September 22, 2003

Monday September 22, 2003 • Howard Tayler

As the title of this letter implies, I'm taking drastic measures in order to repair the buffer.

Here's the thing. Lately it only takes me about 40 minutes to pencil and ink one row of Schlock Mercenary. Thus, I can crank out the requisite nine rows weekly in something under six hours. But that's just the ARTWORK.

The hard part, believe it or not, is coming up with this crap in the first place. And the HARDEST part is making stories fit tight sets of requirements. Schlocktoberfest, while funny and goofy and spooky for you, is the single most difficult thing I do all year. Saying that it's harder than it looks would be trite. It's not only harder than it looks, it's harder than you'd think harder than it looks should be. It's even harder than that, with the same sort of recursion that results in you thinking that squirrel should be cooked longer than you think it should be.

With the buffer as low as it is, I need to crank out SCRIPTS. Finding time to draw can be problematic, but having something to draw ON is critical. As of this writing I have enough scripts to take the buffer up to 19, if I drew everything tonight. I'm not going to do that, though, because I got sick again this weekend (there's a whole 'nother story there, which I won't trouble you with.) For those keeping score, as of Monday morning the buffer will stand at 10. Thus, I need to (and you'll pardon the play on words because you're Schlock Mercenary readers, after all) sit down and crank out the schlock rather than trying to craft a tight-and-tidy Hallowe'en story with all the formulaic scary, pseudo-scary, satiristically-scary, and characteristically funny bits.

Once I made up my mind to do this, the scripts started to flow. The Voices In My Head, unfettered by the tight constraints of Schlocktoberfest, began to yammer. Seven scripts leapt out in a single sitting, which is something that hasn't happened in weeks.

We're not out of the woods yet, but I'll keep you posted. Hopefully the scariest thing about this coming October will be how low the buffer got in September... Moo-hoo-hoo-hoo ha-ha-ha-ha.