Towards an Australian Graphic Novel: A response to Meanjin and Comics

Almost a year ago I wrote a piece for Meanjin called "The Written Image" about the Australian graphic novel and the developing long-form comics created in Australia. This was followed by a response blog post criticising my article as "defensive and dismissive of comics". From inside comic culture this reading might have some weight, but the article sought to introduce a new audience to Australian graphic novels.

I started writing about comics in 1993 when I chose Australian comics and the censorship campaigns of the 1950s as a history thesis topic. The history department was reluctant to take it on and suggested doing it over at the freewheeling postmodern English department. A confused English professor wrinkled his nose and asked "Do you mean a thesis about Ginger Meggs?"

Nope, I was looking to research what happened in the mid-1950s that damaged the development of Australian comics for years to come. Most Australian states introduced censorship laws to tackle what had been called "a flood of blood" of American comics. The campaigns against comics were muddled with comics blamed for destroying everything from literacy to morality but also included strange bedfellows like Australian comic artists who saw their industry threatened by "sin in syndication".

In the Meanjin piece I talked about "so-called horror comics" because at the time few horror or crime comics actually existed in Australia. The pamphlet I've reproduced here (comics as "vile mind poison" could be a marketing slogan today) had to source examples from pulp fiction and penny dreadfuls to find shocking images. Titles like Tales from the Crypt and The Vault of Horror were released in the USA which was the source of the moral panic that swept the world. My article mentions Japan because it is one of the few countries that didn't introduce censorship laws. Manga has developed into a diverse adult literature while elsewhere comics were hampered by a self-censoring industry.

Self-censoring? Yep. In most nations comic book publishers saw the storm of parents, educationalists and churches and opted to protect their markets. The Comics Code Authority in the US is the most obvious example which appeared in 1954 and pushed out comics that featured horror or sex. Entertaining Comics - famous for Tales from the Crypt - dodged the laws by creating Mad Magazine - as a magazine Mad could push the limits more than a post-war American comic. Robert Crumb and underground artists carried the torch for adult comics in the 1960s but it's not until the 1980s that graphic novels aimed at a new audience.

In Australia our moral panic was dealt with by censorship laws. Fearing the loss of their licences that prosecution under the new laws would bring, publishers self-censored. The censorship laws that were put in place were later used against books and magazines, but comic books largely ducked prosecution.

Australia has only just developing graphic novels - impressive longer form comics aimed at older readers are being produced by Australians like Nicki Greenberg or Bruce Mutard. Many of these artists currently creating books come from a community of comic creators that began in the 1990s, working on books that have taken years to create and get published. The Wheeler Centre has an upcoming event spotlighting some of these creators. But there are many more who've created great comics that deserve larger readerships. Getting these creators an audience beyond their community will be a real sign that Australian comics have grown up.

In a strange coda, the 1950s closed with comics as school textbooks (like the second image here). More than selling out, they'd become part of the education system, tagging comics as the stuff of school children for generations of baby boomers. In 1954 Meanjin was in the grip of the moral panic, publishing "Comics and Culture" by Norman Bartlett who feared that "comics and sex books ignore community or any other values and exploit appetites, impulses and passions." Literary journals have come a long way in how they see comics.


Illustrations from a pamphlet "Let Us Work To Ban Trashy Comics And Books Which Poison Our Childrens' Minds", authorised by the Trades and Labor Council of Qld, 1952, and educational comic Flynn of the Great Heart, cover image of by Arthur Hudson, published by Australian Visual Education Pty, 1958.

Inside Rosebank Fellowship

If you've noticed it's quiet in Hackpackerstan lately, it's because I was lucky enough to receive the Rosebank Fellowship. What kind of artsy nonsense is that, you ask oddly channelling Andrew Bolt. For me it was three weeks staying in a 19th century cottage owned by Mary Delahunty to work on my novel.

It's the first fellowship/residency/retreat I've done so I was daunted by three weeks in the bush with only my manuscript to keep me sane. Luckily I could check in with my co-fellow, the mighty poet Andy Jackson. And I also  sought advice from folk who'd done this kind of thing before. The best advice? Bring DVDs, because after a day bent over the keyboard you'll need some easy entertainment.

Another good piece of advice was that you'll go on a lot of walks. When I heard this I saw myself on a residency on a travellator ambling around for hours with little pen to paper, but the a stroll can be a useful writing tool. I assumed I'd be rolling out of bed and hitting the desk raring to churn out 10,000 words a day, but some days you can't find a way into the book or you write yourself into a corner the day before. That's where the walks come in.

There were two kinds of walks: the puzzler and the structural redraft. The puzzler was a short stroll down to the main road when you have a small block - does that scene really play out that way? Or how would that character handle grief? The structural re-draft was an hour plus heading up into the Cobaw State Park often involving drinking water and usually wrestling with big issues like re-telling a chapter from another perspective, junking scenes I was attached to and how to introduce zombies into a realist Australian novel. The advantage of the latter walk is that you see plenty of fauna that you can ask for advice on plot and character development. Kangaroos can be the harshest critics - if they don't like it they just hop off.

My other madness-inducing practice was blind re-drafting. This means getting a chapter reviewing it, maybe making some notes (I had scene cards to fall back on), but basically re-starting it as a blank document. It was like walking into a familiar room and noticing an object you'd never seen before then trying to work out if it was interesting or useful to your story. Some of these new ideas are bound to be useless, but you can't tell until you pick up that new object and try it out. It was a good way to reinvigorate the manuscript. And there's no way I could have done such a comprehensive re-draft without three dedicated weeks.

The Rosebank Residency is made possible by the generosity of Mary Delahunty along with the Sidney Myer Fund and Helen Macpherson Smith Trust, and is administered by the Victorian Writers’ Centre. Applications for 2011 open in August this year.

Q&A with Chris Baty, NaNoWriMo founder

National Novel Writing Month is the brain child of Chris Baty, a San Franciscan who took November off to write a book and found a few friends to join him. It's become a global phenomenon with more than 150,000 participants. Chris chatted about the future of writing, the Office of Light and Letters, book piracy and the bright future for the story in the age of laptops and Kindle.

Hackpacker: What made you start NaNoWriMo? Was it a tool to beat your own procrastination?

Chris Baty: The "why" of it all is such a good question. It wasn't because I had a novel in me that I was dying to write. I'd always loved novels and worshipped novelists but had never really thought I would write a book of my own. Until I started planning the first NaNoWriMo, I believed that novelists were a (superior) alien race that had been beamed down to Earth to delight and intimidate the rest of the planet.

Then, in 1999, I quit my full-time job and try to make a living as a freelance writer. I was living in San Francisco, and the internet boom was in full flower and the streets were filled with cash and you could do things like quit full-time jobs and become a writer without anyone giving you pitying or worried looks. I was doing music writing, travel writing, lots of web stuff for different companies. I loved being a freelancer, but writing for a living also made the whole creative process feel very serious all of a sudden. Each day's writerly successes or failures felt like they had looming implications for the rest of my career.

Enter the idea of getting a bunch of friends together and writing novels in a month. By starting NaNoWriMo, I accidentally created a 30-day refuge from that pressure. It was exhilarating to know from the get-go that our books would suck. They had to! We were writing them in 30 days! But the strange thing about lowering our expectations and focusing on quantity is that we were able to stop feeling intimidated by the endeavor and just write. The books turned out okay. The month was one of the funnest times I'd ever had. And I knew that if me and my friends could write passable books in a month, anyone could.

HP: NaNoWriMo began in 1999 - happy belated 10th birthday. How does it feel to have something that started with 20-odd people become a worldwide event? When did you first start thinking it was getting really big?

CB: In 1999, I really didn't think it would be an annual event. To be honest, I didn't think we'd last out the month. And I never dreamed we'd have more than a couple hundred folks taking part. I think it says something great about the human imagination and innate drive to make stuff that a writing contest where the main prize is the manuscript itself could somehow grow to be the largest in the world.

I first realized it had taken on a life of its own in 2001 when I went to a copymat in downtown Oakland. The employee - a guy I had never seen before - handed my copies to me and then said, out of nowhere: "I only made it to 23,000 words." No introduction. Just a quiet sharing of his NaNoWriMo word count. I walked away thinking: What just happened?

HP: This year things got high tech over at the NaNoWriMo site with profiles that act as social networking between novelists and daily stats on how you're doing against the required word counts. How important is that ability to check in with other writers?

I think it's very important! It's amazing how much easier it is to actually finish a draft when your novel is a matter of public record. You're much more accountable to yourself when everyone can check on your word-count each day. Also, having 150,000 other souls noveling alongside you creates its own creative momentum that can help keep you going when the going gets tough.

HP: People who complete NaNoWriMo get a neat 'winner' badge for completing their 50,000 words. For some people that's almost enough. How many participants go back and re-draft their manuscripts?

CB: You also get a winner's certificate! Which, um, you have to download and write your own name on. But still…

To the question of revision: We do a survey every year, and if I'm remembering the results correctly, over 60% of our participants say they plan on revising their novel and finding a publisher for it. At this point, we're heading towards 50 manuscripts that have found homes with traditional print publishers, including one #1 US bestseller. Given the sheer number of first drafts written during NaNoWriMo, I'm guessing we'll be up to 200 manuscripts sold within the next couple years. And ebooks! We're about to roll out a list of folks who have sold their NaNo novels to ebook publishers, and it's going to be a sight to behold. The number of people who have self-published their NaNoWriMo novels numbers in the tens of thousands.

HP: You've written a novel for every year - that's ten manuscripts. How are they going? Do you get time to re-draft them or are you thinking about next year?
CB: Revising a novel is one of the hardest (and most satisfying) creative projects I've ever tackled. It feels like doing a wall-sized Sudoku puzzle - there are just so many ways to get it wrong and progress feels interminably slow some times. Even worse, you sort of have the rest of your life to work on, it so there's no helpful pressure to get the thing finished. I've been working hard at revising my 2005 NaNoWriMo novel for a couple years now, though, and I hope to have to have it out to potential publishers before November. Or before I die. It just takes so much longer than it should!

HP: I started doing NaNoWriMo a couple of years ago and I really appreciated the deadlines and the manic need to write everyday, but freelancing got in the way and I gave up just shy of 20,000 words. How do you get around the distractions of life when writing?

CB: I know! It is really hard. Especially since most of us aren't getting paid to work on our novels, so other activities that prevent us from getting evicted from our homes tend to take priority over fiction-writing.

My sense from running NaNoWriMo over the past decade is that the biggest thing separating people who hit the 50,000-word goal in November from those who fall short is that those who went the distance had mentally committed themselves and their month to the escapade. We have manically busy CEOs and sleep-deprived high school students and stay-at-home moms with five kids in to look after who all win every year. It's not really a question of whether you have time to write a novel. Because none of us ever have time to write a novel. It's a question of whether you make time to write a novel.

In terms of NaNoWriMo, I find it's easier to stay on track if you get a big word-count lead right out of the gate. It's also easier to stay on track if you tell everyone you know you're doing it. It's that accountability thing again. The fear of personal humiliation is a very powerful writing motivator.

HP: NaNoWriMo is run as a project of the Office of Light and Letters. OLL runs a whole slew of events now including Script Frenzy and the Come Write In events where you invite people to work in their local library or indie bookstore. Are you bent on world domination? What next for OLL?

CB: Hee hee. Yes! World domination! One of the places we're really putting a lot of resources is our classroom-based Young Writers Program. For YWP, kids choose a word-count goal (in NaNoWriMo) or a page-count goal (for Script Frenzy), and then they write like crazy to meet that goal. We provide fun, free hands-on writing curriculum for teachers, along with kid-oriented websites, workbooks stickers, posters, and other goodies for students. It's really helped kids around the world discover how much fun writing can be, and has helped overworked teachers tap into a more adventuresome approach to language arts instruction. (It also usually means that teachers get to write a novel along with their students, which is kind of great.)

HP: NaNoWriMo has spread its message really effectively over the web and gets writers using technology to make them less isolated. How else do you see writes and their writing craft changing with new technology?

CB: That's such a good question! I really think that cheap laptops with long-lasting batteries have brought writing into more people's lives because they allow us to get out of our distraction-filled homes and into cafes or libraries (where a lot of us find we can focus better). It'll also be interesting to see how the current generation of teens - who grew up completely enmeshed in online worlds - end up developing their creative selves. For awhile, it felt like every teen had a blog or a livejournal, and that seemed like a really promising development to me. There's no better way to develop a writerly voice (and hone your storytelling skills) than by condensing your life into narrative form for regular readers. Now that we're moving away from blogs and towards tweets and two-sentence status updates, I'm not so sure what will happen.

HP: There's a lot of talk at the moment about publishing changing dramatically with the arrival of the Kindle creating lower priced books. What impact do you think this will have on writers? What will publishers look like in ten years time?

CB: Another great question. I wish I knew! One of the interesting things that I'm not seeing a lot of discussion about is the fact that we're sailing into an era of widespread book piracy, where every book available in an electronic version will be downloadable for free on bit torrent sites. This will mean that a huge chunk of teens and twentysomethings will stop paying for books altogether; authors will see their already-meager royalties reduced; and writers will begin facing the same pressures that musicians currently face to make money through secondary channels like public events and limited-run collector's editions. I think this works great if you're charismatic, love being a public figure, have the luxury of being able to travel constantly, and have a publisher who is willing to make and market special products based on your work. Authors aren't traditionally known for their stage presence, though, and publishers can be slow to adapt to new opportunities.

Hmmm…. I do think that the high participation rates in something like NaNoWriMo is a bright sign for the enduring power of books and stories. In a historical moment when people are supposedly abandoning books, over 200,000 adults will sit down in November and write a novel just because it seems like an interesting or fun thing to do. That gives me a lot of hope for the future.

Photo by Susan Burdick

Reject Me Nots: How to Get and Give Rejection Letters

Like most writers, I've had my fair share of "de-sucessings", "thanks but no thanks" and "If you continue to send your work to us we will release the hounds" letters. Part of 'getting your work out there' is that often it gets bounced back to you, but it makes it all the more satisfying when a reader/editor/intern actually "gets" your work.

To paraphrase one of my favourite rejection letters – they're opinions are learned but also subjective. Your work can fall on their desk at exactly the wrong time, be in the middle of a lump of stories on the exact same subject or just be the piece that’s read before an editor has a cup of coffee. Don’t take it personally because there are a thousand decisions between your submission and publication. Some writers develop such strong relationships with their work that a rejection letter hurts like getting dumped.

So like a good break-up, a good rejection letter is clear and concise but respectful. The worst rejection letter I got back in the days of snail mail was a slip of paper that was one line - "Thanks, but we have no use for your work at this time". It had been torn using a ruler. They’d been too cheap to blow a whole piece of A4 paper and had just torn off several strips probably with the same handwritten line. It was as flattering as being dumped by a text.

Conciseness is key. A friend of mine received a bulk email that apologised for the bulk email then rambled on about how incredibly busy the editors had been and had only just gotten around to getting back to people before finally getting to the point. My friend summarised it as: "Well then, faceless hordes, you're rejected!"

No-one's expecting a personal reply. But personalising the process a little can help the egos of writers. At Cardigan Press when we sent out rejection letters we had a not-quite list who we gave some general feedback with a few common reasons why we didn’t get selected. Telling people how many submissions you got can be a good way to put things in perspective. At Cardigan we once got an email back saying it was the nicest rejection letter someone had ever received.

For writers, any feedback should be good news. If an editor gives any feedback writers should gobble it up greedily and use it to improve the piece. Editors are busy folk with very little time so if they invest a second giving you feedback then it’s because they gave a good goddamn for your piece and want to develop you as a writer. Take an feedback as a compliment.

But if you're still smarting from a rejection letter try the counter rejection. It's a cathartic experience and even if you never send it writing a rejection letter to the publication that rejected you lets you both move on. Here’s a template:

Dear Sir/Madam (I'm far too busy and important to take in your name)

Thanks for your rejection letter. Unfortunately at this time I'm unable to accept your rejection letter.

I receive several rejection letters regularly and whilst yours rejection letter was of a particularly high standard I'm limited by the number of rejection letters I can receive. So while I encourage you to continue sending rejection letters, I won't be able to accept yours at the present time.

Instead I'll be going around inserting my piece into your publication at various retailers using a specially purchased industrial glue. I'll also be visiting the homes of leading reviewers to interrupt their reading of your title by megaphoning in their ears "We was robbed".

Please be assured that I won't stop short of legal action or violence against your pets as deemed appropriate by myself and the other judges of rejection letters (who are also sought by authorities in connection with several unresolved crime novels).

Thanks for your time,

Hackpacker