✍️ Editing a failure into something new
On getting enough to distance from disappointment to be creative
In the midst of the pandemic, before I started this newsletter1 in early 2022, my main creative outlet was drawing a fiction comic. I had the idea for a graphic novel, maybe even a trilogy, and I completely fell in love with the characters, the setting, the tone, and the plot.
But scripting out and then drawing a whole book was — and is — super intimidating. I wanted a way to keep things fresh throughout, even if the project took years, as I hoped it would. So I would loosely plan out each scene and then complete each panel, in order, from start to finish. This may not seem like a big deal, but it is essentially like storyboarding, scripting, casting, filming, and editing each scene in a movie as you go along. I loved the sense of improvisation and the accomplishment I would get from each drawing.
Before long, I had banked up enough to start releasing it through this newsletter2. Unfortunately, the unspoken “meh” I got back, the deafening non-response, was extremely deflating and disappointing. Was I cut out for fiction comics after all?
But in retrospect, I get it. Really. With a little distance, I can see that the story wasn’t compelling enough. It didn’t go anywhere, and it was too confusing. Releasing it like that, in pieces, days or weeks apart, couldn’t have helped. What a shame, I thought, to spend hundreds of hours on something and have it be wasted.
But … was it a waste? Recently, while driving for a couple hours, I had a nagging thought: there is something like 170+ panels here, or about 28 six panel pages worth of comics. What if I were to scrap all the dialog and rearrange the panels? Could I make something else out of this? Could I treat that entire years-long project as just an ambitious first draft?
And that, dear reader, is exactly what I’ve done with Signal Decay. Whole characters have been removed, panels have been completely repurposed, and the entire premise has been significantly changed.
What once was an on-going adventure serial is now a seven page short story. I invite you to read the whole thing (ideally on something bigger than a cell phone) on my website.
Working on this in the last week or so has been a really satisfying creative experience. I had to try a couple different edits before I landed on this one, but I’m pretty happy with it. Thanks to my pals Beth Hetland and Kyle O'Connell for their notes.
I’d love to hear what you think. Leave a comment, reply to this newsletter, or ideally, share this with someone who you think might like it. Social media is mostly broken, and I think we each have a duty to spread the word about new and interesting things online.
I’ve also added some recent comics to my website, including the Thailand autobio comic and a preview of the experimental sci-fi memory story, in case you missed either of those.
–Josh
P.S.: I’m on Bluesky now if you want to find me there. One thing I found there recently is a link to a rip of David Lynch’s full Masterclass, which I found really entertaining and useful.
I used a panel from it in the first one I wrote
I’m not going to link to it, but you can easily find it if you’re curious