{"id":32083,"date":"2018-04-12T07:58:08","date_gmt":"2018-04-12T11:58:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/?p=32083"},"modified":"2018-04-12T07:58:08","modified_gmt":"2018-04-12T11:58:08","slug":"charles-soule-on-finding-the-joy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/2018\/04\/12\/charles-soule-on-finding-the-joy\/","title":{"rendered":"Charles Soule: On Finding The Joy"},"content":{"rendered":"

And now, a post from Charles Soule — a man who has already conquered comics and now has come for our prose, the bastard, with his most excellent novel,\u00a0The Oracle Year<\/strong>.<\/em><\/p>\n

* * *<\/p>\n

I\u2019m going to write a little bit about writing here, as from what I understand that\u2019s part of the stock-in-trade of this particular website. More specifically, a part of the process that I think is utterly crucial but little-discussed \u2013 and also part of the truth of any creative living (or endeavor, whether you\u2019re paid for it or not): the joy of it.<\/p>\n

I get to make my living by writing a lot of awesome things. I am incredibly fortunate, and I know it. As I type this, I\u2019m staffed as the current writer of Darth Vader, Poe Dameron, Astonishing X-Men<\/em> and Daredevil<\/em>, and I\u2019m also masterminding the return of Wolverine to life \u2013 all that\u2019s for Marvel. I also write my own series Curse Words<\/em> for Image Comics (co-created with the amazing Ryan Browne) and I just released my first novel The Oracle<\/em> Year<\/em> (which includes a kind, wonderful blurb from the occasionally benevolent overlord of this very site.) That is a lot, and while each project is cooler than the last, any single one of them literally a dream come true – I will not lie. Some days\u2026 I don\u2019t feel like doing it. I don\u2019t have the ideas, I just finished something else and I feel like I need to rest, something dispiriting happened in my non-writing life, or I\u2019m just sick to death of my keyboard, my screen, my office.<\/p>\n

The work becomes a job I have to do as opposed to a job I get to do.<\/p>\n

But on those days, I do it anyway. I sit down and force my hands to the keyboard, my pencil to the page, for in my field the deadlines do not sleep. They creep toward you on their strange, serrated legs, ripping away days, hours, minutes, seconds until they\u2019re right on top of you \u2013 and the only way to fight them off is to keep moving, keep moving, always forward, always ahead. (I, uh, saw The Quiet Place<\/em> yesterday. Real fun time at the movies. But I digress.)<\/p>\n

I do this because I love my job and don\u2019t want to let down the many other people who rely on me doing it timely and well (collaborators, readers, editors, publishers, retailers, etc.) However, I was also doing it before I had any of those things. I was doing it from the very beginning of my grownup career, while I was working as a junior attorney pulling 60-80 hour work weeks, late at night, early in the morning, while getting married and starting a family, for years and years. During that time I was the only person who cared about what I was writing. Certainly, people who loved me cared that<\/u> I was writing, because it made me happy \u2013 but the specifics of it? Not really. Getting people to care is a ladder, every rung a good opinion you earn with your stories. It\u2019s not all an endless slog, though \u2013 eventually, that ladder becomes a staircase, and then a home, and then, perhaps, a palace. But it ain\u2019t quick.<\/p>\n

Making a career in creativity is itself a hugely creative act. It doesn\u2019t just spontaneously happen. You have to build it, step by step, just as you do the individual creations themselves. It\u2019s time plus dedication plus skill \u2013 whether innate or cultivated, ideally both.<\/p>\n

So\u2026 how? Who the hell would put themselves through something like that? More particularly, why, when there are easier ways to make a living, with more guarantees.<\/p>\n

Because of the joy of it.<\/p>\n

It doesn\u2019t matter how exhausted I am, how idea-dead, how burned out I might be on the very idea of writing one more word \u2013 the cure is almost always one thing: writing one more word (or a thousand.) When I start creating, I feel a surge of uplift deep inside. Sometimes it\u2019s a whisper, sometimes it\u2019s a roar, but it\u2019s always there, and it\u2019s always been there, even during the years when no one cared.<\/p>\n

I know many people come to this site for thoughts on how to become professional writers, and I think that\u2019s one of my biggest pieces of advice. Listen to yourself, find the joy in just, simply\u2026 making things up. Now, if you can\u2019t hear it, ever\u2026 well, I think that\u2019s telling, and you should listen to that too. But if the joy is there, you should find ways to cultivate it, to access it when you need it, because it\u2019ll be there for you when nothing else is. A life in creativity all begins there, to my mind \u2013 not a desire for money or fame (fleeting if they happen at all.) Joy is a reward in and of itself, and if you find it, you don\u2019t need anything else.<\/p>\n

Creativity is a fire that feeds itself. The output is incidental; the smoke from that fire.<\/p>\n

Why do you sit by a fire? Not because of the smoke.<\/p>\n

I hope this made some sense, and was possibly even helpful in some small way. I\u2019ll tell you what \u2013 I had one hell of a fun time writing it.<\/p>\n

* * *<\/p>\n

Based in Brooklyn, New York, New York Times bestselling author Charles Soule is a writer of novels (graphic and otherwise), comics, screenplays and stories of all types. He plays the guitar fairly well and speaks at least one language.<\/p>\n

Born in the Midwest, he spent his early years in Michigan before moving to Asia, where he spent time living in Hong Kong, Manila and Singapore. Stints on the East Coast followed, before settling in New York (apparently) for the long haul.<\/p>\n

He is the author of the novel THE ORACLE YEAR, published in April 2018 by HarperCollins’ Harper Perennial imprint, as well as many titles for Marvel, DC, Image and other comics publishers, including Death of Wolverine, She-Hulk, Darth Vader, Lando, Curse Words, Letter 44 and long runs on Daredevil, Swamp Thing and Inhuman.<\/p>\n

Charles Soule: Website<\/span><\/a> | Twitter<\/span><\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

The Oracle Year: Indiebound<\/a> | Amazon<\/span><\/a> | B&N<\/span><\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Knowledge is power. So when an unassuming Manhattan bassist named Will Dando awakens from a dream one morning with 108 predictions about the future in his head, he rapidly finds himself the most powerful man in the world. Protecting his anonymity by calling himself the Oracle, he sets up a heavily guarded Web site with the help of his friend Hamza to selectively announce his revelations. In no time, global corporations are offering him millions for exclusive access, eager to profit from his prophecies.<\/em><\/p>\n

He’s also making a lot of high-powered enemies, from the President of the United States and a nationally prominent televangelist to a warlord with a nuclear missile and an assassin grandmother. Legions of cyber spies are unleashed to hack the Site\u2014as it’s come to be called\u2014and the best manhunters money can buy are deployed not only to unmask the Oracle but to take him out of the game entirely. With only a handful of people he can trust\u2014including a beautiful journalist\u2014it’s all Will can do to simply survive, elude exposure, and protect those he loves long enough to use his knowledge to save the world.<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

And now, a post from Charles Soule — a man who has already conquered comics and now has come for our prose, the bastard, with his most excellent novel,\u00a0The Oracle Year. * * * I\u2019m going to write a little bit about writing here, as from what I understand that\u2019s part of the stock-in-trade of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-32083","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"hentry","6":"category-theramble","8":"no-featured-image"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pv7MR-8lt","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32083","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32083"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32083\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32086,"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32083\/revisions\/32086"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32083"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32083"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32083"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}