I recently sat down to the documentary “Dreams With Sharp Teeth,”  to learn a little more about Harlan Ellison. I will be honest- I have been a fan of his work since I was young, but I knew very little about his life. After watching the documentary (which I would highly recommend as required viewing for ANY creative person) I came to admire the man even more, and I came away with three main things.

First of all, while I recognized it as being a surreal moment for Harlan to have called me to tell me he enjoyed Robot 13, I found out from watching the documentary how rare of a phone call that was. Yes, Harlan Ellison tells everything as he sees it and over the years he has championed and encouraged other Writers. But to think that this happens often would be like saying that massive cataclysmic events wipe out all life on Earth “often.” He doesn’t praise someone because he thinks he should or to be polite. If Harlan says something, it’s him being honest and that’s the end of it.

The second thing I learned is that while I may live a thousand years and never approach Harlan’s talent, his background was very similar to mine and to many creative people I know. He was, like many of us, the kid that was a frequent target of bullies. Like many of us, he suffered through a series of situations where what he excelled at was both a blessing and a source of disdain from other less talented people. And like many of us, he built up anger because of those situations that fueled much of his actions through his adult life. Knowing that is comforting because, to be frank, if a guy as talented as that grew up being the High School Quarterback I would feel the urge to shoot myself on the spot.

Finally, what I came away with above all else was Harlan’s monologue on writing being hard work. The idea writing not only IS hard work, but that it was SUPPOSED to be hard and that the better you get at it, the harder is should be was an epiphany. If Harlan Ellison acknowledges hard work in his craft, then I need to get to work, because I have a much farther road to travel…

Today’s lesson in Failure is: The Hard Work Is Never Done.

Play most video games frequently enough, and you will find a pattern emerge. The early stages are difficult at first, by the time you have re-played them dozens of times you can almost sleepwalk through them. That is because the easy levels are easy to get you up to speed with the concepts of the game. If the latest Mario Brothers game was like real life, moment 1 would have as much of a shot of being impossible to master as moment 365.  The game designers do that so you won’t quit before you understand how to play, but it isn’t a realistic model for anything worthwhile in the real world.

Reality is hard, and anything that is worth doing or is done well never stops being hard on some level. If it does, then you are probably being lazy and not improving, or you suck and nobody has the heart to have told you yet.

That’s really it. Good work takes hard work. No magic formula.

For those of you that have been reading my column for a while now, this is not news. What I think needs to be mentioned, however, is that the hard work NEVER stops. Part of that is the need for a creative person to do something new all the time. As Harlan mentions in “Dreams With Sharp Teeth,” you don’t get ideas from an idea store. Who the Hell knows WHERE ideas come from? Some are harder to cultivate than others, but the bottom line is that coming up with new ideas and then turning those ideas into art is ALWAYS going to have a level of difficulty. And the more things you do, the harder it is not to repeat yourself, so you have to work harder still.

Another aspect is that there is a natural desire for your reach as a creative person to grow as time goes on. Say you self publish a comic and print 100 copies. Getting that done and finding ways to get those 100 copies into the hands of readers takes effort. If, however, you continue doing that for 10 years- putting out the next issue, printing only 100 copies and moving on to the next, then you aren’t accomplishing anything. Everyone has to start somewhere, but your goal should be to move in some direction toward a goal. Going from 100 copies to 250 takes hard work, and to make a book that deserves to have a higher print one than the last takes hard work. I can’t speak for other people, but I know that I always challenge myself top what I did before. I want every issue to be that much better than the issue before it, and I want every new story arc to be better than the last. That’s not the easy way to do things, but I couldn’t live with myself taking the lazy way out.

You may ask, “That’s okay for now, but where does the hard work end?”

I am not sure but if I were to guess, the hard work ends when you quit or die or decide to spit out a lazy re-tread of something you already did rather than trying to do something that is worth people’s time. And don’t get me wrong- the reader is important, but they have nothing to do with the hard work of creation. If you are “doing it for the fans,” then you aren’t likely to succeed in doing anything worth gathering a fan base. Don’t put in the hard work for some potential fan- do it because it’s the right thing to do, and it’s the only way to end up with quality work. Believe me when I tell you- not every “fan” knows good work if you put it on the end of a flaming arrow and shot it into their skull. Your job isn’t to “educate” the masses, either- it’s to do quality work that’s good enough for other people with talent to recognize that it’s good. If you do that you’ll be fine in the long run, and you will have the basis for a career of working that much harder to live up to whatever praise you receive.

In the documentary, Harlan shared a positive note from another well known writer and said that it meant a lot to him to get the praise of someone so talented. “You aren’t a Writer,” he said, “Until another Writer tells you that you are a Writer.” I agree with that 100%, and I know that having other Writers enjoy my work not only validates that I am on the right path, but it makes me work harder than even I anticipated to improve my craft. You can work to the same ends, or you can give up on hard work. Your call.

If you are allergic to hard work, though, don’t expect for anything you do to be any good.

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