Reggie’s Bitter Victory

It’s a cold, cold moment when one looks at one’s self in the mirror and sees a poseur.

Months ago I decided to write and self-publish a comic anthology. My goal was to have it ready for a nearby convention, the 2005 Small Press Expo (SPX).

A few months later, I stumbled across a large group of talented comic creator types in my own damn neighborhood, the DC Conspiracy. They meet at a bar where I used to be a regular. It’s about a mile and a half from Jerkwater Estates. They proved to be a bunch of helpful and talented folks.

I’ve even posted on this blog about my creative struggles, using Archie characters to explain the war in my skull.

In short, the world of comic creation lay before me, its grassy hills beckoning me to come romp amid the verdure. The path was right in front of me. All I had to do was step onto it.

You can guess where my story is going, can’t you.

SPX is this weekend, September 23-24.

And it ain’t happenin’.

Back in February and March, I wrote up a bunch of plots, a handful of treatments, and about two full scripts for the anthology. They didn’t do a damn thing for me. This was bad. If I can’t get excited in my own work, a reader sure as crap won’t. My interest flagged and I never picked the stuff up again.

Better still, I attended one (1) meeting of the DC Conspiracy, and not even a full meeting at that. Sundry obligations plus inattention to schedules meant I kept missing ‘em.

Due to some very important obligations this weekend, I won’t make it to SPX this year even as a fanboy.

God, I suck.

Had I the drive, I could have overcome the obstacles and produced the anthology. Or at least something. But my desire wasn’t strong enough to overcome these mild hurdles. Dammit.

Larry Young would pants me, given the chance. And he would be right to.

It’s a cold, cold feeling in the belly when you realize you aren’t “unpublished talent” but rather a “big-talkin’ wannabe.” A steel-toed boot to the crotch of one’s self-image.

Humiliated by this metaphorical nutting, mentally curled into a fetal position, I decided to undertake a new challenge. The final put-up-or-shut-up exercise. To find out if I got the goods.

I have decided to undertake the insane challenge of National Novel Writing Month.

This November I will produce a novel of no less than fifty thousand words. (What it will be about, I have no idea. National Novel Writing Month stresses the point that quality is optional. Phew.) I’ve already instructed my friends to give me non-stop grief about the book throughout November. Such prodding should get me through. I hope.

Thus, for the month of November, I have no idea if I’ll post to this here blog.

Not that I’ve been filling it up a lot lately, I know, I know. I might post a little. Given my preternatural skills at procrastination, I might pause to post about the Freudian implications of Starman’s “cosmic rod” as opposed to Green Lantern’s “power ring” or some such drivel, but I dunno.

My self-image can’t take another boot to the huevos like the SPX fiasco. I will finish the damn novel. GYAAAH!!

To prepare for the event and because I’ve been neglecting Filing Cabinet of the Damned lately, I’m gonna post heavily throughout October. Be warned.

So remember:

NOVELING VICTORY WILL BE MINE!



(It appears gender bending victory will also be mine. Not quite what I planned, but okay, I'll run with it.)