Corban Wilkin

There are several problems associated with writing four graphic novels at the same time which hadn’t previously occurred to me.

For a start it makes each one take four times as long. (Who knew?) Also I have the issue of being able to give up too easily. You see, with just about every comic I’ve ever created, or any project at all for that matter, I usually give up about once per day. It’s sort of an organic part of bringing a project to completion: throwing one’s arms to the sky and declaring that what you’ve done is worthless, telling yourself quite authoritatively that it’s over, you can’t do it any more, before coming back twenty minutes later with a cup of tea and carrying on. Whilst writing four at once, I lose faith in each story just as one of the other stories (inevitably the one which I’ve left the longest without working on) starts to seem like the best idea I’ve ever had.

Now this might sound like a good thing, rotating through the projects, and always working on something, but it begins after a while to seem impossible to focus on one story for very long. If you’ve only got one thing on the go then eventually you’re forced to carry on with it and though you curse and swear and despair and kick the thing across the floor, soon enough the rusty motor kicks into gear and it starts to chug along by itself.

What I’m sure will happen is that one of these stories will begin to take precedence, and as I begin drawing finished pages  it will become the only thing I work on, the other stories put on the back burner to be reconsidered at a later date. However, the biggest problem is that that I like I like them all so much I want to see them all come to fruition!

Unfortunately (or fortunately), though, ideas are only worth the time and effort you put into them. Ideas you don’t at least start bringing into being remain as just that: ideas.

I don’t like to discuss subject matter too much until a story’s completed. I tend to always regret telling people my ideas before they are at least at the roughs stage. But I’ll tell you this much about these four in utero graphic novels: one is set in the past, one is set in the very near future, one is set in the distant future, one is set… somewhere very surreal.

P.S. If you want to be an illustrator but don’t know how to start, you could do worse than getting a copy of Martin Ursell’s Illustrating Children’s Books, which, completely coincidentally, features me as a case study of an illustrator.

Click on the image to go to Amazon and buy it! —–>