Yesterday I posted an update about where I stand with respect to the “Contest for Creative Types,” only most of you probably didn’t see it because I removed it. Why? It was overly lengthy navel-gazing drivel. Frankly, where I stand can be summed up very succinctly: I’m crapping the bed.

See, I started by trying to re-write the script for the first issue of a comic-book entitled The Victory Streak. But I kept falling prey to the temptation to re-write as I went along. So I began losing ground in a big hurry.

Then I found a copy of the first draft of the script, and decided to draw the first four pages. Then I dug up the pencils for page one — which I did about a year or two ago — and inked them with a brush. Badly. Very badly. An untrained monkey could’ve done better.

So when I said I’d finished one page, that was factually correct but functionally incomplete. The complete picture: we’re 19 days into this contest and I have little to show for it.

So last night I taped a piece of artboard to my art table and said, “OK, in two hours I should be able to lay out this page.” But I couldn’t, because I kept erasing, and redrawing, and erasing, and redrawing… oh, and also, swearing and breaking pencils and pissing off my girlfriend who was sitting about five feet away using her PC.

Then I had an epiphany: I realized whatever I drew was going to suck… and that’s OK. Unless you’re a f—ing prodigy, you don’t get good until you get your bad drawings out of the way. May as well do that sooner rather than later.

I don’t know if I’m going to make the Nov. 30 deadline but I am going to complete four pages of this comic, like I said I would. I’m even going to post them in this blog and discuss them a bit for anyone who is interested.

And, hey, if I study and practice hard enough and consistently enough, after a few years people may look back at these drawings and say, “Man, that Bill Myers used to suck.” As in, y’know, past tense.