Day 317. Fantastic. (13/11/13)

Bit of self psycho-analysis for a Thursday morning while (whilst?) I kill time waiting to go in for the late shift and work myself into exhaustion once again.

I don't know if it's that I never understood how to push myself a bit more to create the breaks or if I just never made the effort because I lacked the confidence to put myself forward but I'm becoming more and more convinced that I could have made something more of my abilities if I'd tried a bit harder and not accepted where I was in life.

And this thought came from?

The majority of you will never have heard of this guy but last night James Robinson was announced as the writer for the latest relaunch of Marvel's 'The Fantastic Four'. Now that's not a problem, James Robinson is an excellent writer who has produced consistently good work for over twenty years. And it's the twenty years that's the notable point here; James Robinson was producing his first published work at the time that I was trying to break into comics. As was Mark Millar who is now a wildly successful comics writer and in charge of all Fox's Marvel based superhero film franchises.

I'm not claiming that I'm as good as either of those, I don't think that I am but I know that there's a lot that I read, a hell of a lot that I read, including some major names in the industry, that I know for a stone cold fact that I'm better than. Possibly the biggest writer in the comic industry is a great ideas man and writes sparkling dialogue but seems incapable of concluding a story; he provides big moment after big moment after big moment then suddenly nothing happens and the next tale starts.

Marvel recently took the chance to capitalise on the success of The Avengers (sod that assemble bit, that's bollocks, it's called The Avengers) with an original, stand alone, hard cover graphic novel. They recruited a generally excellent author to script it and clearly briefed him that he needed to use exactly the same characters that had appeared in the film (along with one that they have big plans for in the next year) and to keep the characterisation as per the movie; inter group bickering, sharp, sarcastic comments, that kind of thing and to put all this against a suitably global threat. What they forgot was that there needed to be a story. The result was a dull, rambling, incoherent mess.

I know that I'm better than that.

So what do I do about this? What do I do about the fact that James Robinson has my dream job? (And genuinely, writing Fantastic Four is my dream job)

Perhaps the issue had always been that I'd convinced myself that I worked so bloody hard that in my down time I had neither the time, energy or inclination to write. I took the few rejection letters that I received as an excuse to not try because that way I didn't need to fail, didn't need to be proved wrong, didn't need to find out that I was wrong and that I actually wasn't good enough.

I've proved myself wrong on both of those points. I've had enough positive comments over the last 316 days to make my ego utterly bullet proof. I've proved that I can sit down and write for an hour every day without exception, I've exercised that particular muscle, I've faced the blank page and filled it every time that I've sat down. I know more than ever that I can write.

So here it is; 49 days left of this then I start again. I start with building a website and hosting other people's work alongside my own - see if I can generate an income (no matter how modest) with advertising sales and I continue with writing for an hour a day with the intention of selling work, whether that be fiction, reviews, opinion pieces, whatever. I start using social media more effectively, I start networking. (Here's another example of not telling the universe your plans, I went in a direction I didn't expect at all.)

You don't need to be young to start something, you just need a young mind and this year has definitely freshened my mind up.

This has been a great year for reinvention so I continue, I write and I write and I write some more and let's see where we are in another year.