I’m by no means a standard, old fashioned, or conventional screenwriter. I don’t do the “gag writing” thing, though I hear it pays $50 million a year. Sure it seems like an incentive to stick to the animation status quo, but all the writers I admire broke away from their generations status quo. When I draw a blank and get writers block (not that I ever get blocked when I’m writing; it’s pretty much a continuous flow), I don’t generally turn to classical animation for inspiration, even though yes, I am an animation writer-in-training to some degree. For inspiration I turn to stuff like pulp fantasy, Hong Kong films, contemporary French comics, and things like Mario Puzo and Tom Clancy books, when I’m not thumbing through classic literature I have “occupying” my bookshelf and littering my studio floor. I write animation like I would a live action film or novel, because to me, if someone succeeds at writing that way, others would probably follow that example. Once you have ONE Yoshiyuki Tomino, fast forwad a decade, they’ve breeded, and you have MANY Yoshiyuki Tominos, albeit not quite as prominent as him in status, but still nonetheless cranking out awesome friggin scripts for TV, movies, and comics.
But if you want to be a successful writer, just as it is with art, if you want to succeed, you WILL write every day by any means necessary, come hell or high water, come Apocalypse or not.
I do have quite a bit of hidden discipline and will power. I don't have the discipline to stay directed forever like a Dave Sim or a Osamu Tezuka or an Otomo. My willpower and discipline is a little bit different. I have the discipline to write a lot of words just about anywhere, in almost any format: Daily. I developed my writing discipline by keeping a journal I started on my computer around 2000. By 2010 a solid decade's worth of free epic nonlinear work later, I had a giant word processor of folders and a giant stack of papers written and lying about my studio. I wrote over 10 years nonstop in an attempt to teach myself the discipline of a real writer. I wrote when people saw me writing and when people didn't see me writing. I wrote when the world focused on me and when it didn't. I wrote in emotional traquility and stability and also while in instability, domestic chaos, and inner turmoil. The point is, I wrote. I wrote, and wrote, and wrote, then when I caught my breath, I wrote some more, for just a few more hours. I wrote out of emotional instability and out of creative compulsion. Something I have yet to do with my art. While the world dissected and scrutinized my artwork and designs, which were at the forefront of my public persona, I kept my writing routine in the background, kind of subliminal, and at a safe distance, like that sort of annoying commercial that keeps airing when you watch TV that you don't really mind, but also don't really hate because it's just kind of there, doing its thing, regardless of what you or I or any spectators think of it or assume about it.
-JM
