So You Want to be a Writer? Move a Mountain for Me.

A brief, somewhat frustrated, editorial about publishing.

I have a beautiful idea for a comic book series.  That’s not me blowing smoke, but what everyone who has read it has said.  There’s only one problem - I’m nobody.  Guess what else I have?  Several unpublished short stories, an unpublished novel, and a few screenplays that a friend has made into films that are in post production or released and already forgotten about.  The problems I seem to be running into are myriad.  As far as comic book writing goes, I’m dead in the water.  Most publishers don’t want to see work without art to back it up and those that do have incredibly strict guidelines for the kind of script they want you to send them.  Unfortunately for me, I wrote my comic book script like a screenplay because that’s how it translated best from my head to the page and, really, isn’t that all comic books are?  Just movies put down on glossy paper, but with way less budgetary restriction for explosions, set pieces, and broad sweeping tales of heroism, loss, and redemption.

The major issue to me would seem to be not that I’m a writer, but that I’m a writer with the audacity, that unmitigated gall, to want to be successful at writing.  How dare I?  Because, let’s face it, a large amount of the population really doesn’t think it’s work to write.  They view that as something they were forced to do or do for funsies when they write something like “Roses are red and so is your nose when I punch it.”  The idea that it’s easy to be a writer is really only solidified by your Stephanie Meyers and E.L. Jameses of the world.  Really sorry to throw those two under the bus, but they are two success stories built off of blind luck.  And, as always, sex sells whether it’s between a vampire and a lady and a werewolf or between a misogynistic man and his “freed” woman which is a story as old as, let’s say, O.

Submission processes for short stories are just as difficult, it would seem.  Because of the “high volume” of stories received, no Zine or Journal is willing to give one iota of feedback, either.  This leaves the writer with such burning questions as “Did I format wrong?”, “Was the story not a good fit?” and “Did you even bother to read it?”  I’m not insinuating that none of my short stories have been even cracked open when I’ve sent them at, but the speed at which I get some of these rejections leads me to wonder if there isn’t a secret organization of editors somewhere or, hell, even just one editor for all these publications saying “Another submission from that Daniel Gonyea-Alexander fellow?  His name is too long.  Trash it.  Who hyphenates anyway?  Probably some kind of pompous self-important jackass.”  While quite possibly a jackass (I do choose to continue to be a writer, after all), I resent the presumption by these imaginary characters with no real basis in reality that I am pompous or self-important.

So, what do I do?  Write.  It’s all I can do.  Like any other addiction from coffee to breathing, it’s one of those habits I just can’t kick.  In fact, for this little tidbit to even be read, it’s going to have to be thoroughly vetted by the Evil League of Villain Editors or that one Head Honcho Editor who I brought into being just a paragraph ago.  And, if you’re reading this, then hurray for small miracles.  I will be jumping and dancing somewhere just knowing that something got published for a bit of mass consumption.  Otherwise, does anybody know where I can purchase a bit of mountain moving equipment?