{"id":1479,"date":"2014-06-17T16:29:00","date_gmt":"2014-06-17T23:29:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.comic-con.org\/toucan\/?p=1479"},"modified":"2023-12-18T16:50:00","modified_gmt":"2023-12-19T00:50:00","slug":"devourer-of-words-017-a-non-compete-agreement","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.comic-con.org\/toucan\/devourer-of-words-017-a-non-compete-agreement\/","title":{"rendered":"Devourer of Words 017: A Non-Compete Agreement"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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MARC BERNARDIN’S DEVOURER OF WORDS<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Devourer of Words 017: A Non-Compete Agreement<\/h1>\n\n\n
Marc Bernardin<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n
\"Toucan<\/figure><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
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As one can readily tell, walking the halls of any moderate-sized convention, or reading Twitter, or looking at any one of a hundred websites devoted to covering comics, there are a lot of people trying to make a living writing comics. Some are more successful than others. A few are more successful than everybody.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As a writer looking to break in\u2014or an established writer, looking to break higher\u2014there are a few ways to look at the existence of those whose careers are shining brighter. To borrow from a little green man, don\u2019t be envious, for that envy leads to the Dark Side.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is always hard to see your contemporaries do well and there\u2019s a knee-jerk tendency to root for them to fail. It\u2019s natural \u2026 so much so that the Germans have a word for it: Schadenfreude.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But the thing to remember is that we, as writers, spend enough time alone, in our offices\/coffee shops\/libraries trying to do this work. No one else can understand what we do but us. As such, we are a tribe. (I\u2019d say brotherhood, but that would ignore the ever-increasing number of women who want to do this thing, too.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We are in this thing together, for better or worse. And the thing to remember is that we are not competing with each other\u2014despite the increasing number of bake-offs conducted by editors to staff their books. We are in a war with our stories. The writing process is one which finds us challenged by our own shortcomings, straining against the boundaries of our own talent to deliver something that we weren\u2019t sure we were capable of.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And that fight never gets any easier, not if we\u2019re doing our jobs right. I\u2019ve never met the story that \u201cwrote itself,\u201d but I\u2019ve met plenty that have resisted me at every turn.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s not for nothing that TV writers refer to the act of outlining an episode as \u201cbreaking the story.\u201d They are like wild animals that will either be brought to heel or will run to places you didn\u2019t want them to go. (Which is, in and of itself, not that bad a thing. But we have deadlines.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Spending the time worrying about how much work this writer is getting, or the exclusive that the other one has, or the entire print run that that woman sold out of or the dream character that guy gets to write\u2014that\u2019s wasted time. Time that could be better spent writing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Or learning from those who are blazing the trail just ahead of you. I\u2019ve found that most writers are happy to share their tales from the trenches and would like nothing more than to offer some advice to get you through a particularly prickly story thicket, or help navigate some business hazard you\u2019ve never seen before.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A little competition is healthy. It makes you want to be better. But when competition gives way to unhealthy obsession, it does no one any good.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We all got into comics to make comics. What\u2019s more, to make comics better. Anything that detracts from that is like peeing in the wind.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Devourer of Words by Marc Bernardin appears the third Tuesday of every month here on<\/em> Toucan!<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Written by<\/p>\n\n\n

Marc Bernardin<\/div>\n\n\n

Published<\/p>\n\n\n