Before Adventure Time
was the mega success for Cartoon Network, it was once a short being held
hostage by Nickelodeon. When I went to
College for Creative Studies, Penn Ward came and lectured us for a day about
his cult cartoon that was just a short looming on the internet at the time. Nickelodeon
thought the idea was much too weird to be a full on cartoon, but they wouldn’t
let Penn do anything with it. However,
it still had a huge following on the internet.
Penn even admired his inappropriate fanart (which kind of crept me out,
to be honest).
I had never seen the short, but they showed it to us and I thought
it was funny. To be honest, the show had
to grow on me. My youngest sister is
obsessed with Adventure Time and she
would DVR the episodes and she watched them multiple times, so I was watching
her watch them. Now I’m an official fan that's excited to see new episodes,
but she envies the fact that I’ve actually met Penn.
But I took some important information away from that time
with Penn that I think would mean a lot to authors out there, so allow
me to share the words of wisdom that Penn shared to all of us: “Never pitch
your baby.”
If you think that Penn Ward spent so much time writing out a
storyboard for Nick for Adventure Time,
you are wrong. It was something he
thought up in a couple of minutes and it ended up catching fire. Now everyone isn’t going to be picked up by
such a lackadaisical attitude, but I still appreciated his reasoning behind not
pitching something important to him.
When you have something that you work on and you dedicate so
much of your heart to, it’s your baby. You
have a hard time accepting other’s people’s advice on how to raise it and let
it grow. You’re very protective and very
defensive about it. And in the case of
whether it’s a cartoon or a show that you have to pitch to a big network, you
have to make a lot of compromises and you might have to kind of sell out to
make a living.
Jhonen Vasquez, the creator of Invader Zim, has created a lot of things and even though there are
people who love his cult phenomenon, he doesn’t exactly freak out about the
greatness to the extent that people like me do.
It's nice to him that people walk around with Gir stuff, but it doesn't give him butterflies. After being at his panel at C2E2 2012, I learned that he’s planning on
making new cartoons, but he wants to make them without the pressure and the
supervision of a big network. He wants
to let his creativity flow on his own terms.
He talked about needing to raise the money and the fans cheered and
claimed that they would give to him if he started a Kickstarter. As a matter of fact, someone shouted, “Shut up
and take my money already!”
Sometimes you get sick of sacrificing your own creativity to
appease someone else. And the truth is there
are probably people out there as sick and twisted as you that will appreciate
what you do. Sometimes, you do need a
different perspective to reel you in or to bounce ideas off of. That’s why a lot of writers have
partners. But sometimes the experts don’t
always get it right. Stephanie Meyer who
wrote Twilight had a whirlwind
of success relatively quickly, but she still got rejection letters and some of them weren’t
so nice! J.K. Rowling pretty much only
got her big break because her publisher had a child that read some of the pages of the Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone
manuscript and demanded to have the rest.
I started writing my first novel, Superficial, soon after meeting Penn and I adored it to death! It’s not the best thing I’ve written, but I believe
it’ll be a huge franchise and I’ve made a lot of great and memorable
characters. I tried submitting it to
literary agents and even though I got positive feedback, it didn’t get picked
up. I literally had agents that said
they knew I would be successful with this project, but it just wasn’t for
them. I could respect that they didn’t
want to take on something they didn’t have their heart and soul in, but it also
baffled me that they rejected the chance to make what they thought to be a lot
of money.
So I started writing more novels. I have a couple finished in my Superficial series, but I started
different series that I also adore. Now am
I as attached to other projects as I am to Superficial? No.
Some stories that I’ve written are more strategically written to
get me where I need to be. Most are just
spawned out of my creativity and what I feel like writing. But I’ve learned to not be so touchy and I can
experiment and test out other stories that I’ve written.
Now I’m at the point in my life where I’ve taken a leap of
faith and I’ve done the insane thing of self-publishing a book—two,
actually. Superkid and Sunrise Sunset
are now available for sale and I’m extremely proud of them both! Will Superficial
be joining them any time soon? Well,
that depends. My goal is to have a strong base before I launch what is so near and dear to my heart. Be honest with yourself. If your work failed, would you be okay with that? I personally think it would break my heart. So if you can’t be detached enough to a project, it’s best to work on another one. Maybe you’ll never publish your favorite piece. Maybe it’ll always be stored up on your hard drive to read when you feel the need to pat yourself on the back. Maybe some people might think you’re a coward for doing that, but sometimes you have to protect your heart. And there might come a day when you can let the baby roam free into the world after you and the baby are prepared.
Mr. Vasquez has fans that will follow him, give him money, and that will support his dream and creativity. I’m sure whatever Penn Ward’s “baby” is can see the light of day when he feels it’s time. He's got enough fans. In the meantime, Penn has had a ridiculous amount of success with something that he created in a manner of minutes.
I think you should protect your baby and maybe even shelter it if you have to. Refine it and make sure it’s how it needs to be. Set realistic goals and make sure you have proper plans. I’m learning the value of taking your time with a project and I’ll take all the time I need to in order to make Superficial a smash hit.
