For most of my life (which admittedly isn't too long), I have been the self-deprecating type. If you insult yourself before anybody else does it, they won't have as much fun doing it. If you don't think that your work is any good, then you will never have to worry about getting egotistical or about getting your ego deflated. If your work is junk to you, it also forces you to keep trying harder and harder to do better. It certainly worked for quite a while.
I told this to one of my professors once. He told me that there reaches a point where that ideology becomes a hindrance. If you never think your work is any good, it will only go so far (it occurs to me now that this goes along with the misguided hope of getting discovered). Eventually, you have to start taking pride in your work. You have to know that what you do is worth writing and worth reading. You have to show it to other people with that enthusiasm and let the pride in your work drive you to keep writing and do even better.
That advice really struck me. I had never heard anything like that. If I did, it certainly never resonated before. I never got that conversation out of my head, but it wasn't until now that I really experienced it.
I am extremely proud of my comic. I love writing it. I love reading it. When I go back and read scripts I've made, I laugh out loud. If I can make myself laugh with stuff I've already written that doesn't even have the accompanying pictures, then I am positive other people will love it. And that's how it has been for me. I don't just hope the comic will take off; I am certain of it. I'm being realistic, knowing how extremely hard it will be, but I know that I have an exceptional product in a market supersaturated with crap. And the more I think about it, the more I realize that this pride is doing wonders for the comic itself. I want to advertise it, to share it with everybody, and to do it full-time (and dedicating your life to one thing says a lot about how much you love it).
If I ever came across somebody who had the same ideology that I used to have, I know I would give them the same advice that was given to me.
About Me
- Kevin Bahler
- I am a writer. A writer is one who writes. By the same logic, I am also a thinker, an observer, and a puzzle solver. I am a graduate from the State University of New York at Cortland with a degree in Professional Writing. The idea of the program is that one studies all three aspects of writing as a whole: Creative Writing, Technical Writing, and Rhetoric. The knowledge I have gained in those subjects is put to use in every aspect of my life. The worst thing a person can be is boring. I am most interested in people who can pique my interests. An example is people who can correctly use the word 'pique'.
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