacation where I also sold some of my books at the Artwalk event in Alpine, Texas. Now that I’m back, I actually have to do work again, like this article. And after reviewing my list of articles to write, I realized I didn’t feel like writing any of them.

I realize that I have a list so that I can write things, not so that I can muse on what I want to write. If I don’t know what to write about, I go to the list and select one. That’s the way I can get things done. And it might be the only way for me. Everyone has a different method for writing, and mine is quite “brute force”. If I have an idea floating around, I write the idea down, and then I pick it up later in time for my deadline. This works most of the time. Except this time, because I have missed my deadline even as I write this. Still, it does work quite often.

I have no idea why that is. It never seems like just sitting in front of a computer screen or staring at a blank piece of paper and saying to myself ‘be creative’ would work. But it does for me, and I know that for the vast majority of people it doesn’t. And it’s weird that it only works for creative things: in school I got things done early. I never worried about studying because I never needed to. And in what work I have done I get it done at a good time, or sometimes never if I don’t want to. In any of those cases I don’t ever have to force myself. I will either do it or not.

Creativity does come easy for me, but not the creation of a finished product. I can’t tell you how many book synopses I have written and scattered about that could only possibly be made into books if I spent the rest of my life writing. I love ideas and doing different and new things, which is why I have so many comic strips, but also why I have a problem with them.

I just have to sit down and force myself to make them every week. And that’s something I couldn’t do with a lot of other things (like empty the dishwasher). I guess that’s a good thing(?) But here I am writing about this, instead of one of the many things on my list which I now think will require quite a bit more research than initially anticipated. Or I could just wing it.

My experience has shown me that whatever the case, I won’t do fun things for fun. I have to force myself to create. Then, sitting back, and looking at all I’ve done makes it worth having forced myself to go through it.

If You Can’t Write… Don’t.

Articles are hard, just sayin’ that. Depending on the definition of article being used they can be even harder. What exactly makes an article is really up to either the author or the publisher. The same thing applies to when a short story becomes a novella, a novella a novel, and so on. But other than that they’re just plain hard. Writing is hard, every writer is the first to admit that (every high school “artist” wouldn’t in a “million” years). And contrary to popular belief, writing is becoming harder. While anyone can now become a writer, attention spans are becoming shorter. People who “write” write very little. Bloggers even have to force themselves to come up with interesting content. At least the interesting ones do. How many times have you come across a dead Blog with a promising start, that just disappeared. Or, more realistically, just sucked and piddled out. Everyone has a Blog, everyone posts words, or videos or something on the internet. However most just wither and die. Most “writers” don’t have the attention span or the drive to continue writing. Even people who are attentive to their Blogs fail because they can’t push themselves to continue creating content. Eventually preconceived ideas drain and nothing new comes. It seems cliche now to say that every writer finds it hard to write and most have to force themselves to start, but it is true. The difference is that most people say that to encourage people to write. I am not trying to encourage you: writing is hard, really hard and time consuming. But I don’t mean to discourage you either, if you write well then write, if you can force yourself to. Just because writing on a computer is easy, doesn’t mean you have great ideas, just because you have great ideas, doesn’t mean you can force yourself to write them, or that when you do it will be good.

Most writers that continually create content write as either their job or as a major hobby, and it works like any other hobby. Just like how the movie buff spends most of his free time watching movies, or that model collector you know spends his putting together little plastic pieces and painting them, writers spend theirs writing. It takes time and dedication to do, and if that is not applied, it is crap. And as much as the writer in me wants to say it’s hard because you’re continually being attacked by dinosaurs, going to parties, flying pigs around Mount Everest, and communing with the soul of William S. Burroughs, that is simply not the case. Any writer able to continue creating deserves commendation, but those unable to should not be concerned. The ubiquity of the Blog is unnecessary. Not everyone needs to be a writer. There are other ways a voice can be heard, or maybe it won’t even be your voice but your actions. Writers may be able to write more and arguably better then you, but you can do better than them at something. And if you are a writer continue to be so, the amount of dead Blogs grows every day from forgotten passwords to lack of content, don’t let yours fall into the same hole. But my intent is mainly a caution: do what you do, and not what the internet does.