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What's even worth saying?
Writer's block does not exist, but tell me that at 2 am the day before a deadline- when the pile of scenes in front of me refuses to accrue into a story and I'm all out of Malbec- and I reserve the right to lunge across the desk.
I'm gladly not in that state right now. Rather, I'm thinking about the things that can paralyze us. There's a touch of narcissism to every piece of writing, in that one is heading out into the world and saying "hey, listen to me. I've got something to say and you should spend some of your oh-so-brief existence on this beautiful chaotic tumult of a planet listening to it, because it will in some small way affect your experience."
I think about the weight of that often. It's why I've typically been a very quiet social media user. What do I have to say that someone else hasn't already said better, that a thousand and one people aren't saying simultaneously, loudly and at length?
The common advice "write what you know" at its best refers to the idea that every perspective is unique. It is. But, let's face it, it isn't on every topic. Because so often we regress into the tried and true, the rote and the idiomatic. This is not a bad thing. It's how we pass information on. We're memetic animals.
Yet there are certain questions I'm asked in interviews, where I inwardly wince even as I'm answering, because I can hear how I'm parroting writing advice I read years ago from Alan Moore or John Yorke.
It's been said before and said better, so what's the point in me reiterating it?The narcissism of "hey, listen to me" runs up against the narcissism of "I should have something new to say. I should be the one to blow the bloody lid off this thing."
What's worth saying, I've grown to accept, is anything with candour. The first time I was on a live panel, I found it bloody nerve wracking. I was in my very early 20s, and thought I had to live up to what a writer was meant to be. How a writer was meant to come across. And I had to do it in front of a whole crowd of people.
I just know too many writers now to have any romantic notions about that. Public speaking doesn't bother me anymore, cos I know I'm just gonna open my mouth and let words fall out. If they're foolish, at least they're honest and foolish. If I parrot, it's because I genuinely believe the advice I read has served me well, and should be reinforced. I'll still wince, though.
I'm thinking about this as I'm on the seventh edition of this newsletter, and finding it easier and easier to sit down and write you a thousand-ish words once a week. These too might be foolish... but they're honest and foolish, and you don't have to read em.
Writer's block does not exist, your ego is just getting in the way, as it doesn't want to let you put down enough bad words to get to the good ones. Or you've already fucked up the plot and are finding it painful to tear apart what you thought you'd carefully constructed. It really hurts at 2 am.
Shit, I'm sure I'm even parroting that from somewhere.
I've spent the last week straight listening to Alone, the new track by the Cure.
There are few things I'm obsessive about- I'm a Jack of all trades master of none on most topics- but Robert Smith's band of unmerry men is something really special to me.
Alone is their first new studio track in sixteen years. It's fantastic. Very much calling back to the Disintegration era, three minutes of keyboard led dreamscape followed by three minutes of dread laden poetics delivered matter of factly and laden with vocal hooks.
But sixteen years. The album, Songs of a Lost World, is out next month, and I might have to take a whole day off. It was originally announced for 2019, which still would have been an eleven year wait.
I haven't gone looking for it to confirm, but I remember reading in an interview from back then that it was all finished except for the vocals. Smith has a reputation as a perfectionist, refining and reworking his words in a way a humble monthly comic writer can only dream of.
He's also declared that he's breaking up the Cure after every album since the 90s- even making noise in that direction as far back as the 80s- as he doesn't want to ever release an album that doesn't stand up to what came before it. Yet here we are in 2024 with a new record, one that's clearly been painstakingly crafted and deemed worthy for the world to see. Because it was still worthwhile. There was a new, better thing to be made. A thing worthy of the band.
That's an interesting thing to think about as a working artist with rent to pay each month. I'll happily do a dozen drafts of a script if it isn't working. But I only feel like I've folded my integrity once in the last few years and actually released an issue I'm not proud to stand behind. 20-odd pages I didn't think really worked. That was a lesson, at least. That sometimes you should listen to bloody Robert Smith and walk away while you're ahead.
The Cure are probably another reason I've been thinking about the honesty of art and artists. This video of Smith as a judge on a 1990 pop music show always brings me joy, as he very politely shits on every act he's presented with. Refusing to say anything nice about art he finds categorically bad. You have that right when you wrote Pornography.
Perhaps I'll use this an excuse to wait sixteen years to release my next newsletter.
I haven't written much about what I've been reading in the last two weeks. Work has been boiling my brain, so I've been reading Warhammer 40k novels. Chainsword go bzzzzzzzt.
On the other hand, Caspar Wijngaard just sent me his and Kieron Gillen's The Power Fantasy issue 4, and bloody hell. I wrote effusively about issue 1 back when I started this newsletter, and every issue since then has gotten better. Issue 4 is fucking heart wrenching. It feels like the soul of the whole thing. Out November 20th.
Last week DC revealed the preview pages of Nightwing #119, my first issue alongside our team of Dexter Soy, Veronica Gandini, and Wes Abbott. Those pages look like this:
I'm immensely proud of this book. I hope these pages show that we have ambitions here. That's five new antagonists for Bludhaven in five pages. Hard to believe it's only a few weeks until it's on shelves. Out October 23rd. Curtain up.
At the top of this week I'm fine tuning a new issue 1 for an expansive franchise I wasn't very familiar with before I was approached for it. I quite like doing those- I had a similar experience on GI Joe. I try very hard not to write as a fan, even if I am one. I take out that part of my brain and put it in a jar on a shelf, and find a story that's exciting and interesting regardless of whether the reader gives a damn about the character or the world before picking up the comic.
At this point in my career I generally assume I'm being hired to do the thing that I do, so it's liberating to walk into a whole new universe and start kicking over tables to see what's cowering beneath. Brand new raw material to shove into the creative maw. New mythologies to tinker with, tear apart and stitch back together once I know what their organs look like.
This one I'm enjoying in particular. The franchise is broad and grand enough that the story can go pretty much anywhere it wants. Despite that, it's shaping up into a tightly focussed paranoid thriller.
When that's done, I have two pitches to write after two editorial zoom calls last week. Both for books planned for 2026.
One is for DC, and I cackled my way through that call as the editors brought me an impish high concept that I wanted to start writing there and then. It builds off seeds I planted in an earlier story, and I think will make a lot of readers very happy indeed. I have my fingers crossed it might just expand into a bigger, crazier thing when all is said and done, but we'll see.
The other call was broader- a "what would you do with this" kinda thing. I wasn't sure, until the next morning a big "what if" dropped into my head.
That's two new things I'm impatient to get my teeth into, so see you next week.
This has been thedeadairchannel. A download from the desk of Dan Watters. Please do subscribe.
