Mental stages of creating a manga

 

A piece from my last manga

 

I am at the last stage of finishing up my last manga for the year (at my school we have to write two each year) and I am probably further ahead than anyone!

I made sure to get this one approved as quickly as possible and then get to this last stage as quickly as possible and now I am far ahead compared to many people. There are still people that haven't even finished their first manga for the year and I really do wonder how it will go for those guys.

If you don't finish 2 mangas before the 20th of December you will not be allowed to graduate, which means you kinda spent 2 years on this education for nothing!

Anyway, that is not what I am here to talk about. I was thinking the other day about how much I hate my manga and wish that I never had to lay eyes on it again. Which is weird because when I came up with the idea for this manga I thought it was going to be my best one so far and that it was a great story (even though it's very short).

That is also what I tought about all my previous mangas (except for the first one cause I never really liked that one)! For all my mangas I really loved the plot in the beginning and was really excited to draw it, but somewhere halfway I just started hating it, thinking "This is the worst crap ever why did I write this? I should have gone with this story instead!". Why do I have this recurring patterns for all my mangas? I wonder if it's because they really are bad or just because I got tired of it.

One of our teachers said that you write manga you have to be fast, especially if you are writing comedy, because "neta ga kusaru" which means "the story will begin to rot". So if you write a joke in your manga and you think it is the most awesome thing ever, just wait a little bit when you have been around that joke for a while and you will wonder why you ever wrote something that dumb in the first place.

I suppose even if it's not comedy, a story will begin to rot if you stick around it for too long. But I still think it is odd, since I've written many novels and never had this problem.
Maybe it is because when it comes to manga, I also have to look at my own characters and see the reality of how my drawings turned out, and they never turn out as good as hoped.
When I look at the drawings in my manga I feel like I've failed, because this is not an acceptable level for a real manga: Granted I am not trying to sell my manga or anything, but still. We all want to feel that we have created something great, so when you see that it's not turning out great you want to quit.

Now I am at the last stage, just a little more and I will be done, and hopefully this will be my best manga so far, even if I hate it.