Tale Out of Time

Every tale springs from its time. The underpinnings reflect many social, emotional and personal things that are happening in the author’s life, and in the world around them. I’ve been thinking about this after a trip to my local comic shop.

Like a lot of things in our pandemic era, what’s on the shelves has been significantly delayed. These titles were meant to come out in April and May, and they were intended to kick off a summer-long multi-title crossover event. Seeing them “start” in August carries a funny kind of discontinuity. You just have to smile at the ads that say the next issue will appear in June.

But, there’s a whole planning process that stretches back months before a particular issue arrives on the shelf. Editorial meetings for these issues probably took place in the fall of 2019. Then there was the process of assigning writers, scripts being written, editors approving them, followed by artists being assigned, their work approved, followed by inking, coloring, and the actual process of printing the magazines.

Being a writer in whatever genre or format requires you to be a little bit psychic. The comics staff were looking ahead, from fall 2019, to predict what readers in spring 2020 would want to read. (They missed the mark, but that’s a subject for another blog.) We prose writers do a similar thing. The stories we work on now, in fall 2020, also face a time lag. If you self-publish, your story might come out this winter. But if you work with traditional publishing, your book might not appear until 2022 or later.

It kind of makes you wonder, doesn’t it? The world may change wildly before your story even comes out.

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