It’s an abnormally warm Sunday in February. The sun’s out, the neighborhood is quiet, and I have a few moments for self-reflection. I wanted to write this “update” last month, but life keeps flying by, each minute faster than the last. 

In 2023, I wrote 58,446 words. That was personal time writing, not day-job writing. It’s about the length of a novel, though it includes short stories, work on one of my book projects, and reviews for TheBatmanUniverse.net. I mentioned in a previous post that I started keeping track of how many words I wrote at the end of 2022 as a form of self-motivation and encouragement. It’s easy to get down about how little you create when you feel like you have nothing to show for it (for example, I have a comic book miniseries, robot novella, and a couple of short stories in need of a good home). However, cataloging the words has helped combat that pessimistic outlook and keep plugging along. 

This year, my goal is to double that number. Currently, I’m tracking at 7,069 words. But that’s not what this update is about.

Since last I posted, my schedule has been busy with family holiday events, new podcast interviews, reviews, and deep thoughts about the future. 

The Quick Updates

• I interviewed three people for The Batman Universe Podcast in the last month and a half.
  • Robert E. Eliot, author of Nolanverse: Exploring the Greatest Illusion in Movie History.
  • Lou Tambone, editor of The Man Who Laughs: Exploring the Clown Prince of Crime.
  • Ian Miller, creator of the much-beloved fan comic series Batman Enigma.
• My comic reviews might be expanding outside the realm of Gotham City. I pitched reviewing the upcoming Moonstone The Phantom series to the fine folks at ChronicleChamber.com. For those who don’t know, The Phantom is another one of those comic characters I’ve been a fan of for many years now. 
• My monthly motivational newsletter Because We Can had its first issue release of 2024. 
• I’ve been looking into self-publishing my robot novella, and it’s this last update I wanted to speak to. 

Sometimes You Have to Forge Ahead

For many writers and artists, fighting for a spot in that cross-section of business and art is highly competitive and hard to break into. Some give up along the way. Others hesitate themselves into never fully reaching their dreams. And then there are those who forge their own paths. 

I had a phone call a few months back with a fellow writer and friend who self-publishes, and it helped get the gears turning again. It forced me to ask myself two things: What do I want, and what am I waiting for? The answer was big for the first question and extremely small for the second one. 

Recently, I picked up an autobiography by a writer, producer, and comic nerd I admire. I read his first autobiography a little over a year ago (and interviewed him), and I’m currently two-thirds of the way through his most recent one, Batman’s Batman. It’s a book that, so far, beats on all of the failures, misfires, and missed connections that litter the road to success. Even moreso, it speaks to the need to self-generate the willpower and faith to keep going — because in many scenarios, you are the only advocate for your work. 

That writer and producer is Michael Uslan, and he spent 10 years trying to get Warner Bros. to make a Batman film in the 1980s. It’s silly to think that no one believed in the project because the character is so pervasive in media now, but this book, paired with a previous conversation and some more research into self-publishing has me fired up to take another read-through / edit of the robot novella and just release the damn thing already!

Why? Because, at the end of the day, I believe in this project. I’ve imbued it with importance, and if it only releases to an audience of one, the fact that it’s available and out there in the world will put my mind at ease.

And maybe, just maybe, it’ll find and speak to the person who needs it most. Because that’s what art is all about. It’s about communicating to one another, about inspiring, motivating, and sharing that human experience with each other. And that’s a beautiful thing.