{"id":146,"date":"2008-03-25T12:10:14","date_gmt":"2008-03-25T18:10:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/chriswisniaarts.com\/blog\/?p=146"},"modified":"2010-04-26T11:23:43","modified_gmt":"2010-04-26T17:23:43","slug":"134-the-diary-of-a-struggling-comics-artist-october-2006","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/chriswisniaarts.com\/blog\/archives\/146","title":{"rendered":"134. THE DIARY OF A STRUGGLING COMICS ARTIST, October 2006"},"content":{"rendered":"

The idea with this blog was initially that I had a lot of fun stories that I wanted to share.\u00a0 <\/span>A lot of what I thought would be amusing anecdotes, that I hoped others would also find enjoyable.\u00a0 <\/span>And as I wrote, I started thinking about including my creative process.\u00a0 <\/span>And soon, I just started jotting down anything that came to mind, so long as it involved my love of comics, or my production of them, or attempts at getting into this industry.<\/p>\n

And of course, another incentive was, I looked at it as a potential marketing gimmick, to get more people to my website.\u00a0 <\/span>It was another attempt at diversifying my product to attract new potential enjoyers of my work.\u00a0 <\/span>With all the name dropping I could do in this blog, I hoped it would generate links at search engines, and spread more of the word about ME.\u00a0 <\/span>It would sell me as a product, so that if people bought other products by me, it would help them feel more invested and personally involved.<\/p>\n

I had tried so many ventures at this point \u2013 publishing comics, publishing trade paperbacks, publishing big comics, publishing little comics, going to conventions, doing book signings, placing advertisements, sending out promo posters, doing web bulletins and mailings and personal emails, going to stores and introducing myself \u2013 but nothing seemed to help my work catch on.\u00a0 <\/span>So I looked at the blog as yet another marketing tool, yet another idea to throw at the wall in the hope it might stick.\u00a0 <\/span>If you trying throwing enough things hard enough\u2026<\/p>\n

There were a few initial sparks that got the juices flowing for this project.\u00a0 <\/span>When my wife and I had gone to the Bristol Con in 2005, my wife had sent an email to friends, when we returned, about our trip.\u00a0 <\/span>She mentioned some of the professional connections we had made, and the fun we\u2019d had, such as hanging out with Simon Bisley.\u00a0 <\/span>There were particular stories such as this that we would share periodically, and so of course this got me thinking about doing some documentation of my own.<\/p>\n

Elizabeth\u2019s summation of cons to her friends inspired me to write a sort of diary-style recap of our trip to the Baltimore Con, back in September 2005.\u00a0 <\/span>I hand wrote a few pages about that convention, while on the airplane, flying back from the trip.\u00a0 <\/span>She sent another email out about this trip, and I compared my notes with hers.<\/p>\n

But the idea of documenting my comics career (or lack of), and publicly posting it as a blog for all to see (and hopefully enjoy, and make me a BLOGGING STAR!) hit me like a brick while at Orlando\u2019s Mega-Con, the night I had dinner with Al Feldstein.\u00a0 <\/span>We had set up the dinner, and we went back to our hotel to drop our stuff off, and I was so excited, I called two of my friends to tell them I was in Orlando and having dinner with Al Feldstein, in the moments before we stepped back out to eat.\u00a0 <\/span>I was so excited, I was beside myself.\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n

And right there, in the hotel, I was telling my wife, I really should start writing all this great fun stuff down that we\u2019re doing.\u00a0 <\/span>All the crazy and interesting experiences we\u2019ve had.\u00a0 <\/span>And she said she thought I should.\u00a0 <\/span>And one of the friends I called that night said I should.\u00a0 <\/span>And that trip I began typing all the experiences that came to mind into my computer.<\/p>\n

I consulted my \u201cappearances\u201d list at my website, and then created multiple documents, each one titled for the particular convention.\u00a0 <\/span>\u201cOrlando 2006.\u201d\u00a0 <\/span>\u201cBaltimore 2005.\u201d\u00a0 <\/span>\u201cWondercon 2006.\u201d\u00a0 <\/span>\u201cWondercon 2005.\u201d\u00a0 <\/span>\u201cWondercons before I began publishing comics.\u201d\u00a0 <\/span>\u201cSan Diego 2005, 2004, my first in 2001.\u201d\u00a0 <\/span>And memories would just flood me, and I would be clicking from document to document, furiously typing to get all the memories down into one or the other as I was remembering them.\u00a0 <\/span>When I wasn\u2019t with my laptop, I\u2019d be jotting down notes of events that would suddenly come to me.<\/p>\n

I went through Elizabeth\u2019s letters to friends, to see if they didn\u2019t jog memories I\u2019d forgotten to put down.\u00a0 <\/span>I went through photos we\u2019d taken at different conventions, and those photos brought back memories.\u00a0 <\/span>\u201cOh yeah, we were with this person on THIS year\u2019s Wondercon.\u00a0 <\/span>For some reason I had thought it was the year before that.\u201d\u00a0 <\/span>Or I would go online and research a particular con on a particular year, to see who the featured artists were, to make sure it was 2003 and not 2004, for example, when I\u2019d had an exchange with that person.\u00a0 <\/span>I expect some of my reminiscences aren\u2019t wholly accurate, year by year \u2013 I was writing back experiences from ten years ago sometimes.\u00a0 <\/span>And certainly it\u2019s important to use a flair of theatricality, drama, exaggeration, or whatever as you go, to keep the stories interesting.<\/p>\n

So I guess the genesis of this blog was about bragging to more friends, in a way.\u00a0 <\/span>About all the fantastic luminaries in the industry I\u2019ve met, and the interactions I\u2019ve had with them, fun, humorous, and even embarassing.\u00a0 <\/span>So as I say, I started typing entries into my computer that evening of our dinner with Al Feldstein, February 25, 2006.<\/p>\n

I entered the mad compilations of experiences at hotels, on airplanes, at my day job when there was a break, at night before bed, during the day before work.\u00a0 <\/span>Whenever I could fit some time in, or whenever reminiscences came to me.\u00a0 <\/span>This was about eight insane typing months.\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n

I finally began publishing them a couple months before posting my Dick Hammer web comic (which was in December of 2006).\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>So you can see I\u2019m just trying as much as I can to diversify, diversify, diversify.\u00a0 <\/span>C\u2019mon, stuff I\u2019m throwing to the wall, doesn\u2019t anything want to stick?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The idea with this blog was initially that I had a lot of fun stories that I wanted to share.\u00a0 A lot of what I thought would be amusing anecdotes, that I hoped others would also find enjoyable.\u00a0 And as I wrote, I started thinking about including my creative process.\u00a0 And soon, I just started 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