Working With Prose

Like I said in my opening post, I have a number of projects coming up in the next year or two. And while that’s extremely exciting, it can also be one of the most frustrating experiences in the world.

Being a writer in comics requires patience. A hell of a lot of patience. While I can finish the script for a graphic novel in two to three months, the artist I team with might be working on it for two to three years. I finished my first draft for The Broadcast in late 2007. It’s finally seeing print in August 2010.

That’s three freaking years!

Now, the two years that Noel was working on that thing were great. Every time he sent a new batch of pages I got to watch as my characters became living, breathing people as the story came to life on the page. it was like opening a Christmas present twice a month, every month, for two years straight.

But why’d it have to take so damn long?! Like I said, frustrating.

Anyway, in the time a comics writer spends waiting he’s likely to start playing around with other projects. In the last few months I’ve turned to writing a few short stories to pass the time while I’m waiting for art to come in. I’m not sure I’ll do anything with these, but I’d love to hear what everyone thinks as this is pretty much my first hand at prose since high school.

The first is about a dying woman who thinks her time is finally up. The second is about a young couple who’s stumbled across their dream house only to learn it is probably anything but.