Back in March of last year, I put out a call for comic book collaborators on my website. I've long been interested in comics/graphic novels, and wanted to give it a go. Thinking it would be easier, first time, to concentrate on the drawing side (and not also be solely responsible for the content and writing side), I asked for suggestions from would-be collaborators for subjects we could develop together.
Over the next few months, I received a number of interesting ideas, and whittled these down to a shortlist based on what I thought was interesting to me personally, and might interest others. Figuring that there were likely to be drop-outs and delays, I decided to say yes to a number of project ideas, in the hope that at least one would make it to completion. Sure enough, this is what happened - well, the first part anyway: of the three projects I'd selected, one pulled out because of work commitments, one I simply never heard from again, and one got some way (a script was started and some sketching done), but then again petered out. I still haven't given up hope on all these projects - the last one especially I think has great potential, and I'm still in contact with the writer from time to time (so we'll see). But it just goes to show that, even with three prospective projects, things can fall through.
From that point on, I was still occasionally contacted by people who were interested in developing something. There were a few interesting ideas, but things either petered out again or it seemed to me that the idea wasn't quite right - either it didn't fit my interests (and if I'm going to spend a year drawing something, it needs to), or else it wasn't defined enough. If my little experience of publishing has taught me anything, it's that you need a strong hook to draw people in. It's not enough to say, 'Let's do a comic about golf' (or whatever); you need to be able to refine it into something specific and engaging about some aspect of golf (yeah, well, good luck with that!). This is why it's so hard to develop original ideas. It's easy for would-be writers to be made bitter and paranoid from constant rejection. We may point to the fact that George Orwell, J. K. Rowling, etc, were all rejected by numerous publishers before they found acceptance. And it's true that an idea may have to wait its time to be recognised - even years. However, it's also true that, like those hapless X-Factor hopefuls who ignore Simon Cowell's cutting advice to go back to their day job, we can hang on to an idea that's never going to make it. It's a difficult call. I've been there, and still occasionally like to holiday there (entertaining old ideas that have gone the rounds of rejection). But if you want to make a living, you have to be a bit tough with yourself. It may be, as publishers and agents are fond of saying, that an idea is simply 'not for them' (which may be true, or may be a polite euphemism for 'this is really shit'). And I think that at times the publishing industry is too concerned with what will sell, and with spotting the next big trend (you can thank them for the ceaseless procession of crappy teen-vampire and zombie books and films). But it just might be the case that your idea isn't strong enough.
Anyway, fast forward to April of this year, and I was contacted by Berit Brogaard, a Danish academic living in America. She wanted to use some of my caricatures for her forthcoming psychology book, and wondered how long it would take to produce more. "By when?" I asked. "Tomorrow," she said. When I'd finished laughing, we set about trying to persuade the publisher to give her an extension on her deadline so that I could provide some decent illustrations whilst getting occasional bouts of sleep (you can see some of them in my portfolio). During the course of our correspondence, it turned out that we both liked comics, and both harboured a half-formed wish to do one. We batted some ideas around, and settled on something to do with Freud (a shared interest). Over the next few weeks, this became 'Light in a Darkened Room'.
Since then, there have been a number of things that have threatened to derail the project - and still might - but we've managed to push through, so far. I'm a fairly stubborn and driven person - I'd probably ignore Simon Cowell's advice about most things - but Berit is something on another level altogether. Within 3 weeks she'd produced a first draft of the script, a fledgling book proposal, and all this whilst teaching, writing, and juggling the thousands little things that all of us have to deal with on a daily basis. Often I'd go on Google docs (which we use to share the script), to see her beavering away at an hour so unearthly as to leave it uncertain whether she'd got up early or simply not gone to bed. Anyway, 'force of nature' doesn't quite describe her. Without that energy and determination, I do wonder whether I would have had enough self belief to progress this far. Personal projects are all about self belief: this is why things like NaNoWriMo are so popular, because there develops a sort of collective will - 'we're all in this together' - that pushes people to achieve things that they might not normally think themselves capable of. 'Better together' is certainly true of such things, and for that reason I'm very glad that I chose to do a collaboration for my first comic book project, otherwise I might not have ended up doing one at all.
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