The Purple Girl is finished
I spent the summer writing a story about a girl who finds a photograph, and I’m happy to say that the first draft is now complete. It’s time to edit and polish and get it ready to be the centerpiece of my graduate school application packet, and possibly begin shopping it around. If you’re interested in reading it, I will be printing a very limited run in chapbook format for friends to see. I also have to return to some other writing projects I’ve neglected, including my comic book, “The Alberic Heresies,” and some things I’ve agreed to do for other people.
The one thing “The Purple Girl” has taught me is just how much I love fiction. There’s something undeniably appealing about having complete control over your characters and the world they live in. As much as I enjoy working in the comics medium, it is a collaborative process — there are benefits to it, and there are also big hurdles. You are required to have an artist, which makes writers like me who don’t draw beggers, essentially. We really do depend on the charity of artists — without them, there is no way to realize our scripts. I’m fortunate that I’m able to work on “The Alberic Heresies” with an old friend, but other writers aren’t so lucky. I see them at the DC Comics Conspiracy meetings, desperate to get someone to draw their work. Even if they are fortunate to find a collaborator, their next big hurdle is trying to sell their book to an audience that doesn’t care. Unlike readers of short stories and novels who are always looking out for new writers, the comics audience is much more conservative. The majority are happy to read their nine X-Men comics a month and overlook innovative and great stories being produced independently. That’s the price of working in a dead medium.
Sorry, I didn’t mean to get so gloomy. What I am excited about is the cycle of stories I’ve begun about people living on the margins of the middle class in Washington, D.C., of which “The Purple Girl” is the first. Part of the exercise is, with the exception of one story, to write only about characters with very different viewpoints from my own. That’s a tough challenge, but it’s fun. We’ll see if I’m up to it.
By Doug, August 29, 2006 @ 3:47 pm
Please save me a copy of the chapbook! Thanks = )