The woes of writing

As I've previously blogged, I am currently in the process of writing a couple of Hatman scripts in addition to editing a couple other Hatman scripts and doing layouts for upcoming Hatman comics. But sometimes I get stuck. I believe this is traditionally called writers block, but I don't really think of it as a block per say. I know that if I were to sit down to work on one of those scripts I could write, it just wouldn't be as good as if I were to sit down when I'm feeling "it".

What do I mean by "it" you may ask? Well, I'm not even sure how to articulate what the "it" is that I'm referring to, but when you are feeling "it" the words flow like... well if I was feeling "it" I'd have a beautiful analogy here, but because I'm not, you'll just have to fill in something that flows well.

I know many writers and artists of various forms fall into this place of stuck-ed-ness (for lack of a better term). But I think sometimes it isn't more that I'm stuck but that the words or the finished work itself are incubating, or gestating in my subconscious and once they are ready to be "hatched" they will produce themselves.

I know this might sound like a bunch of artsy fartsy nonsense, but I honestly can't articulate it any better than that. Especially at this moment.

The thing that I hate the most about these bouts of "incubation" (if you will) are that I fear missing my deadlines or holding up the whole process. However, I do tend to work six months out or more, so I haven't held us back yet!

If you watch a 3 or 4 issue story that I wrote, you may be able to see that I wrote one part at a different time than another because even though they are still one overarching story, the "feel" is a little different. You'll get what I mean with this years Halloween special. I wrote the first part in one setting and really liked it; it sets up a new villain and tells a story in and of itself that is somewhat inspired by a popular Spider-Man story. Then I was "stuck" for a couple of months on where to go with the second issue, but I finally felt "it" again and quickly wrote the second issue out alongside the third in nearly a weeks time.

Other times I will be "stuck" prior to writing anything at all, as I've previously mentioned that was partly the case with "Back to the Beginning" we had all taken a crack at the story and had missed the mark a bit and then one day I was alone in the house and I sat down at my computer and refined the notes we had taken of what we wanted to happen and I wrote all 4 parts in that day. It was exhausting but satisfying as well. I really do hope that you are enjoying it. The last installments should be out in the next few weeks and hopefully you can watch them all back to back and see the whole story in one setting somewhat how I saw it unfold through my fingertips when I wrote it.

I apologize for the long somewhat ADD post, but hopefully this sort of thing will help me recapture that magic "it".

Jason

A sneak peek at Christmas

I am currently in the process of writing "A Hattington Christmas Story" which is going to be a parody/tribute of the beloved holiday classic, "A Christmas Story". I've had the idea for this rattling around in my brain for a couple of years and now I'm finally writing it out. I've blogged before a bit of how we try to make our parodies fresh as well as really portray the original material in a good light. This is no easy task and we really do put quite a lot of thought as well as some research into these types of stories, maybe more so than the mainstream "parody" movies do (i.e. Superhero Movie). I'll share with you a little bit of my process so far.

Over the past couple of weeks, I have had several long discussions with Steve, Michael, Andy and my wife, Michelle (she does the voice for Blonde) about exactly how I should tackle this particular project. As you will remember with "Hatman Clause" I took more of the base concept from the source material and wrote something entirely new and different. Well, with this I want it to be more close to the source material, and yet still tell an original story. Which as you might guess is going to be like a tightrope act in order for it to work.

So, in these various discussions I picked the brains of my fellow 3twins-ians and asked, "what scenes from the movie should we portray?" and "what should we try to shy away from or more or less alter in a way?". I'm not going to give you a whole lot of spoilers for the answers we came up with, because, where's the fun in that. However, I will give a few teasers as to what I've come up with:

A Christmas Story was set in the 1940's and was about a man recalling a particularly memorable Christmas from his past. Well, the approach I'm taking with my 3twins tribute version is: Setting it in the 1980's and it will be Hatman recalling a particularly memorable Christmas from his past. So, the story will have the same "feel" and we can still reference '80's things like the movie referenced '40's things.

The next question was, "Do we have our regular cast of characters play parts in this?" Or "Should we try to extrapilate a past for Henry Hattington out of what we already know and therefore, certain characters (i.e. Leppy, Indigo, Blonde...) who appear in nearly every single issue will be absent from this story?" And the answer we agreed on is the latter, many of our regular cast will not be in "A Hattington Christmas Story". However, I am working in new characters that will somewhat "fill the shoes" of the absent cast members as well as a surprise here and there for a few cameo's from people we have met in the Hatman universe.

As you can guess, this will be a bit of a departure from our normal adventurous style, however, I really hope that when it goes online, it will feel like a warm tribute to the classic Christmas movie that is number one for many people.

-Jason