John Ostrander: Conviction

John Ostrander

John Ostrander started his career as a professional writer as a playwright. His best known effort, Bloody Bess, was directed by Stuart Gordon, and starred Dennis Franz, Joe Mantegna, William J. Norris, Meshach Taylor and Joe Mantegna. He has written some of the most important influential comic books of the past 25 years, including Batman, The Spectre, Manhunter, Firestorm, Hawkman, Suicide Squad, Wasteland, X-Men, and The Punisher, as well as Star Wars comics for Dark Horse. New episodes of his creator-owned series, GrimJack, which was first published by First Comics in the 1980s, appear every week on ComicMix.

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5 Responses

  1. mike weber says:

    I’m not sure who it was – but one of the Golden Age SF writers defined “writer” very simply – “A writer is someone who cannot not write.”

    Fred Pohl once said that he had one simple rule – he writes writes something, anything – for an hour a day.

    Period.

    Every day.

    He said that more than once, he would open up his portable typewriter on his lap in an airport lounge and write for an hour, then and there.

  2. mike weber says:

    This blue-and-white meshwork background makes the text in some comments hard to read.

  3. Mindy Newell says:

    My neice Isabel, who is about thirteen, has an A-MAZING set of pipes. She’s an incredibly talented kid, also plays the cello and the piano. Anyway, a couple of weeks ago, she went to audition for ANNIE on Broadway; though she’s a bit old for the part–they’re looking for kids from 6-10–she is a little small for her age. Her mom wanted her to get to see what it’s like–there were 350 kids there!!!!

    She did very well, sang WHERE IS LOVE from Oliver (though her mom wanted her to sing something from Sondheim, she left it up to Isabel.) The response was: “Very, very nice. Thank you.”

    She wasn’t too disappointed, I think, especially as it was a new experience for her; still, I told her today that if she wants to be in the creative arts, she had better be SURE–have conviction, as you say, John–and absolutely, positively BELIEVE IN HERSELF, because it’s going to be DAMN hard.

    Once again you knocked it out of the park, John.

    P.S.: I’m going to send this column to my sister-in-law to show Izzy.