Decluttering the Soul

Been working 24/7 the last few months (always wanted to say 24/7 although it's more accurate to say 12-14/7) and am weary and a bit emotional. I decided to take the week off from the usual Black Mermaid activities including blogging. A week off didn't mean I was in the clear though – for normal people a week off would constitute a flight to a tropical island somewhere to sip cocktails at sunset and to skinny dip at a secluded beach (which is what my friend Rod did last year in Fiji around this time!), or perhaps going into the city and staying at a five-star hotel and having spa treatments while eating strawberries dipped in chocolate. A perfect week for me would be packing up a big fat suitcase of books I've been dying to read and just sitting down and polishing them off one after the other. I remember keeping tabs of my reading activities while I was at school – I think my bumper year was around 180 to 200. Not these days. Now, it's more like one every fortnight. And as far as my week off went, well it actually constituted a massive decluttering of my studio.

Anyway, I'm now happily looking at a wide expanse of pink carpet in my office. Gone are the scattered messy piles of filing – all I have left in the actual office is one large laundry bucket of paperwork to sort, which I will work on bit by bit during this week. I've reorganised my filing system, thrown out lots of rubbish, dusted, collated, and archived some comics artwork including an old WaveDancer piece that Jozef gave me as a gift several years ago, as well as a wonderful page by artist Paul Abstruse from WitchKing. The artwork is nestled safely in a portfolio folder until such time that I find some fabulously wicked frames and hang them on the wall.

I do feel that decluttering is good for the soul – it frees up mental, emotional and physical energy and I most certainly am feeling fresher today. Jack Canfield and co-author Janet Switzer devote an entire chapter to it in their book The Success Principles: How to Get from Where You Are to Where You Want to Be. They talk about cleaning up your messes and your incompletes, and about completion consciousness.  I also heard about another book with the rather amusing title Does This Clutter Make My Butt Look Fat? where the author Peter Walsh recognised a correlation between clutter and being unhealthy. Apparently, many of his clients found that they dropped weight once they cleaned up their homes. I haven't read the book, but it sounds about right.

My job is by no means finished. I still have two tables in the garage with about eight boxes left to sort. That is my goal for this year. My 2009 decluttering goal will be to go through about five years worth of old newspapers I haven't read but hoarded. It sounds obsessive and it undoubtedly is, but I don't intend to read them except for any articles that jump out at me or inspire me creatively or give me ideas for stories. One of the most important things to do if you're a writer is to read read read constantly. I keep these old newspapers because occasionally I come across a story or a photo that just leaps off the page and gets my creativity flowing. I cut those out and stick them into a scrapbook, which is full of pictures mostly – faces, eye colours, costumes, nature, architecture – you name it. 

My 2010 goal will be to sort through and archive all my old photos, as well as all the torn out recipes from magazines which would take about 100 years of fulltime cooking to test every one of them. Got to cull cull cull. Got to dump dump dump. A few years ago I taught my equally messy niece a little chant when she discarded stuff all over her bedroom floor or the rest of the house: "You took it out; you put it back." I really need to start implementing my own advice on the moment rather than in retrospect. Consequently, I am working hard at consciously breaking old habits by putting things away or throwing them out once I have finished using them rather than letting them pile up. And that includes reading papers within a week of being purchased otherwise it's the rubbish bin!

Mermaid Treasures 6

Well not quite... strictly speaking this is not mermaid paraphernalia, although I sometimes imagine what it would look like with a mermaid figure on it. I love this piece nevertheless and it holds its place nicely in my mermaid collection. It's actually a lamp. I had it next to my bedside when I was a child and for some reason it gave me great comfort to look at it. It's a pink pottery shell with a couple of colourful angel fish in the interior and a cluster of decorative sea anemones and clam  shells along the base. There's a sticker on the outside that says "Peggy Stanton Hand Styled". I just Googled it and got a hit onto eBay that says it is a "rare pottery shell and tv lamp" and yes, that it's "very kitsch". 

Book Publishers at San Diego ComicCon

More on the ComicCon but from the traditional publishers' POV who were well represented on the exhibition floor. Check out Publishers Weekly for more info.

More on Graphic Novel Proposals for the Mainstream Book Market

About six weeks ago I did a presentation at Supanova Sydney on how to submit graphic novel proposals to mainstream book publishers. The first piece of advice given was to meet the publisher's exact submission guidelines, which may vary from company to company, imprint to imprint. The second piece of advice was that comic book publishers often have very different needs to traditional book publishers and that in fact, all the former usually want to see is about five pages of finished sequential art (by finished I mean coloured and lettered) and maybe some cover art and a brief synopsis of the story. Traditional book publishers on the other hand usually want more information than that – they want to know what the genre is, who is the target market and other marketing information, as well as biographical information on the creators behind the project. In terms of the actual graphic novel itself, they usually want it treated in the same way as a picture book submission – a few finished pages and either an outline and sample scripts or a full script – this way if they make a decision to accept the book they can choose a size and format (such as landscape or portrait) and then ask the creators to prepare the rest of the work according to these specifications.

In the last part of the presentation, I went into a lot of detail about the components of a book proposal. This information was gleaned from three different US sources – a literary agent, a publishing consultant, and the submission criteria of a children's publisher to whom I had pitched a property a few years ago (it took me about two weeks to write the proposal based on their criteria). All three I must add don't specialise in graphic novels, since this is quite a recent publishing phenomena in both the US and Australia, and some publishers are still cementing their understanding of what they are actually looking for. However, the reason for this level of detail in the proposal – as was explained by all three of them – is that they want to see that the creators know their market inside and out and make a case for their book, that it helps the agent know which publishers to pitch to and the publisher to decide where to position the book in their list, and it helps in defining the marketing plan. Furthermore, it gives the publisher confidence that the creators can proactively handle publicity and promotion, rather than passively relying on the publicity department which might be working on multiple campaigns at any one time. An author/artist/comics creator's familiarity with marketing also helps ensure the longevity of the book and pushes it to become a strong backlist title if sales are consistent and good. 

The one thing I didn't take into account – which is why I add this blog post as an addendum or codicil to my original presentation – was cultural differences in the publishing world (and this is where I put on my hat as "perpetual student" – see post below). What may be embraced by some in one country or continent, may be too overwhelming in bulk or prescriptive for others around the world, simply because the dedicated staff in many publishing companies have little time, stretched resources, and are coaxing or juggling many projects at any one time through the editing, production and marketing stages. As audience member Tad Pietrzykowski of The Dark Nebula fame so concisely said at the time of the presentation, sometimes "less is more". 

So the original advice still stands – always respond by meeting the submission criteria for each publisher (for some it may brief for others it may be a behemoth). Either way, the act of writing out a comprehensive book proposal even if you don't send it in to all publishers actually helps you understand your own product so you can talk about it coherently to your publisher and your readers.

Ultimately, as Brian Cook, literary agent and publishing consultant of the Manuscript Agency said at the presentation, "content is king"! The graphic novel will be picked up on its quality alone, and the rest is secondary. Having said that, sometimes a good pitch (which meets the submission guidelines and demonstrates your understanding of the creative property and the market) can help nudge your graphic novel over line once it is presented at publishing meetings where editorial, finance and marketing must make the decision together. 

The Perpetual Student

A few years ago I was faced with the dilemma of being cast as an authority on a complex subject I felt I was just learning about when I was asked to pitch a non fiction new age book to a publisher that was just starting a new imprint. It didn't really matter that I had been ingratiated into that particular world for many years or that I knew more about it than the average person in the street or indeed that I had completed many courses on the subject matter and seen many clients. It was just that I felt there was a gap – a time lapse – between actual logical learning and actual full integration into the mind/body/spirit. What I mean by that is that sometimes I can listen to a lesson, but actually not experientially "get it" until much later down the track at which time I will sit up with a jolt and declare to myself or others "Now I know what lecturer X meant when he/she said that..." This is a point of time when the information becomes a natural part of yourself and you can communicate about the subject as easily as if you were having a conversation with your best friend without reconstituting a textbook. 

Now ... I am no Pretender (where are you Michael T Weiss, you sexy thing?) ! I strive to live a life of truth and authenticity which means looking into the mirror and acknowledging those aspects of myself that need more work, and also foregoing many of the defense mechanisms that we are all accustomed to using or exhibiting under emotional pressure (I actually may do a special blog post on this for you so you know what I'm talking about). So how did I deal with the original dilemma that made me feel significantly uncomfortable – that is, how could I label myself an expert when I didn't feel like one? How could I be an authority figure when I was still learning (and indeed still am) through much of what I do? 

Well it turns out that I didn't, and that there were three tricks to this as I came to discover. The first is a basic one about constantly refining and improving yourself. The second one is about being open to new information that could influence, impact or even change your previous learnings. The third one was answered in a most unexpected place when I attended a Mark Victor Hansen Mega Book Marketing event. One of the speakers was a guy called John Childers, whose niche was in public speaking training for profit. He took to the stage with great aplomb as if he had been born there and told his story. One of the things he mentioned was how he got started on the speaking circuit – how he had researched the real estate market and made some good investments and became a millionaire in the process. He was asked to do a seminar at a community event and he was faced with the same dilemma as I was – how could he speak from a position of authority when he was only five minutes (that's me taking dramatic licence – it was more of a case of a couple of years) into the real estate game. He came upon the realisation that he didn't need to fake anything – that in fact he could speak from one of three positions: the expert (one who knows everything there is to know about a specialised subject), the reporter (one who has no direct experience within a given area but who has researched it profusely and is merely delivering the material to an audience) and the student (one who is in the process of learning about the specialised area). At his initial talk, John Childers took the third position and found that that the admission didn't hurt him at all  – in fact, if anything the audience responded with greater enthusiasm because they could relate to him. Needless to say, he nailed the presentation.

That message was like a gold nugget for me and it hit me – I could work from either one or indeed a mixture of those points-of-view in the future and not compromise myself or the reader/audience. 

I ended up writing a bonza of a book proposal, which to this day I am extremely proud of. Unfortunately it wasn't converted into a publishing project because the editor in question vanished a few months later and the new imprint didn't eventuate. But no matter – I integrated something extremely important in the process – and perhaps in this act of blog posting it I become, for just a moment, an expert.

To Meet or to Avoid Mr Right? That is the question

I'm going to my fabulous Leo-friend's book launch tonight at one of Sydney's beach suburbs. Her name is Anita Heiss and she is a force to be reckoned with – bright, talented, passionate, stylish, witty and extraordinarily generous and funny. The book in question is called Avoiding Mr Right. It's the follow up to the hilarious and perceptive Not Meeting Mr Right. Go out and buy them now! That's an order! 

ASA Comics/Graphic Novels Portfolio Update

We've been working hard the last few weeks on various briefs for the Australian Society of Authors (ASA) Comics/Graphic Novels Portfolio where we are dual portfolio holders. The recommended freelance rates (eg. inking, colouring, convention sketches etc) are currently being researched; the legal officer is drafting up various Minimum Approved Contracts for Comics Creators; the Executive Director will be doing a costing of a proposed Comics Creators Talent Register which we want to put online onto the portfolio page of the ASA website so that publishers searching for talent can find it all in the one place; we've just finished the Supanova round of seminars for the year; and we've had several meetings at the ASA offices. There's another secret plan up for consideration this weekend, and Jozef and I will be addressing the fourteen-person Committee of Management and letting them know what's happening in the Australian comics community, as well as outlining the direction we'd like to go in over the next year or two. Jozef is also currently designing a logo for the portfolio, after which I will be putting together a regular ezine which will be going out exclusively to members. All this is taking lots of time, so our heads are spinning at the moment. If you're an Aussie comics creator we recommend you join. Heck ... if you're an overseas comics creator just come on board and help build the membership and find strength, resources and inspiration from the community.