For a few months now, I've been in private correspondence with a gent who's fairly new to the art 'n' craft of writing comic books. He's sold a number of things and seen them published…and he'd hoped that by this time, his career would have picked up some momentum and he wouldn't still be scrounging for assignments like an absolute beginner. That has not happened. His old credits have not led to new ones and his dream — to give up his non-writing day job and become a full-time professional author — appears more remote than ever.
Many e-mails have been exchanged and we got to talk for a bit at San Diego. He suggested I quote here, so all could read them, some things I wrote to him in recent messages. I edited hunks of a few messages together and made a few changes so it makes more sense yanked out of the context of our back-and-forth…and here 'tis, for whatever it may be worth to someone. This is me writing advice to a friend who's having career trouble…
Your problem, pure and simple, is that you were late with your work. It is all well and good to rationalize, "Well, it's more important that I deliver a good script than that I deliver it according to some editor's schedule"…and yes, there are times when a deadline is utterly arbitrary and they tell you they need it in June when they aren't going to do a damn thing with it until August. But not all deadlines are like that and to let a real one go by unattended is a luxury that we rarely have in the writing game, especially when in a new relationship. There are times even then when they can give you an extra two weeks. There are also times when they can't…or when to give you that two weeks means taking it away from your collaborators; i.e., the artist is going to have to draw the comic in three weeks instead of the five he expected to have.
You may also have harmed his income. He expected to have that script next Tuesday. He planned his life and maybe turned down other work so he could start drawing your script then, plus he counted on being paid for it by the time his next mortgage payment is due. But because of you, he has nothing to draw next week and no way to make money on the days he cleared to draw your script…and he may have to turn down the assignment he was going to do after he finished your script because he's now not going to be done with it when he expected to be. Ask anyone who's worked in comics for a few years and they'll gladly unload a tirade of anecdotes about how someone else's lateness screwed up their lives and maybe even prevented them from doing their best work.
There is nothing noble about being late, nothing that suggests your work is better because you fussed longer with it and did that extra draft. Creative folks can meet deadlines and still be creative. Laurence Olivier somehow managed to be on stage when the curtain went up at 8 PM. He didn't tell them to have the audience come back at 9:30 because he needed more prep time to give the best possible performance. You can do good work and get it in when it's supposed to be in…or reasonably close to it. (When I write here of being late, I'm not talking about being a day or so late or even of skirting phantom deadlines. I'm talking about being late on a real deadline such that it causes problems.)
In San Diego, you went on and on about how [name of his editor on a recent project] had screwed you up by not answering questions or getting you certain reference materials you needed or…well, I'm sorry but my brain tuned-out after a certain amount of that. But let's say you're right. Let's say he is a bloody incompetent who couldn't handle his end of things. That does not give you special dispensation to be late. It's not like "He did these things wrong so I'm allowed to do some things wrong." If his actions made it impossible for you to meet the agreed-upon deadline then you should have told him that at the time and worked out a new, realistic deadline. (One thing I've learned to do: If someone hires me to write something that I can't start until they send me a piece of reference, I don't agree to deliver by a specific date. I agree to deliver X days after I receive the reference material. The clock starts ticking when I can start, not when they hire me to start. It minimizes the problem you had.)
If you don't renegotiate the deadline, you should still meet it. Why? Because it's professional and because it gives you standing. I'm going to tell you something I've learned in more than four decades of professional writing for a pretty wide array of media and editors and producers: On any project, you should never expect to win an argument about anything unless your work is more-or-less on-time. If you're late to the point of creating production problems, you lose some or all of your rights even if it's someone else's fault. If the work is on time, you have standing to complain about what others do to your script, you can debate changes that the boss wants to make, etc. If the work is late, you lose a large chunk of the moral authority to say, "This needs to be fixed."
Two other things about being on time. When you're late, it's the easiest thing in the world to have a good reason why it isn't your fault. I know writers who are often tardy and they always have a good reason. Always. There's a power failure or a sick mother or a dental emergency — and they aren't fibbing. I used to say of one writer I worked with, "His greatest skill is in having disasters occur when a deadline is looming."
Eventually, I thought of a clearer way to look at it. Disasters can and do happen to everyone — I've certainly had them interfere with my writing — but some folks make those situations more destructive to the schedule than necessary. I'm talking about the kind of person who, deep down, is always looking for reasons not to work. So if Mom gets sick or the computer's on the fritz, they immediately let that stop them. It doesn't always have to. There's a famous story they used to tell around the Marvel offices about the great New York blackout of 1965 when power was off everywhere for about twelve hours one evening. Most everyone showed up at the Marvel office the next morning without their homework, figuring they couldn't be expected to write or draw by candlelight. Stan Lee, however, came in with all his pages done, having labored by candlelight. And the point of the story was that Stan was amazed that everyone else hadn't done that. It had simply not occurred to him not to write even though he had a perfect excuse. Which is one of the reasons he's Stan Lee and you and I are not.
Disasters are also more likely to stop you if you're the kind of writer who puts things off 'til the last minute. If you have all of November to write a script and you don't start 'til the day after Thanksgiving, you're gambling. That guy I said was really good at having disasters occur when a deadline was looming…I think that was his problem. He wasn't to blame when that car hit him two days before the script was due. But he was to blame for not starting on the script until three days before it was due.
The other thing I need to say is this: Don't get mad at other people because you're late. Don't get mad at people who may have contributed to your being late and especially don't get mad at people who didn't. I did this a lot when I was starting out. Secretly, I was angry at myself for screwing up but I couldn't cope with that so I found ways to direct that anger at others — at my editor, at my collaborators, at innocent bystanders even. Far better to be mad at them than mad at me. But I learned…and while I still occasionally still make that mistake, I don't make it for very long. Ultimately, it's a much easier problem to correct if you're clear on who's responsible for it.
You made a bad mistake being late with your first few jobs. I tell beginning writers, "Never get a reputation for unreliability. You will never lose it," which is an exaggeration but only a slight one. What you need to do now is cultivate the opposite rep and maybe, just maybe, the new one will trump the old one. If not…well, you just may have to look for another career. I'd check into jobs at United Airlines. Based on my last few flights with them, I'd venture you can make a good living there if you're always late.