There is no shortcut to becoming a talented and successful writer.

People will talk about tapping the unconscious. About stream of consciousness. About characters who take on a life of their own and speak their dialogue in perfect little chunks that never need to be revised or edited.

Of stories that come to their authors, fully formed, in dreams.

But make no mistake: Writing is hard work, and anyone who tells you different is either lying to you or lying to themself*.

The unconscious is a strange and wonderful thing, but it is also full of poorly thought-out nonsense. The man who publishes the first 1,000 words he writes has already written the last 1,000 words he will publish.

Ginsberg revised Howl over and over again. Coleridge made up the Man from Porlock story, because he couldn't think of a good ending for his poem. And anyone who really thinks their characters are speaking to them really needs some medication.

Don't get me wrong. It's a great way to hype your book: "This comic is the result of a 13-month peyote-fueled vision quest and was dictated to me by the demon, Explortha, who lives inside my medulla oblongata." I'm just saying that even if he does live in your medulla oblongata, Explortha needs an editor just as badly as you do.

Can you write fast? If so, that's great. Are your first drafts so beautiful that they make grown men cry? That's amazing.

But there's a reason that we don't call writers "first drafters."

If you know how to write, you know how to take a first draft and improve upon it. And if you don't know how to improve on a first draft, that's probably a good indication that you don't know how to write.

     Yet.

And that's the good news. Because once you except that writing is something that can be worked at and improved, and not some inexplicable pseudo-mystical, pseudo-religious, pseudo-Explorthian experience... Well, at that point you can start working at it and improve.

Last time, we said that Step One to becoming a brilliant comic book writer is finding your own unique voice. Well, here's STEP TWO: Prepare yourself for many, many more steps.

(Which is convenient for me, because I have a column to write.)

Remember, anything worth doing is worth working at. And working at. And working at. And then, if you're really tired, you can take a little nap.

But then you have to wake up and get back to work.

If it feels like what you're doing is too easy... If it feels effortless... It probably is too easy, and I'd recommend putting in some extra effort.

Sometimes people are attracted to writing precisely because it seems so free and easy. Because they think that they can write whatever they want. Because they think there are no rules. And to a large extent, that's true. Certainly, no one is holding a gun to your head and telling you that if you split an infinitive, they'll kill you.

     I hope.

But on the other hand, just because there is no gun-toting grammarian at the ready, that doesn't mean that anything goes. Some writing is obviously ambiguous. Some writing is unintenionally misleading. Some writing is demonstrably bad.

Some writing needz two bee spllchekd.

It's never a matter of "always do this" or "always do that." (Though, as a matter of practicality, I suggest you always do "that" and avoid "this" at all cost.) Rather, it's a matter of knowing your playing field.

There's that famous cliche, "Think outside the box." Which is awful advice, because, honestly, how much do we really know about this box? Maybe you should be thinking outside the box. Maybe you should be thinking inside the box. But you're never going to know until you spend some time thinking about the box itself.

In other words, stop worrying about your subconscious mind and start learning how to engage your conscious mind.

Have your own voice. Check. Develop a work ethic. Check.

Come back next week, and we'll actually talk about comics.

     I promise.

This is one of Drew's classic Think Like Tomorrow columns.

* I know that "themself" is technically not a word, but I greatly prefer it to the alternatives. For those who get upset over these sorts of things, I suggest patience. The singular "they," split infinitives, and sentences ending in prepositions will all be proper English sometime in the next decade or so.