It seems that I just can’t update this blog as regular as I would hope to. See, I don’t have the Internet in the house so anytime I’m updating it’s during a slow period at work or when I’ve stayed behind after a shift specifically to post something. Well, there are (thankfully) a lot less slow periods at work at the moment and I’m a bit too busy to stay behind after shifts.
My current plan is to write my blog entries at home (as I’m doing now) and then just paste them into Blogger when I get to work - I always get there at least 15 minutes before I’m due to start working.
But why am I so busy at the minute? I’ll try to explain...
I am employed by South Tyneside MBC to work 12 hours of youth work every week at The CAVE Youth Initiative Centre in South Shields. I’m a Youth Work Assistant so my duties aren’t that difficult, although at times things get very difficult. Generally, I’m working with bands and musicians trying to get them to the stage that my band Squares is at.
Ah, there’s the next time-consuming activity I am bound to. I’ve been the singer and co-songwriter of Squares for the last three or four years. We’ve just released our debut album and played a fantastic launch party. But since then we haven’t done much. To be honest, I fear for the future of this band. I’ve but so much work into it, so much money into it, so much time...and it’s all falling apart. We were recently offered our own practice room (you’ll see when I’ve finished this ‘why am I so busy?’ section why that would’ve been such a good thing) but we decided not to take it. I’m not sure why. I’ve heard money is the reason. But it would actually have saved us money in the long run or cost us around the same amount as we’re already paying out for practices and transport. But, anyway, we practice at least once a week and then there’s all the other stuff that I do for the band on top of that.
On top of all that I’m in a long-term relationship. Not only do I have a commitment to maintain to working at keeping that relationship alive and well, I also am compelled by that crazy thing called ‘love’ to be with Lily as much of the time as I possibly can. And, since she’s been on her summer holidays, there’s been a lot of time when we could see each other – so, of course, we would see each other during that time.
Then there’s the Paper Jam Comics Collective. The best group in the world. We meet every other Thursday at Travelling Man in Grainger Street, Newcastle. As well as the meetings, I’ve been writing a draft constitution for the group and a script for the forthcoming Paper Jam comic book anthology. This anthology is right up my street – it’s aimed at kids! As soon as that idea came up I started work developing my script. I wanted to do something that was aimed at kids but didn’t patronise. I wanted to do something aimed at girls. And I wanted to do something that harked back to the old-school British comics that I used to read when I was a young lad – of course, I used to read old annuals and comics bought from church fetes and car boots – so this strip harks back to waaay beyond my 23 years. The strip is called ‘Bianca’s Bicycle’; it’s a story about a young call with the fastest bike in her town. I’m very happy to say that one of the most talented people I’ve ever met is drawing the strip – Jack Fallows...
And talking of Jackson Fallows – that brings me to another huge part of my life, Jack and Daniel’s Comic Book Workshops. As I’ve said, I’m a trainee Youth Worker. What I haven’t said is that I don’t see this as a long-term career. I’m working at The CAVE for a number of reasons – I love music, I want to give something back to the local community, I want to help new kids out that way that Squares were helped out the we were when we started and I NEED THE MONEY. So, yeah, there are altruistic reasons behind my working with these kids, but there’s also the fact that I’m a struggling (or, maybe, emerging) writer and I need to eat...and buy comics.
That’s where these comic book workshops come in too.
I’ve recently graduated from Northumbria University with a First Class B.A. Hons Degree in Drama and Scriptwriting (I focused on scriptwriting). At the very end of the second year of my degree I had somewhat of a revelation. I knew I wanted to be a writer. I knew that and I still know that. I wasn’t, however, sure what I wanted to write. Scripts, obviously – I hate prose. But one of the main reasons for doing this course was the three years it would allow me to decide what I wanted to write (while getting the chance to become a better writer).
So, yes – the revelation. Up until this point I had been writing theatre, TV, film and radio. I had already written short films and short theatre scripts before. I knew I didn’t really want to do this for a living and couldn’t. There isn’t a living to be made in short films and theatre. And I’m not at all interested in long-form theatre. That wasn’t an option. To be honest, I’m not that interested in feature films either. Or radio. TV then! Yes, I LOVE TV. And I LOVED writing it. I still think that my third year TV pieces (an Eastenders script and an hour-long cult teen fantasy show) are mint. I worked very hard on both and received very good marks for them.
Oh, I still haven’t got to that revelation. I remembered something, you see. I remembered that every week I left university on a Thursday and went into Forbidden Planet and Travelling Man and bought comics. And people write comics. And comics (along with music) had always been a major force in my life. And, yes, I used to want to write comics myself. Hey, why can’t I be a comic book writer?
So I decided that I would write a comic book script for my Proposition module in third year. Proposition is a module in the third year of Performance, Drama, and Drama and Scriptwriting where each student literally proposes what they’re going to do and sees what the lecturers say. At first I was told that I wouldn’t be able to write a comic book. I was doing a performing arts degree and comic book scripts cannot be performed. I like to think that I’m quite good at putting my side of the argument across. I used this ability to argue that the artist performs the comic book script. After all What is performance? (that’s a big part of performing arts, you see – ‘what is performance?’).
So, as I struggled to write my 48page comic book script, I went into Travelling Man. This must be February2009 now. I spoke to Becca on the desk (although at this stage she was known as ‘short-haired girl who sometimes speaks to us’ to me and Lily) and asked if anyone in the shop made comics. I wanted to be around people who were making comics. I’ve always wanted to be part of a community and artistic communities are especially appealing to me. To be with artists is to be an artist. Or, at least, to feel like one. She told me about Paper Jam Comics Collective (then called ‘Comics Night’) and I soon joined. And I loved it.
I’ve totally forgotten where I’m going with this. I’ll have to scan back to see what I’m going on about.
So – I’ve decided I’m going to write comics, I’ve joined Paper Jam Comics Collective and I’m still at university. One of my other modules was ‘The Working Writer’. This module is great. Although, I think I was one of the only ones who thought so. Everyone else was scared by it. We were told things like ‘you will probably not make a living off writing’, ‘you will need to become self-employed’, and ‘you will need to treat your writing like work – a business – and make a business plan’. This was not a revelation to me. I have done a good few writing courses in my short time. I had heard most of this before but not in this constructive let’s try it out environment. So I was well aware that I would need another income along with whatever I can scrape together from writing comic books.
And that’s where (in the short term) working at The CAVE comes in and where (in the long-term) Jack and Daniel’s Comic Book Workshops comes in.
Comic books are not being bought by as many kids as they should be. Not enough comics are being aimed at kids as there should be. The first statement is a result of the second statement and the second statement is a result of the first.
Not enough comics are being aimed at kids. What’s wrong with that? Well, if kids don’t read comics, who will be reading them in ten years time when these kids are in the main demographic for comic buyers? If the answer is ‘no one’ or ‘significantly less people than are reading comics now’ the comics industry is going to be in a shabby state. And there probably won’t be a lot of writing work to go around.
So that’s quite a selfish reason for me to start developing comic book workshops. But it is by no means the only or main reason.
When I was at Ridgeway JMI in Park Avenue, South Shields I was not a very good reader. Thinking about the way I am nowadays, I can assume that this was less down to pure ability and more about laziness and lack of interest. But the truth is that I was in a special needs reading group. I couldn’t read – even if it was just because I wouldn’t read. I had no interest in reading books. It seemed pointless. They were boring. Nothing I saw in the books offered to me at school was of interest. And even when there were things of interest in books – they were very long and would be taking up my precious time.
When I came out of the special needs class, I could read. But I still didn’t want to. I can only remember reading two books during the rest of Ridgeway – The Hound of the Baskervilles and Beowulf. But outside of school I was reading lots of comics. Lots and lots of comics. And the comic books I was reading were aimed at people quite a bit older than me (the fact that I hid an issue of The eXecutioner’s Song because it featured the words ‘sexy’ and ‘homosexual’ proves I was not ready to be reading this comic). But when I didn’t understand a word, I’d ask my dad or look it up in the dictionary. Whenever I had no idea about a situation, I’d ask about that too or I’d look it up.
Comic books were teaching me stuff – even if they didn’t set out to.
In my life, comic books have been there when I couldn’t read then when I could read but didn’t want to read books. And they were still there when I graduated with a First Class Honours Degree.
That’s what kids are missing out on. Not only are comics really good fun – they’re a great reading tool for kids. They feature exciting characters and situations that capture the imagination (for me, it was the Spiderman Clone Saga), there are really great pictures and they are often light on words. Comics are so accessible for new readers (I mean people who don’t read rather than people who don’t read comics, that’s another debate all together). A young lad could read a comic book and not even realise he was reading.
If I can go from where I was to where I am now – and I swear that most of the things I know I learned from comic books or TV – so can just about anyone else.
There’s the main reason for the comic book workshops. And it’s a big one. It’s something I’m very passionate about. Something I would shout from the rooftops. Another reason is making comics (at a beginners level) is quite simple. You need a pen and a bit of paper and a spark of imagination. So, not only are we trying to make sure there are comic book readers in the future, we’re trying to make sure there are readers in the future and we’re trying to help people be more creative.
So me and Jack have been working hard on our sales document – a booklet we can send out to schools, libraries and other organisations to advertise the various services that we can provide. Not only have we been developing, writing and drawing our sales booklet, we’ve been out meeting people. As a result, we have quite a lot of work lined-up in October and some in November. We’re very hopeful for the future of these workshops and are looking forward to doing a lot of good work around the North East.
That’s quite a lot of stuff and doesn’t even begin to touch on ‘Adventure Arena’ (although I think I’m going to be called that ‘A4 Comics Presents...’ as long as that title is free), or my Action Man animation serial, ‘Resistance’ or the amount of comics I have to read!
